Indigenous peoples in Colombia

In the pre-Columbian era, the total population of Colombia had an estimated 6 million people. However, after Spanish conquest, the population of Colombia was lowered to only 750,000 people in which native people made up 80% of the population, at 600,000. That percentage would lower after independence, when the population grew to 1.327 million in which native people made up 53% of the population, at 700,000. In the 1912 census, the native population accounted for 6.3% of the people, down from the 17.8% reported in 1852. By the 1993 census, that had further lowered to 1%. However, increased recognition from the government made the propotion of registered indigenous people grow to 3.4% in the 2005 census and further to 4.3% in the 2018 census. The demographic decline can be explained by liberal policies implemented by new republican elites, which tried to abolish indigenous collective land ownership, which had been recognized by the Spanish monarchy, and they forced natives to assimilate in mainstream national culture. As of 2023, the total population of Colombia has grown significantly to around 52 million people in which full-blooded native people are estimated to make up around 10% of the population, at 5.2 million. The increase is caused by the raised awareness among Colombians about their indigenous identity and from the 1991 constitution, which gave more legal rights to indigenous communities. Despite the reduction in percentage of the total population, native people make up a large part of the genetic ancestry of Colombians. A study from Rojas et al. determines that the average Colombian (of all races) has a mixture of 47% Amerindian, 42% European, and 11% African, with native people having the most significant contribution in the study. == History ==

Some theories claim the earliest human habitation of South America to be as early as 43,000 BC, but the current scholarly consensus among archaeologists is that human habitation in South America only dates back to around 15,000 BC at the earliest. Anthropologist Tom Dillehay dates the earliest hunter-gatherer cultures on the continent at almost 10,000 BC, during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods. According to his evidence based on rock shelters, Colombia's first human inhabitants were probably concentrated along the Caribbean coast and on the Andean highland slopes. belonged to several hundred tribes, and largely spoke mutually unintelligible dialects. and is considered the world's largest necropolis. Lost City Ruins.jpg|Ciudad Perdida is a major settlement believed to have been founded around 800 CE. It consists of a series of 169 terraces carved into the mountainside, a net of tiled roads and several small circular plazas. The entrance can only be accessed by a climb up some 1,200 stone steps through dense jungle. Pre-Columbian history . The complexity of the Indigenous peoples' social organization and technology varied tremendously, from stratified agricultural chiefdoms to tropical farm villages and nomadic hunting and food-gathering groups. At the end of the colonial period, the native population still constituted about half of the total population. In the agricultural chiefdoms of the highlands, the Spaniards successfully imposed institutions designed to ensure their control of the Amerindians and thereby the use of their labor. The colonists had organized political and religious administration by the end of the sixteenth century, and they had begun attempts to religiously convert the Amerindians to Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism. The most important institution that regulated the lives and welfare of the highland Amerindians was the resguardo, a reservation system of communal landholdings. Under this system, Amerindians were allowed to use the land but could not sell it. Similar in some respects to the Native American reservation system of the United States, the resguardo has lasted with some changes even to the present and has been an enduring link between the government and the remaining highland tribes. As land pressures increased, however, encroachment of white or mestizo settlers onto resguardo lands accelerated, often without opposition from the government. The government generally had not attempted to legislate in the past in matters affecting the forest Amerindians. During the colonial period, Roman Catholic missions were granted jurisdiction over the lowland tribes. With the financial support of the government, a series of agreements with the Holy See from 1887 to 1953 entrusted the evangelization and education of these Amerindians to the missions, which worked together with government agencies. Division of the resguardos stopped in 1958, and a new program of community development began to try to bring the Amerindians more fully into the national society. The struggle of the Indigenous people on these lands to protect their holdings from neighboring landlords and to preserve their traditions continued into the late 20th century, when the 1991 constitution incorporated many of the Amerindian demands. New resguardos have been created, and others have been reconstituted, among forest tribes as well as highland communities. The 1991 constitution opened special political and social arenas for Indigenous and other minority groups. For example, it allowed for creation of a special commission to design a law recognizing the black communities occupying unsettled lands in the riverine areas of the Pacific Coast. Article 171 provides special Senate representation for Amerindians and other ethnic groups, while Article 176 provides special representation in the Chamber of Representatives: two seats "for the black communities, one for Indian communities, one for political minorities, and one for Colombians residing abroad". Article 356 guarantees Amerindian territorial and cultural rights, and several laws and decrees have been enacted protecting them. Article 356 refers somewhat vaguely to both "Indigenous territorial entities" and Indigenous resguardos. By 1991 the country's 587 resguardos contained 800,271 people, including 60,503 families. The general regional distribution of these resguardos was as follows: Amazonia, 88; llanos, 106; Caribbean lowlands, 31; Andean highlands, 104; and Pacific lowlands, 258. They totaled , or about 24 percent of the national territory. Colombia today may have as many as 710 resguardos in 27 of the 32 departments. ==Indigenous political organization==

