Asuncion vs Punta Arenas

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Asunción (UK:, US:, Spanish: [asunˈsjon]) is the capital and the biggest city of Paraguay in South America. The town stands on the left bank of the Paraguay River, almost at the confluence of this river with the River Pilcomayo. The Paraguay River and the Bay of Asunción from the northwest separate the city from the Occidental Region of Paraguay and from Argentina in the south part of the city. The remainder of the town is surrounded by the Central Department. Administratively, the city creates an autonomous capital district, not a part of any department. The metropolitan area, known as Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San Antonio, Limpio, Capiatá and Villa Elisa, which are part of the Central Department. The Asunción metropolitan region has around two million inhabitants. The Asunción Stock Exchange lists the Municipality of Asunción as BVPASA: MUA.

Asunción is one of the oldest cities in South America and the longest continually inhabited place from the Río de la Plata Basin; for this reason it's called"the Mother of Cities". By Asunción colonial expeditions departed to found other towns, including the second base of Buenos Aires and other major cities such as Villarrica, Corrientes, Santa Fe and Santa Cruz de la Sierra. The Globalization and World Cities Research Network classifies Asunción as a "Gamma City". It's the house of the national authorities, principal port, and the chief industrial and cultural center of Paraguay. Near Asunción are the headquarters of the CONMEBOL, the continental governing body of association football in South America. Asunción ranks among the cheapest cities in the world for foreign people.

Source: Wikipedia

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Punta Arenas (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpunta aˈɾenas]; historically Sandy Point in English) is the capital city of Chile's southernmost region, Magallanes and Antartica Chilena. The city was officially renamed as Magallanes in 1927, but in 1938 it was changed back to "Punta Arenas". It is the largest city south of the 46th parallel south, and at the same time the most populous southernmost city in Chile and in the Americas, and due to its location, the coldest coastal city with more than 100,000 inhabitants in Latin America. It is also one of the most populous sites so far south in the world. As of 1977 Punta Arenas has been one of only two free ports in Chile, the other one being Iquique, in the country's far north. (Punta Arenas itself is not a "free port": outside the city there is a "zona franca" where certain products can be imported into the country under a reduced-tax regimen.) Located on the Brunswick Peninsula north of the Strait of Magellan, Punta Arenas was originally established by the Chilean government in 1848 as a tiny penal colony to assert sovereignty over the Strait.

During the remainder of the 1800s, Punta Arenas grew in size and importance due to the increasing maritime traffic and trade travelling to the west coasts of South and North America. This period of growth also resulted from the waves of European immigrants, mainly from Croatia and Russia attracted to the gold rush and sheep farming boom in the 1880s and early 1900s. The largest sheep company, controlling 10,000 square kilometres in Chile and Argentina, was based in Punta Arenas, and its owners lived there. Since its founding Chile has used Punta Arenas as a base to defend its sovereignty claims in the southernmost part of South America. This led, among other things, to the Strait of Magellan being recognized as Chilean territory in the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina. The geopolitical importance of Punta Arenas has remained high in the 20th and 21st centuries because of its logistic importance in accessing the Antarctic Peninsula. Since 2017, the city and its region have their own time zone: they use summer time during the whole year (UTC−3).

Source: Wikipedia