Ло-Барнечеа: История, География и Население Коммуны

Lo Barnechea is a commune located in the northeastern sector of the province of Santiago and its area corresponds to 48% of this province. Its urban boundaries are: to the north with Los Andes of the Valparaíso region, to the west with Colina, to the southwest with Vitacura and Huechuraba, to the south with Las Condes and to the east with San José de Maipo. It developed around the old rural town of Lo Barnechea. Its population is heterogeneous, as it is inhabited by high and medium high income families in sectors such as La Dehesa, Los Trapenses and El Arrayán, and also by medium low and low income families, mainly in the towns of Lo Barnechea, Población La Ermita and Cerro Dieciocho.

Lo Barnechea has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. Before the Incas, it was occupied by the Llolleo culture and the Bato tradition, and after them, the Aconcagua culture, the Promaucaes, the Incas and later the Spanish occupation. Its pre Hispanic inhabitants were called huaicoches (in Mapudungún: waykoche 'people who live in a landslide zone') because of the huaicos or huaycos of the region (in Quechua: wayqu 'stream'). Also called lloclla (in Quechua: lluqlla 'alluvium'), these are violent alluvial floods in which a large amount of material from the slopes is dislodged and dragged by the water downstream to the bottom of the valleys, causing enormous burial sites in its path. In modern scientific terms, according to the Multinational Andean Project, a huayco is known as a debris flow, or debris flow. A huayco is caused by the violent fall of water, which drags mud, stones, trees and anything else in its path. Its origin may be due to an intense rainfall or the overflowing of a river or lagoon at high altitudes. The town of Lo Barnechea was created in the 19th century. So far, it has resisted conurbation with Greater Santiago. The DFL 1 3260 of 9 March 1981 established the new commune of Lo Barnechea, from a subdivision of the commune of Las Condes; however, until 1991, it was part of the communal grouping managed by the Municipality of Las Condes. By Decree with Force of Law No. 32 18.992 of 20 May 1991, the Municipality of Lo Barnechea was officially established, the same day as its neighbor Vitacura.

The urban center of Lo Barnechea is located in the areas below 1,000 meters above sea level, in the basin of the Mapocho River and the valley of La Dehesa. Its neighborhoods are composed of affluent sectors such as Los Trapenses, La Dehesa and El Huinganal (Molle Schinus polygamus, in Mapudungún Huingan), El Tranque, and middle class sectors such as the traditional Pueblo de Lo Barnechea, Cerro 18, San Enrique and El Arrayán. Many of its streets recall the old alleys owned by the seven founding families. El León Street recalls the old Parador and Hostería de El León, which used to welcome miners after their long days of work. On this street lived the Salfate sisters, now deceased, who knew the history of the town and its inhabitants: Blanca and Irene Griselda. Their stories about the mythical trips to the Laguna del Viento in the foothills of the Andes and the local mythology enlivened the village's social gatherings in the afternoons. Towards the northwest there are neighborhoods with Spanish names: the Chin street that remembers the owner of the parcel with the surname Echeñique. In the Trapenses area, many of the landmarks of this congregation, which for many years was in this commune before selling its land for the capital gain, are remembered. Currently, at the end of the Trapenses there is a road that connects La Dehesa with the Chicureo sector and at the end of the road El Golf de Manquehue connects it with the unpopulated area of Huechuraba.

In 2018, the number of registered companies in Lo Barnechea was 10,072. The Economic Complexity Index (ECI) in the same year was 1.01, while the economic activities with the highest Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index were Retail Sale of Underwear and Personal Wear (42.14), Dance Instructors (27.49) and Amusement Parks and Similar Centers Activities (18.79).

According to the 2002 census of the National Statistics Institute, Lo Barnechea spans an area of and has 74,749 inhabitants (34,901 men and 39,848 women). Of these, 72,496 (97%) lived in urban areas and 2,253 (3%) in rural areas. The population grew by 49.3% (24,687 persons) between the 1992 and 2002 censuses.

The architecture in the area of buildings is very scarce, with a few late colonial style houses located preferably in the so called Pueblo de Lo Barnechea. As regards the commercial area, there are the shopping centers Portal La Dehesa, Espacio Urbano La Dehesa, Paseo Los Trapenses and Mall Vivo Los Trapenses. Also noteworthy is the large number of mansions and luxury homes that are established in this commune, especially in the sectors of Arrayán, Los Trapenses and La Dehesa, being these of various styles built mainly during the last twenty years and belonging to the so called "upper class" of the country, making up one of the areas with the highest average housing prices in Chile. In parallel to the construction of houses and luxury apartments, social housing was developed in Lo Barnechea, in addition to the processes of self construction of the founding tenants of the town, along with their generations. For the same reason, in the commune of Lo Barnechea we can see a series of contrasts, not only architectural, but also of social character, given that in a few square meters, or crossing a street (Padre Alfredo Arteaga Barros with Comandante Malbec), neighborhoods of high socioeconomic strata can be seen, in opposition to sectors of low social strata, clearly delimited between them.

The commune has a low connection to the interconnected public transport of the city, consequently and being located at one end of the metropolitan area, together with Vitacura it leads the rate of motorization per capita (motor vehicles per inhabitant) in Greater Santiago. It was expected that by 2020, Lo Barnechea will have 3 stations of the Las Condes Tramway, which would give it a historic connection to the Santiago Metro, being currently one of the three communes of Greater Santiago (along with La Pintana and Lo Espejo) that does not have stations of the metropolitan railroad. However, the project was canceled by the authorities for not having the necessary subsidies for its execution. Lo Barnechea was also part of the Transantiago feeder zone C, together with the districts of Providencia, Las Condes and Vitacura. It is currently served by units 4 and 6 of this transportation system. There is an elevator on Cerro 18 operated by the Municipality of Lo Barnechea that connects this sector with Los Quincheros Street and the top of the hill, where the Parque de la Chilenidad is located.

The incursion of warm winter fronts in 1982 caused a rise in the lower limit of the snowpack, from 1800 to 2400 m above sea level, generating a large increase in the volume of water and sediment runoff, resulting from the melting of snow, which caused saturation and subsequent overflow of the natural and artificial water drainage systems. The repetition of a similar event, under the current conditions of occupation and urban expansion in Lo Barnechea, could cause even more catastrophic situations, due to the high degree of intervention and modification to which the natural system has been subjected by the construction that has taken place on increasingly higher ground.