Individual Indigenous groups have a variety of governance structures. A number of Indigenous groups are represented through the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC - Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia). Increasing organization and agitation have sharply broadened the Indigenous land base over the past forty years. The government titled more than 200 new reserves from 1960 to 1990, with 334 total operating as autonomous municipalities by 1997. ==Territories==

in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountains. Indigenous peoples hold title to substantial portions of Colombia, primarily in the form of Indigenous Reserves (), which encompass one-third of the country's land. The 1991 National Constitution of Colombia defined Territorial Entities (Entidades Territoriales) as departments, districts, municipalities and Indigenous territories. Within an Indigenous Territory Entity (ETI) the people have autonomy in managing their interests, and within the limits of the constitution have the right to manage resources and define taxes required to perform their duties. ETIs are to be defined by the government in conformance with the Organic Law on Land Management. However, this law has yet to be sanctioned so in practice the territories are unregulated. == Territories with predominant Indigenous populations ==

Departments Municipalities ==Major ethnic groups==

Community in the Colombian locality of Bosa, Bogotá. According to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), there are 102 Indigenous groups in Colombia. The ethnic groups with the greatest number of members are the Wayuu (380,460), Zenú, (307,091), Nasa (243,176) and Pastos (163,873). These peoples account for 58.1% of Colombia's Indigenous population. Highland peoples refer to the cultures of the Andes and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta of Colombia, while lowland peoples refer to the inhabitants of Chocó, Amazonía, Guajira and the Caribbean Coast, the Urabá Region and other non-mountain cultures. ==Struggle for rights==

