Arhuaco people

Arhuaco
Ika

Arhuacos holding a meeting.
Total population
(27,000)
Regions with significant populations
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta  Colombia
Languages
Arhuaco, Spanish
Religion
traditional tribal religion
Related ethnic groups
Chibchan group

The Arhuaco people are an indigenous people of Colombia. They are Chibchan-speaking people and descendants of the Tairona culture, concentrated in northern Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

The Arhuaco are also known as the Aruaco, Arawak, Bintucua, Bintuk, Bíntukua, Ica, Ijca, Ijka, Ika, and Ike people.

The Arhuacos live in the upper valleys of the Piedras River, San Sebastian River, Chichicua River, Ariguani River, and Guatapuri River, in an indigenous territory in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountains. Their traditional territory before the Spanish colonization, was larger than today's boundaries which exclude many of their sacred sites that they continue to visit today, to pay offerings. These lost territories are the lower parts by the steps of the mountains, lost to colonization and farming.

The Arhuacos are distributed into 22 sections.

The population is dispersed, but gets together in these towns for reunions and ceremonies, with Nabusimake being the most important of them and with a special significance: it's composed of fifty squared shaped houses and circular temples named Kankura, for men and women.

The Arhuacos' main economic activity is subsistence agriculture, which traditionally was practiced by every family in the community in their own parcel by their houses. Each family owned two houses, one in the high lands where the weather is cooler and another in the warmer, lower lands of the mountains. Nowadays they can only practice this on the higher lands due to expropriation of land during the Spanish colonization.

In the higher lands, they cultivate potatoes, onions, cabbages, lettuce, blueberries, tamarilloes, pumpkins, garlic and wheat. In the mid-lands; corn, beans, yuca, arracacha, malanga, coca, cotton, pineapple, papaya, guava, passion fruit, sweet granadilla, oranges and limes. Coffee is cultivated for commercial purposes only along with Arhuaca mochilas (handmade bags, fashionable among both males and females in Bogota and other major Colombian cities), and other arts and crafts to exchange in the lower lands for products they don't get in the high lands. They also raise chickens, cattle, sheep and goats. Men produce entirely the traditional clothing, but nowadays they also use modern clothing.