Catamarca Province house in Catamarca, first with Arnoldo Castillo (1991–1999), then with his son Oscar Castillo (1999–2003), and now with the present governor, Eduardo Brizuela del Moral. The province is divided into sixteen departments (). Department (Capital) Catamarca Province Catamarca () is a province of Argentina, located in the northwest of the country. The province had a population of 334,568 as per the , and covers an area of 102,602 km. Its literacy rate is 95.5%. Neighboring provinces are (clockwise, from the north): Salta, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, Córdoba, and La Rioja. To the west it borders the country of Chile. The
San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca founded until 1683, by Fernando de Mendoza y Mate de Luna. "Catamarca" comes from Quechua meaning "fortress on the slope". The city, which had only 8,000 inhabitants in 1882 and was reached by a railway line in 1888, grew very slowly, and the region remained poor even in the middle of the 20th century. This situation was exacerbated by nepotism on the part of the ruling Saadi family, before they lost political power in the 1990s. In spite of this, the province remains still politically unstable, and a large part of its population lives in precarious conditions. The warm semi-arid