Talk:La Ligua Valley

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La Ligua Valley treats the valleys of the Ligua and Petorca rivers and their coast, in Petorca Province, Chile, as a cannabis growing area: the hemp sown there for cordage in the 17th century, and the cannabis plantations that police found and destroyed from 2018 to 2025. The town is treated at La Ligua; the valley to the south at Aconcagua Valley; Chile's law and the national picture at Chile.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and other reports bearing on the area here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why La Ligua Valley is a growing area

• Vázquez de Espinosa (1628–29), p. 677: "En el valle de la Ligua se siembra, y coge cantidad de Cañamo" (in the valley of La Ligua a quantity of hemp is sown and harvested).
• Díaz-Ordóñez and Rodríguez Hernández (2017), p. 12, on Governor Córdoba y Arce's letter of 1 February 1627: "la fibra se cultivaba en los valles de Quillota y La Ligua" (the fibre was grown in the valleys of Quillota and La Ligua).
• Gay (1865), vol. 2, p. 132, on the answer to the enquiry of 1626: "los solos valles de Quillota y de la Ligua daban 8,000 qq. al año" (the valleys of Quillota and La Ligua alone gave 8,000 quintals a year).
• Radio Agricultura, 2 February 2018: plants found from a helicopter after the analysis of "diversos sectores de Los Andes, Cabildo, Longotoma y Petorca" (various sectors of Los Andes, Cabildo, Longotoma and Petorca).
• Radio Agricultura, 15 February 2020: "más de 3.640 plantas de marihuana que se encontraban ocultas en medio de una plantación de choclos" (more than 3,640 cannabis plants hidden in the middle of a maize plantation), in the communes of Papudo and La Ligua.
• Radio Agricultura, 22 March 2021: 28,848 plants seized "en operativos realizados en la provincia de Petorca" (in operations carried out in Petorca Province).
• T13, 5 February 2025: "la plantación se encontraba en la Quebrada Los Coiles, sector Los Molles, La Ligua" (the plantation was in the Quebrada Los Coiles, Los Molles sector, La Ligua).
• BioBioChile, 24 April 2025: "en el sector Los Molles, en la quebrada 'El Fraile', existía una plantación de marihuana" (in the Los Molles sector, in the ravine of El Fraile, there was a cannabis plantation).

How the border is drawn

• The line follows Petorca Province, Valparaíso Region: the communes of La Ligua, Cabildo, Petorca, Papudo and Zapallar, the union of their OpenStreetMap relations (113201, 113204, 231953, 113203 and 110713), about 4,600 km², the figure in the infobox.
• The province is used, not the basin of the Ligua alone, because the places in the police reports lie in all of it: Cabildo and La Ligua on the Ligua, Petorca on the Petorca river, Papudo on the coast, and Los Molles on the coast at the north end of La Ligua commune. The 2021 report and the 2025 report on Los Molles both speak of Petorca Province.
• The colonial sources name the valley, not its limits, so the border does not mark the extent of the 17th-century hemp fields.
• In the south the line meets the border of the Aconcagua Valley.
• The infobox point (−32.34, −71.01) is the centre of the area, not a field.

Growing status

The status is Active: police reports of 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2025 describe cannabis plantations found in the area, and no source says that growing has ended. All of these reports are of police seizures and destruction; none describes growing that the law allows. The hemp of the 17th century and the plantations of 2018–2025 are different crops in different centuries, and no source connects them.

The name

The colonial sources speak of the "valle de la Ligua" (Vázquez de Espinosa; Córdoba y Arce as reported by Díaz-Ordóñez and Rodríguez Hernández; Gay). The police reports of 2018–2025 name communes, sectors and ravines, not the valley.

Sources

• Radio Agricultura, 2018. The report's headline places the seizure "en Los Andes"; the brigade was that of Los Andes, and the report says that the flights were made over the province of Los Andes; the sectors it names also include Cabildo, Longotoma and Petorca. It does not say which of the plantations lay where.
• Radio Agricultura, 2020. The headline and first sentence give more than 3,640 plants; the PDI officer quoted in the same report, Fernando Silva, gives "aproximadamente de 1.640 plantas" (about 1,640 plants). The article uses the report's own figure; the officer's figure is recorded here.
• BioBioChile, 2025. Byline Daniela Salgado. The Carabineros valued the cannabis at 413,660,000 pesos, or 11,800 doses.
• Góngora (1970). The holder of the encomienda at Valle Hermoso, who supplied 41 quintals of cord in 1655, is named in Góngora's appendix (entry 15, p. 144); his name is illegible in the scanned text. Maluenda is entry 109 (p. 162).

Open questions

• A report on 24horas.cl describes a PDI seizure of 3,602 plants in the Quebrada La Retamilla, Zapallar, under the local prosecutor of La Ligua. The page carries no legible date.
• Díaz Ordóñez (2005) cites Mellafe and Salinas, Sociedad y población rural en la formación del Chile actual: La Ligua, 1700–1850 (1987), for cordage of about 300 quintals made at the Hacienda del Ingenio, La Ligua.