Diaguitas

The Diaguita people are a group of South American indigenous people native to the Chilean Norte Chico and the Argentine Northwest. Western or Chilean Diaguitas lived mainly in the Transverse Valleys incised in a semi-arid environment. Eastern or Argentine Diaguitas lived in the provinces of La Rioja and Catamarca and part of the provinces of Salta, San Juan and Tucumán. The term Diaguita was first applied to peoples and archaeological cultures by Ricardo E. Latcham in early 20th century.

Ancient Diaguitas were not a unified people; the language or dialects used by them seems to have varied from valley to other valleys and they were politically fragmented into several chiefdoms. Coastal and inland Chilean Diaguitas traded as evidenced by the archaeological findings of mollusc shells in the upper course of Andean valleys.

According to the 2010 census there are 67,410 self-identified Diaguita descendants in Argentina.

Early Spanish accounts, including Jerónimo de Vivar, claims the Diaguitas inhabiting the different Transverse Valleys spoke different "languages". Jesuits active in western Argentina also report a large number of "languages". For the Chilean Diaguitas scholar Herman Carvajal claims however that they could very well have spoken not different languages but different dialects. According to this hypothesis the main difference between dialects could have been in the lexicon.

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