Historical Timeline of Piura

Between 500 BC and 500 AD, the Alto Piura basin hosted the flourishing of the Vicús culture, settled around the hill of the same name in today province of Morropón. It excelled in gold, silver and copper metallurgy using lost-wax casting, hammering and tumbaga alloys, and in its diagnostic ceramics of the Vicús Negative and White-on-Red styles and the Vicús-Moche phase. Its deep vertical-shaft tombs with lateral chamber (boot-shaped) reveal a rigorous social stratification.

During the 15th century, the kingdom of the Gran Chimor extended tribute networks over the Tallán curacazgos. Later, the expansion of the Tawantinsuyu led by Túpac Inca Yupanqui and consolidated by Huayna Cápac incorporated the region into the Chinchaysuyu: it traced a stretch of the Qhapaq Ñan through Huancabamba and Ayabaca, erected the fortress of Poechos and established mitmaqkuna colonies. The dynastic crisis between Huáscar and Atahualpa fractured the empire and predisposed several caciques to make pacts with the Spaniards.

The Tallán chiefdoms knew curacazgos ruled by women, the capullanas, recorded with astonishment by chroniclers such as Pedro Cieza de León and Francisco de Jerez. They governed entire valleys with full legal, civil and military jurisdiction, traveled in litters carried by vassals, presided over deliberative assemblies and arranged marital alliances at their discretion. The model allowed cacical succession through the matrilineal line, a singularity that marked the first contacts with the Europeans in 1532.

Between 700 and 1500 AD, the Chira and Piura valleys were under the hegemony of the Tallán nation, a conglomerate of autonomous chiefdoms and curacazgos: Poechos, Marcavelica, Tangarará and Amotape in the Chira; Catacaos, Sechura and Colán in the Piura. They built irrigation channels, derivation canals and dams such as Coscomba to overcome aridity, irrigating cotton, maize, beans and squash. Their ceremonial centers such as Narihualá, Huaca Sojo and Huangalá hosted the worship of deities such as Walac and Watan.

With the Royal Ordinance of Intendants of 1784, the Corregimiento of San Miguel was suppressed and Piura became one of the most prosperous partidos of the Intendancy of Trujillo, governed by a subdelegate. The census of Gil de Taboada (1790–1795) and the chronicles of Bishop Martínez Compañón portray a dominant mestizo society, with indigenous communities in Catacaos and Sechura, an urban Afro-Peruvian population and Creole landowning elites such as the Seminario, Fernald and Velásquez de Tineo families.

On November 13, 1741, in the middle of the War of Jenkins Ear, a British squadron commanded by Commodore George Anson took the port of Paita by surprise, sacked the pier and set fire to the town and its churches. The sailors desecrated the Mercedarian chapel and Anson stabbed the effigy of Our Lady of Las Mercedes, whose gash is still preserved; the image washed ashore unharmed the following day. The event consolidated her devotion, and centuries later she was declared Patroness of the Arms of Peru.

With no mineral veins, the viceregal economy of Piura revolved around the algarrobo groves for goat herding and their by-products, as studied by Susana Aldana Rivera. In the «soap vats» and tanneries to the north of the city — the first industrial district of Piura — tallow was rendered and goat hides were processed into famed «cordovans». The soap supplied Huancavelica and Potosí, and the cordovans were shipped to Callao and Panama by cabotage.

On November 11, 1587, Viceroy Conde del Villar ordered the definitive relocation to the lower basin of the Piura river; Captain Juan de Cadalso Salazar chose the wooded site of El Chilcal, in Tacalá. The formal founding was completed on August 15, 1588 with the solemn distribution of building lots and the constitution of the town council, with the original notarial act preserved. The site offered abundant fresh water, alluvial soils, a temperate microclimate sheltered by algarrobo trees and protection from the sea: it is today Piura.

Around 1572–1578 the population settled on the bay of Paita to benefit from maritime trade with Panama. The site lacked fresh water, which had to be brought by raft from Colán or the Chira river, and was extremely vulnerable: Francis Drake besieged it in 1579 and in 1587 Thomas Cavendish landed with artillery, sacked the royal storehouses and reduced the wooden-and-cane houses and churches to ashes, forcing a total evacuation.

