San Javier, Chile


San Javier is a Chilean city and commune located in the Province of Linares, Maule Region. The city lies in the geographical center of the country, some south of Santiago, to the northwest of the provincial capital, Linares, and to the south of Talca, the regional capital. The Pan-American Highway passes through the commune of San Javier, touching tangentially the eastern side of the town. A paved road connects San Javier with Colbún, Colbún dam lake and Panimávida and Quinamávida hot springs.

Demography

According to 2005 estimates, the commune of San Javier has a population of 39,583, of which 19,682 are male and 19,901 are female. About 60% of the population is urban and 40% is rural. According to the 2002 census of the National Statistics Institute, the population of the commune of San Javier was 37,793 inhabitants. Of these, 22,004 lived in urban areas and 15,789 in rural areas. Between the 1992 and 2002 censuses, the population grew by 6.2%.

Geography

The commune covers an area of. The eastern part of its territory lies within the fertile, central plain or "depresión intermedia", but the extense western part is hilly and somewhat drier, a typical "Cordillera de la Costa" terrain, which requires supplemental irrigation to support its varied cultivations. This area lends itself nicely to wine growing and cereal cultivation. Therefore, San Javier has some of the better vineyards and quality wines of the bountiful Maule Valley, in the Chile's central valley viticultural regions or appellations.
San Javier is bordered on the west by the communes of Constitución and Empedrado,, Cauquenes,, and Villa Alegre; on the north by Pencahue and Maule communes, in Talca province; on the east, by Yerbas Buenas, Villa Alegre, Linares and Longaví and on the south, by Cauquenes and Retiro. The town lies on the right margin of the River Loncomilla. Located a few km north of San Javier is the wide Maule river, of which the Loncomilla is the main tributary. River Purapel, a regional "anomaly", since it flows eastward in a country where the overwhelming majority of rivers flow in the opposite direction, is a tributary of the Loncomilla.

Geographic coordinates

Architecture

There are many villages and other smaller, rural entities within the communal territory; several of them are quite distant from the main urban centers and relatively isolated from the more distorting external cultural influences. Therefore, the commune can boast several villages with well-preserved colonial rural architecture - the criollo legacy - both in the religious as well as the civil domains. Singular examples of this brand of picturesque and bucolic villages, in the commune, are: Huerta de Maule, Nirivilo, Bobadilla, Caliboro and Melozal. Also, along the paved road that connects the towns of San Javier and Villa Alegre there are some outstanding examples of traditional Chilean rural architecture, which is especially noticeable in the farm houses typical of the region.
Some of the parish churches in this zone are among the oldest in the Linares diocese and the Maule Region.

Poets

The Maule Region has produced a remarkable number of writers and poets and in consonancy with this legacy, San Javier has been the birthplace of two gifted poets: Raimundo Echeverría y Larrazábal and Jerónimo Lagos Lisboa.

Administration

As a commune, San Javier is a third-level administrative division of Chile administered by a municipal council, headed by an alcalde who is directly elected every four years. The 2008-2012 alcalde is Pedro Fernández Chavarrí, and the councillors are as follows:
Within the electoral divisions of Chile, San Javier is represented in the Chamber of Deputies by Jorge Tarud and Romilio Gutiérrez as part of the 39th electoral district,. The commune is represented in the Senate by Hernán Larraín and Manuel Antonio Matta as part of the 11th senatorial constituency.