La Guajira’s desert and

its legendary Wayuu

people
La Guajira is the driest and hottest place you will find in Colombia and the
home of the legendary Wayuu people.
The Wayuu are particularly legendary because the Spanish were never
able to conquer them or colonize the territory of the “savages” from the
northern peninsula.

The arrival
According to archaeologists, the Wayuu’s ancestors began settling in La
Guajira some 10,000 years ago.

These people originally came from Central America and gradually

settled along the Caribbean coast and the Antillean islands north of
Venezuela.

Over millennia, several cultures developed in the peninsula. The Wayuu

became the largest and most dominant.

Despite settling in what is the driest region in what is now Colombia, the
Wayuu and their neighbors survived by specializing their hunting and
fishing skills, and using rare fresh-water sources for horticulture.

The Guajiro rebellion

The Spanish first arrived in the peninsula around 1500, two years after
Christopher Columbus learned there was an entire hemisphere east of
the Atlantic Ocean.

While the conquistadors were able to colonize much of Latin America,

the Wayuu and their allies proved invincible for them.
In fact, when the Spanish were finally expelled from Colombia 319
years after their arrival in La Guajira, the Wayuu were still in control of
their territory.

The Wayuu’s resistance was this successful, because they were able to
adapt their battle techniques and retreat into the desert where conditions
were too harsh for their enemies.

Initially the Wayuu were only armed with spears and arches, but at the
peak of their resistance in the 1770s the Wayuu had some 20,000
warriors riding horses and armed with guns, according to then-Viceroy
Pedro Messia.

Their failure to conquer La Guajira made the Spanish hate the

“barbarians, horse thieves, worthy of death, without God, without law and
without a king” as Governor Soto de Herrera described the Wayuu in
1727.

No Spanish means no Colombians either

Colombian republicans benefited from the Wayuu’s force when
expelling the Spanish in 1819, but were met with the same resistance
when they tried to annex the peninsula.

It wasn’t until the late 19th century that Colombian and Venezuelan
armed forces were able to somewhat submit the Wayuu to republican
rule.

Nevertheless, their relentless resistance against outside domination to

this day allows the Wayuu to maintain their culture, their language and
relatively high levels of autonomy in both Colombia and Venezuela.

The resistance continues

The Wayuu are proud of their resistance, especially because colonization
has robbed them of one of their one of main fresh water sources and
some of their most beautiful sites, and submitted them to some of the
worse forms of violence.

The Colombian state may formally claim ownership of the Wayuu’s

territory, but the people rely largely only on themselves.
Despite efforts to impose Catholicism, the Spanish language and
capitalism, more than 200,000 Wayuu still speak their own language,
honor their own traditions and manage their own business.
MAIN IDEAS

*La tribu Wayuu es uno de los asentamientos indígenas más antiguos

*Gracias a su manejo y conocimiento sobre la tierra, pudieron sobrevivir.

*Los Wayuu significaron un problema para la colonización española

*Los Wayuu mantienen su cultura, lenguaje y tradiciones

*Su estabilidad se basa en el respeto hacia ellos por parte del Estado colombiano y venezolano

Where did it take place?

La Guajira’s desert, between Venezuela and Colombia

What is its sector?

It’s social and cultural

How Colombia’s
abandoned railroad and
a local hero helped
Tobia rediscover its own
beauty
Tobia is a quaint little town in central Colombia where a local initiative to
build a train allowed tourists access to its beautiful surroundings.

The town in the central Cundinamarca province lies next to the railroad

between Bogota and the Caribbean coast that was abandoned in 1991
and almost forgotten about.
With the train, the town also lost its connection with much of the
astonishing natural beauty in the area, until local Raul Zarate took the
initiative that is.
The Tobia resident didn’t have anything to do after he lost his right arm
in an accident and nobody would hire him.

With his left arm and the help of his brother, Zarate built his own train,
gave himself a job and reconnected his town to the multitude of
streams, waterfalls and ponds in the area.

Zarate, whose house is located right next to the abandoned railroad,

initially constructed a simple cart to transport locally produced panela
to neighbors and provide school children transport to school.

Some 15 years ago, Zarate and his brother used their savings to buy old
taxi parts and scrap metal, and the two began building their train.

Not only did the train reduce the children’s time to get to school from two
hours to 15 minutes, it became a tourist attraction to waterfalls and
ponds the locals had forgotten about.

