Department of Madre de Dios
department of Peru
Madre de Dios (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmaðɾe ðe ˈðjos] , English: Mother of God) is a department of Peru. Located in the country's southeast, it borders Brazil, Bolivia, and the Peruvian departments of Puno, Cusco, and Ucayali, in the Amazon Basin. It is also the third largest department in Peru, after Ucayali and Loreto. However, it is also the least densely populated department in Peru, as well as its least populous department. It has one of the lowest poverty rates in Peru. It is administered by a regional government. Its capital is the city of Puerto Maldonado.
According to the adjusted 2025 census results, around 209,000 people lived in Madre de Dios.
Etymology
The name of the department is derived from the Madre de Dios River, ultimately a tributary of the Amazon, and named by ethnic Spanish colonists. It is a very common Spanish language designation for the Virgin Mary, literally meaning Mother of God.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Department of Madre de Dios” is department of Peru. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Department, Madre and Dios, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q210896. VIAF identifies the subject as 145419085. The Library of Congress control number is n80146167. Authority coordinates are -11.990, -70.590. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Department of Madre de Dios” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.