Arauco, Brief Historical Review

Arauco, belongs to the province of Arauco and its voice in mapudungo means (clayey water) is a term loaded with history. From the time of the Incas was called "Araucanian" the Indians "brave and courageous" to refer mainly to the Mapuche, "people of the earth", who lived between the rivers and Tolten Itata. Founded in 1555 by Pedro de Valdivia in 1590 and moved to its present location at the foot of Cerro Colo Colo.

During the colonial period, Arauco was close contact area between the Spanish and indigenous groups originating peaceful process of miscegenation and integration based on trade.

In the early nineteenth century, around the last location of the fort, there is the establishment of different groups of people forming a village within which events occur that mark its history. One of them, and since establishing independence, is the so-called War on deaths reported among the nascent republican government and remnants of the Royalist army led by Vicente Benavides who, along with a group of guerrillas, had taken over the village making it the operations center of looting in the neighborhood.

Arauco population census of 2002 had 34,873 inhabitants, including 24,269 urban and 10,604 rural.