Pijao

Pijao, Indian people of the southern highlands of Colombia. By the mid-20th century the Pijao were thought to be extinct; however, in the 1990s, having made a successful argument for “cultural reignition,” they were officially recognized by the Colombian government as an indigenous people.

Traditionally, the Pijao were agriculturists, raising corn (maize), sweet manioc (yuca), beans, potatoes, and many fruits; they also hunted and fished. They lived in settlements of several families in houses built of wood and plastered with mud and clay. They made pottery, wove cotton, worked stone, and smelted and worked gold and copper. They generally wore no clothing except palm-leaf hats, though they painted the body and adorned it with feathers and sometimes gold ornaments. They deformed the skulls of their infants by tying boards against them. In addition, they were cannibals who devoured their slain enemies. The Pijao worshipped idols and believed that the dead were reincarnated as animals.

The Pijao refused to make peace with the colonizing Spanish, and their population was decimated by the mid-17th century. Pijao tradition stresses their resistance not only to the conquistadors but also to the Roman Catholic Church’s pacification campaigns. Nevertheless, the Pijao worked on the haciendas that sprouted in the area and assimilated into the local peasant economy. As big landowners sought to expand their holdings, the Pijao were dispossessed of their land. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries some Pijao resisted, but by the 1940s and ’50s more and more had accepted state-administered buyouts. Other Pijao participated in government relocation programs.

Pijao communities persisted in the department of Tolima, where the bulk of the Pijao population lives today, though a significant number of Pijao also live in Bogotá. By the mid-20th century it had been deemed that the Pijao shared cultural traits with the broader campesino (peasant) community and that they no longer constituted a distinct indigenous group. In the 1990s, however, by demonstrating the validity of their ongoing legends, customs, and traditional beliefs, the Pijao were officially designated an indigenous people.