“People are coming from everywhere,” Medardo Gutierrez told Caracol

TV earlier this year. “There’s gringos coming, Japanese, people from all
over the place.”

These tourists aren’t coming to Tobia just for Zarate’s train ride, but also
for the different extreme sports activities that have been developed and
the fact the colorful town is gorgeous.

Zarate never imagined his self-made train would become a tourist

attraction. He really needed a job and wanted to help the local children
to get the education he never received.

“I never went to school like I should have and without an education

you’re nobody in life,” Zarate told Caracol.

The man with no education and one arm may be the exception to his own
rule. Zarate built his own train, helps children get to school and
accidentally boosted his town’s tourism potential.

MAIN IDEAS
  Tobia es un lugar muy turístico
 Gracias a Raul Zarate, ahora hay más acceso a la educación en su localidad
 Zarate tenia mucha creatividad y logró superar su discapacidad
 Logró impulsar la economía y el turismo de su pueblo
 Aunque no tuvo educación es un ejemplo para la comunidad

Where did it take place?

Tobia, a little Cundinamarca’s town.

What is its sector?

It’s cultural, education, economic and tourist

Bucaramanga: from
chaotic no-man’s land to
Colombia’s city of parks
Bucaramanga used to be territory disputed by multiple peoples. Now
it’s one of Colombia’s most prosperous cities.

While now considered an exemplary city that hasn’t suffered much

violence, historians and archaeologists believe this was quite different
before the Spanish settlement in 1552.

Before the Spanish arrived in the region around 1540 and began a
brutal extermination campaign, Bucaramanga lied on the border of the
territories of multiple peoples.
The Guanes lived south of Bucaramanga, the Yariguies west and the
Chitareros northeast. Depending on ambition of the chieftain, this would
frequently lead to clashes.

The arrival of the Spanish displaced many of these peoples and,

enslaved by a conquistador called Ortun Velasquez, the natives built the
first settlement called Bucaramanga, a Chitarera name, in 1552.

The Spanish never considered Bucaramanga and the nearby settlements

towns, but a mining area, whose inhabitants were submitted to the rule
of the mayor of Pamplona, a town in what is now Norte de Santander.
The Royal Mining Area was formalized in 1622 and the surviving
natives who were living in the regions were forced to live in the town.

When gold began running out in the nearby mines, the surviving native
Colombians were evicted and forced to live in Guane for further
evangelization. To compensate the lack of income from mining, the
Spanish sold the land to wealthy Spaniards, Germans and mestizos.

According to a 1799 census, only 178 native Colombians were left in the
town of 2178 people, which was reconstructed to meet the needs of the
“civilized” newcomers.

Bucaramanga was formally considered a town in 1810, just before the

beginning of the revolution that would end Spanish rule in 1819. Two
years after the Spanish had left, the new Colombian rulers confirmed
the municipal status of the town.

The foundation of the Santander department in 1857, a new conflict arose,

this time between the towns of Pamplona and Socorro that both wanted
to be capital.
Pamplona was dominated by the anti-democratic Conservative
Party while Socorro was dominated by the pro-democracy Liberal
Party. As a compromise, Bucaramanga was named capital in 1886.
Tensions between the liberals and the conservatives remained, however.

In 1864 already, craftsmen from Bucaramanga and surrounding towns

and cities founded the Golden Beak democratic society, called the
Golden Beak Snake by their opponents.
These conservative opponents consisted largely of families of Spanish
descend and German immigrants, who had taken control over trade and
banking.

When one of the Golden Beak candidates was murdered ahead of the
1879 local elections, the craftsmen and the merchants formed began
attacking each other and even formed their own armies.

The death of two Germans even led to the involvement to the German
emperor who threatened to bomb the coastal city of Barranquilla unless
the German immigrant population was compensated.

The 1886 Constitution banned democratic societies like the Golden Beak
and the situation stabilized until 1899 when liberals and conservatives
throughout Colombia went to war.

MAIN IDEAS

 La historia de Bucaramanga puede variar según el punto

de vista del que se aprecie.
 Los Guanes, Yariguies y Chitareros fueron las primeras
tribus que habitaron el territorio de Bucaramanga y sus al
rededores
 La minería fue un factor de interés para los españoles
cercanos a Bucaramanga
 Los artesanos crearon un importante partido político
incidente en la historia de Bucaramanga
 La constitución de 1886 prohibió partidos democráticos
como el Golden Beak

Where did it take place?

Bucaramanga and nearby

What is its sector?

Social, politic and history