The Settlement of the Sinu Valley of Colombia

Abstract

IN ABORIGINAL times the Rio Sinut Valley of Colombia was densely peopled. A brief orgy of grave looting by the Spaniards followed the Conquest, after which they almost forgot the area; for its gold had come from elsewhere and few Indians remained to be exploited as a labor force. Its effective resettlement has been accomplished only in the past 75 years. First came the American and French lumber interests, which cleared the forest; they were followed by the big cattlemen and, more recently, the cotton kings. Monteria, in I950, was as heady with anticipation as a Texas oil-boom town, as Medellin capitalists, some with farming experience and others with only their checkbooks, poured in to make their fortunes from cotton planting in the Sinut. A relatively few families still hold the better alluvial valley lands in large blocks, acquired either by crown grant or, more commonly, by purchase from a financially distressed government. As the population has pyramided, the landless Sinuano peasant, who as tenant or wage laborer cleared the large haciendas, has gone to the hills to claim his own maize-hog farm from the forested baldtos (government lands). He has extended the frontier of settlement westward well into the Department of Antioquia, but into lands that have had little appeal for the highland Antioquefio, himself a vigorous colonizer who has shown a marked preference for the cooler uplands of the tierra templada and tierrafrfa.' While the Sinuano has been occupying the empty, steamy hills along the Caribbean coast, the headwater area of the Rio Sinut (the Alto Sinui) has been somewhat more slowly colonized from interior Antioquia, and increasingly heavy pressure has been exerted on the remaining Choco-type Indians.