Pasto

The valley of Atriz was home to the Quillacinga people when the Spanish arrived, and the city takes its name from the Pastos, the Indigenous people of the wider region, with whom more than 160,000 people identified at the 2018 census. Sebastián de Belalcázar founded the city in 1537, and in 1539 Lorenzo de Aldana moved it to its present site as San Juan de Pasto. Through the colonial period it was an administrative, cultural and religious centre for the south, filled with convents and churches, which earned it the name of Colombia's theological city.

In the wars of independence Pasto stood with the Spanish crown. That royalist stance, and its remote position high in the Andes near the border with Ecuador, left it isolated from the rest of Colombia for a long time after independence. Trade, crafts and the businesses of entrepreneurs such as the Italian-born Guido Bucheli built its economy, and the Pan-American Highway eventually tied it to Popayán in the north and to Ecuador in the south.

Above the city rises Galeras, considered Colombia's most active volcano, which has erupted frequently since its first recorded eruption in 1580. Named a Decade Volcano in 1991 for its danger to the city, it erupted in 1993 while scientists were in the crater, killing nine people. An eruption in November 2005 forced the evacuation of thousands of people from nearby villages, later eruptions covered Pasto in ash, and a January 2010 eruption forced 8,000 people to leave their homes.

The Carnival of Blacks and Whites, from 2 to 7 January, is the heart of Pasto's identity. Its roots go back to a colonial day of rest granted to enslaved Africans on 5 January, when they danced in the streets; the Whites' game of talc and perfume began on 6 January 1912, and in 1926 students from the high schools and the University of Nariño took to the streets in carnival costume. The festivities open with the arrival of the 'Castañeda Family', a comic parade of travellers, followed by Blacks' Day, when everyone paints each other with black cosmetics, and Whites' Day with talc and foam, and they end with a parade of giant floats portraying legends and current events that craftsmen spend years building. UNESCO named the carnival a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

Craft is the city's other great tradition. Barniz de Pasto, a pre-Columbian technique, uses the resin of the mopa-mopa tree, coloured and stretched over wooden pieces, then cut by hand into fine designs; leather, ceramics and wood are also worked in the city.

The dominant culture is Andean, and the city is strongly Catholic. Pasto shares much with highland Ecuador, including chaza, an old ball game played in teams on a rectangular court, widely played in Nariño and the national sport of Ecuador but unknown in other regions of Colombia. Football is followed passionately, and Deportivo Pasto's first league title in 2006 set off celebrations across the city.

The municipality had a population of about 390,000 at the 2018 census, and Pasto is the main city of Nariño and of Colombia's far south. Trade and services dominate the urban economy, along with small businesses, about half of them craft manufacturing; the larger companies produce food, drinks and furniture, and shopping centres serve customers from neighbouring Ecuador. The surrounding countryside lives from farming, cattle and some small-scale mining, and most of the department's hospitals are in the city.

Life is shaped by altitude: highs rarely leave the range of 15–18°C, and hot drinks such as hervidos suit the cool evenings. On Sundays and Monday holidays, Avenida de los Estudiantes and other streets close to cars for the ciclovía, when hundreds of people cycle, skate, jog and walk.

The Galeras volcano is part of daily life: it can be seen from almost anywhere in the city, it is watched by a volcanological and seismological observatory in Pasto, and residents of the villages on its flanks have been evacuated several times this century.

Pasto's signature dish is cuy, guinea pig, grilled or roasted. It is the city's most typical dish, and 7 January, which closes the carnival, is Cuy's Day, when many visitors go to the rural fairs of nearby Obonuco and Catambuco. Cuy restaurants are found across the city and in the villages around it.

Everyday food is simpler. Empanadas de añejo are small dough pastries filled with meat, rice and green beans; quimbolitos are another well-known dough-based pastry, and tamales are cheap and filling. Frito and juanesca are other local dishes. Desserts include helado de paila, ice cream churned in a copper pan cooled with crushed ice, and chilacuán, made with mountain papaya.

The cold climate shapes the drinks. Hervidos are hot drinks of fruit juice, usually lulo, blackberry or passion fruit, that may be strengthened with aguardiente or chapil, the local cane spirit. Chicha, made from fermented maize, and guarapo, made from sugar cane juice, are homemade traditional drinks.