Madre de Dios is one of the twenty-four departments that, together with the Constitutional Province of Callao, form the Republic of Peru. Its capital and most populated city is Puerto Maldonado. It is located in the southeast of the country, in the Amazon, bordering the north with Ucayali and Brazil, to the east with Bolivia, to the south with Puno and to the west with Cuzco. With 85 300 km² it is the third most extensive department - behind Loreto and Ucayali - and with 1.3 inhabitants / km², the least densely populated. It was created on December 26,1912 from the territories of Puno and Cuzco.
It receives its name from the Madre de Dios River, from whose basin most of the rivers in the region are tributaries and on whose banks the departmental capital rises: Puerto Maldonado. From the hierarchical point of view of the Catholic Church, it is part of the Apostolic Vicariate of Puerto Maldonado.