Indigenous people are 4.4–10% of the population of Colombia, and their level of income and the indicators of human development as education and health conditions are lower than those of the rest of Colombians. During the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable increase of the interest dedicated to the concerns of Indigenous communities all over the world. Therefore, the United Nations proclaimed the disclosure of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People and in Latin America on 10 December 1994 and in Latin America. More than in any other region, the period was characterized by a wave of Indigenous movements that practised a growing political power from the Chiapas resistance of 1994 until the fall of the governments of Ecuador and Bolivia. The rise of Indigenous mobilization in Colombia is explained as a reaction of crisis at various levels: a crisis of representation caused by the shortcomings of political parties with sufficient representation to shoulder all collectives' interests. a crisis of participation from the lack of citizens' participation in public affairs and a legitimation crisis from discrimination against some social groups. During their struggle for rights, Indigenous people abandoned the armed struggle of the 1980s, and their new strategy included forms of legal liberalism, a politics of identity, and the use of transnational networks putting pressure on the state to achieve recognition and respect. That ha no't always led to success and often turned into victims of the cultural project of neoliberalism. Indigenous people's cultural accomplishments were accompanied by an escalation of the acts of persecution and the number of violations committed against them. According to the Indigenous National Organization of Colombia (ONIC), there are 102 Indigenous peoples in Colombia, and only 82 of them are recognized by the Colombian government. One of the main problems that the Colombian Indigenous communities currently face is the lack of recognition of their right to be consulted. Poverty is another aspect that is central to understand the contemporary situation of the Indigenes of Colombia, which has been measured by using of the Unsatisfied Basic Needs (UBN), whoch conders poverty to be insufficiencies in living, services, and education. There are differences among zones: those of greater influence of poverty measured with the UBN standard are Chocó, Sucre, Boyacá, Nariño, and Córdoba, which exceed the 50% of the population and those of less influence are found in Bogotá and the departments of El Valle, Atlántico and the coffee core: Caldas, Quindío, and Risaralda. In 1986, the concept of pobreza absoluta was introduced in the nation during a crisis of governability and an escalation of problems concerning the armed conflict. With the politics of struggle against poverty, the state tried to consolidate its presenece in zones thatwere considered "marginal," especially those areas including Indigenous people. Policies between 1986 and 1990 tried to rehabilitate the marginal zones and their integration to achieve development. Specific institutions were set up to work with Indigenous communities, which were seen as farmer communities whose habits and forms of production had to be modernized. As a consequence, the Indigenous minorities revolted and argued that it was not up to them to reintegrate but for the state to reform its ideas and recognize the people as the original Colombians. The goal was to solve the crisis of governability by eliminating poverty without excluding local necessities and to encourage development from the perspective of diversity. The Indigenous communities were considered to be marginal sectors in disadvantage and highly retarded populations, which had to be incorporated and integrated in greater society. The Indigenous people were not seen as a part of the diversity of the nation whose participation was needed for its construction. That conception has survived since the colonization of the continent until now; Indigenous and black people are generally still seen as negative elements, whose diversity needs to be reduced or wiped out to guarantee Latin American societies' development and modernization. Despite the Constitution of 1991 introducing the multiethnic and multicultural character of the Colombian nation, the contemporary relation between the state and the Indigenous communities seems to be contradictory, particularly since the communities demand autonomy. The Colombian government has always recognized the Indigenous groups only as communities since they are considered to be culturally diverse and to require therefore different political strategies to be integrated in the national society. Different forms of participation have been assigned to the communities but always in conformity with the state's legal and constitutional regulations, as has defined and established throughout history. The 1990s were a decade of mobilization and, in some way, a victory in terms of neoliberal multiculturalism, but 20 years of the Constitution of 1991 has made people realize the need to turn to other forms of mobilization, more than legal mobilization. They have seen that the recognition of equality is not enough, and Indigenous peoples have also demanded their right to difference: access to particular rights as Indigenous communities. Many people in Colombia choose not to identify as Indigenous because the history of discrimination against them and the immense wealth gap between those who identify as Indigenous and others. That led to only 1%, or under a million people, of Colombians in the 1993 census identifying as indigenous. During the most recent censuses, however, more people have begun to identify as indigenous, from 3.4% in the 2005 census to 4.31% in the 2018 census. Many scholars estimate the true indigenous population of Colombia to be around 10% of the country's population, or 5 million people. The same can be said for Afro-Colombians who are estimated to be around 20% of the total population, or 10 million people, despite only 6% of Colombians identifying as Afro-Colombian in the 2018 census. Indigenous political participation, both in national and local elections, has remained low for various reasons: the fragmentation of the movement from the several groups within the Colombian Indigenous communities; the loss of the vote from non-Indigenous leaders; and the low number of voters since many who identify as Indigenous comprise a small part of the national population, with most of them living in the countryside without the possibility to vote. ==Notable Indigenous Colombians==

• Hunzahúa (c. 1470), zaque of Hunza within the Muisca Confederation. • India Catalina (c. 1495–1538), interpreter and translator, of Mokaná descent. • Aquiminzaque (unknown–1540), last zaque of Hunza within the Muisca Confederation. • Agustín Agualongo (1780–1824), military commander of the Royalist forces during the Colombian War of Independence, of Pasto descent. • José María Melo (1800–1860), 7th President of the Republic of New Granada, of Pijao descent. • Quintín Lame (1880–1967), Indigenous rebel of Nasa origin. • Feliciano Valencia (1955–), Senator of Colombia for Cauca, of Nasa origin. • Lorenzo Muelas (1938–), Indigenous activist of Misak origin. • María Clemencia Herrera Nemerayema (1968–), Indigenous Amazonian activist, of Witoto origin. • Aida Quilcué (1973–), Senator of Colombia for Cauca, of Nasa origin. • Lido Pimienta (1986–), Colombian-Canadian songwriter and musician, of Wayuu descent. • Martha Peralta Epieyú (1988–), Senator of Colombia for La Guajira, of Wayuu descent. • Luis Díaz (1997–), Colombian footballer, of Wayuu descent. ==See also==