Paysandú

Geography

It is located at the west on the Uruguay, and is limited to north by the department of Salto, to the east by the Tacuarembó and to the south by the Río Negro. It should be noted that most of the territory belongs to the basin of the río Queguay .

The department represents alone 8 % of the surface of the country, and is mainly rural.
In the center and is of Paysandú, there are two ranges of hills of basaltic nature (the cuchilla of Queguay and the Cuchilla de Haedo ). In south-west on the contrary, the ground is covered with sediments (what allows agriculture for the installation of the men).
In extreme cases western of the department, there is, as we said, the river Uruguay and another very important river divides the department into two (it crosses it according to an axis is/western), it is about the río Queguay Grande and Chico as its multiple affluents which feed all the area.

With its temperatures oscillating between 23,6° C and 12,2°C, and its annual precipitations of 1.200 mm, the department is in the averages of the country.

History

The first colonists arrived in the department between 1752 and 1756, these colonists were local Indians, missionaries, soldiers… and settled along the Uruguay
In 1820, Paysandú became an Uruguyan department but thereafter, during the years of war with the two large neighbors, the department was on several occasions invaded because of its strategic position. It is indeed on the road of the two capitals Montevideo and Buenos Aires.

In the middle of the 19th century, the department passed from a withdrawn country panorama of the vital organs of the coast to that industrialized, with industries of the meat, of leather, and in 1840, the first salting tub, followed by an industrial boom with the Tannerie S, Brasserie S, industries of the Textile…

Economy

The composition of GDP watch that Paysandú, just like the other department of the country, has a clear orientation of the economy towards the production of the services (40,7%), followed in importance by manufacturing industry (25,4%), and the production of the primary sector (19,9%), the remainder being the constructions and the work carried out by the local government. If one compares industry with that of the remainder of the country which accounts for 22,2% of the GDP ( Attention, the 22,2% represents the share of manufacturing industry in the GDP and not the share of all the secondary industry as in the article Économie of Uruguay ) one realizes that the department is industrialized much more than the remainder of the country.

This economy can be divided into three zones:

In the zone is department the basic production is the breeding of cattle (ovine and bovine) with the production of Viande (2 000 companies having 675.000 heads producing more than 52.000 tons), of Laine (1 400 companies having 1.200.000 heads producing 3.562.275 kg of wool) and of Lait (288 companies having 30.000 heads producing 55.130.000 liters of milk).
In the central zone, to the livestock farms, is added the linked activities to wood (movable of high-quality) and some small sectors intended for cultures (cereal cultures (Blé, Sorgho, Maïs) and oélagineuses (Tournesol, Soja, Arachide, flax, Colza)).
In the western zone finally, littoral of the river Uruguay, the activity there is very diversified with industries and agriculture.

The consumption of energy of the department exceeds the 2 million tons oil equivalent. During the last years there is a supported general growth, especially by the electric energy demand, of light fuels and the Petroleum gas liquefied or Natural gas. The distribution expressed as a percentage of the total is: 57% of derived from oil, 23% of coal and 20% of electricity. The capacity of generation of electricity is of 2.137 M W, of which 71% are hydro-electric and the remainder comes from the biomass. The hydro-electric stopping larger than the country is that of Salto Grande on the Uruguay river, located at 120 km in the north of Paysandú, it produces electricity with fourteen turbines of Russian manufacture.

Tourism as for him is in full rise, it took delay in the department because that was not a priority these last years. There are approximately 200.000 tourists who come each year for one intermediate duration approximately 3 days.

See too

Site of the department
Portal de Paysandú

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