Toward the end of 1534, by order of Diego de Almagro ratified by Pizarro, the town was relocated to the Alto Piura, at the site of Monte de los Padres, next to the lands of the cacique Señor de Piura (today district of La Matanza). It flourished there for four decades with a regular grid, a Main Square and a Main Church, as revealed by the excavations of the University of Piura and the Polytechnic University of Madrid. By 1570 the collapse of the water table, climate fluctuations and the «mal de ojos» (eye blight) made the settlement untenable.

On his third expedition, Francisco Pizarro established a camp in the Chira valley and founded the first European city of the South American Pacific at the Tallán village of Tangarará. Historiography debates its date — Maticorena proposed July 15 and Del Busto August 15, 1532, the officially adopted date — because the original founding act disappeared. Pizarro distributed building lots, planted the pillar of justice, instituted the first town council and left Sebastián de Benalcázar as lieutenant governor. The site proved unhealthy: malaria, heat and indigenous hostility forced its abandonment.

The El Niño events of 1891, 1925, 1983 and 1998 repeatedly overflowed the Piura river, flooding Castilla and Catacaos and causing the collapse of the Bolognesi bridge on March 16, 1998. To solve the floods and the water deficit, Decree Law 18381 of September 1, 1970 created the Chira-Piura Special Project: the Poechos Dam (one billion cubic meters), a 54 km transfer canal, the Sullana Diversion Dam and the Miguel Checa Canal irrigate more than 100,000 hectares and protect the cities from extraordinary floods.

After the bankruptcy caused by the war, the province of Piura reconverted itself with the acclimatization of Pima Cotton in 1918, whose extra-long staple fiber conquered the markets of Great Britain and North America, enriching the Chira and Piura valleys. Simultaneously, the La Brea and Pariñas oil fields, operated by London Pacific Petroleum and later the International Petroleum Company, made Talara the energy heart of the country, until the military takeover and nationalization of the enclave in October 1968 under Juan Velasco Alvarado.

Piura gave the country its greatest maritime hero: Admiral Miguel Grau Seminario, born on Tacna street in Piura, who commanded the monitor Huáscar until his death at Angamos on October 8, 1879. The «Piura N.° 25» and «Manco Cápac» battalions suffered heavy casualties at San Juan and Miraflores (1881). In September 1880 the expedition of Patricio Lynch bombarded Paita, imposing a contribution of 10,000 pesos and destroying the customs house, the pier and the railway workshops; between 1881 and 1883 Chilean troops occupied Piura and Catacaos.

In 1872, under the government of José Balta, construction of the Paita–Sullana–Piura Railway began under Federico Blume Othon, with a standard gauge of 1,435 m and 105 km of track. It reached La Huaca in 1874, Viviate in 1876, Sullana in 1879 and its terminal station in Piura in 1887, linking the harvests of the Chira and Piura valleys with the ships anchored at Paita. It operated until the mid-20th century under the Peruvian Corporation. In 1893 the «Old Bridge» (San Miguel) connected the city with Castilla across the Piura river.

After depending on the Prefecture of Trujillo during its first republican decades, the demographic and commercial weight of Piura demanded administrative autonomy. Through the Law of March 30, 1861, during the second government of Marshal Ramón Castilla, the Department of Piura was officially created with the founding provinces of Piura, Paita and Ayabaca.

Led by Miguel Gerónimo Seminario y Jaime and councilman Buenaventura Raygada, armed groups peacefully disarmed the royalist garrison on the night of January 3, 1821. On January 4, before a massive crowd that overflowed the town hall, the session moved to the church of the Convent of San Francisco de Asís, where the independence of Piura was solemnly declared. The proclamation counted on artisans, the communities of Catacaos and Sechura, Black militiamen and women of all social ranks.

Enlightened ideas circulated in Piura through the Mercurio Peruano, fostering identity and unrest against the tributes and monopolies of the Crown. In October 1820 Guayaquil proclaimed its independence, closing the royalist flank, while Cochrane squadron and San Martín landing at Paracas dismantled viceregal control. On December 29, 1820, Torre Tagle proclaimed the independence of Trujillo and dispatched letters to the subdelegations, including Piura.