COLOMBIA: The Chibcha Culture - Forgotten, But Still Alive

COLOMBIA: The Chibcha Culture - Forgotten, But Still Alive
By Gloria Helena Rey

Credit:Gloria Helena Rey.

BOGOTÁ, Nov 30 (IPS) - Use of the sacred coca leaf, respect for water and nature, and other practices of the pre-Columbian Chibcha or Muisca culture survive in Colombia in spite of five centuries under attack. The culture was as highly-developed as those of the better-known Inca, Maya and Aztec people, according to scholars.

"Many Chibcha traditions and customs were demonised by the Spanish and other people, so we were encouraged to forget them," writer Antonio Cruz Cárdenas told IPS.

"However, Chibcha culture has not disappeared. We have begun to prove that it was not we who were the ignorant ones," indigenous physicist and biologist Alfonso Fonseca, head of the Chibcha town council of Cota, half an hour north of Bogotá by road, commented to IPS.
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Nowadays few Colombians speak Muisca, because speaking indigenous languages was forbidden in 1770 by royal decree, and Spanish became the dominant language, for social, religious, economic and political reasons.

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