Cardenal Caro Province


Cardenal Caro Province is one of the three provinces of the central Chilean region of O'Higgins. The capital of Cardenal Caro is Pichilemu.

Name

The province is named after Cardinal José María Caro Rodríguez, native of Pichilemu, and who was the first Cardinal of Chile.

History

On July 13, 1973, President Salvador Allende Gossens decreed the creation of the Cardenal Caro Department. The decree was published in the Diario Oficial de la República de Chile in August of the same year, making it official. Marchigüe was declared the capital. However, the coup d'état that occurred in September of that year made the decree "dead text".
The province of Cardenal Caro was created on October 3, 1979 by General Augusto Pinochet. The communes of Litueche, La Estrella, Marchihue, Paredones, and Pichilemu, originally from Colchagua Province; and Navidad, originally from San Antonio Province, formed the province.

Administration

As a province, Cardenal Caro is a second-level administrative division of Chile, governed by a provincial governor who is appointed by the president. The province is composed by six communes, each of which is governed by a popularly elected alcalde.

Communes

Geography and demography

According to the 2002 census by the National Statistics Institute, the province spans an area of and had a population of 41,160 inhabitants, giving it a population density of. Between the 1992 and 2002 censuses, the population grew by 11.2%.