San Agustín

The hills around San Agustín were home to the people now called the San Agustín culture, whose beginnings may go back to the fourth millennium BC. Over many centuries they built burial mounds and stone tombs and carved hundreds of statues — guardian figures, animals such as jaguars and birds, and figures thought to be gods — spread across plateaus on both sides of the upper Magdalena. The statues are believed to have been carved between about AD 5 and 400, and they were once painted yellow, red, black and white. Much about the carvers and their society remains uncertain.

The first Spanish settlement, founded in 1752 by Alejo Astudillo, was destroyed by attacks from Indigenous people, and the present town dates from 1790. In 1756 the Spanish friar Juan de Santa Gertrudis passed through and described the statues in his book Maravillas de la naturaleza, one of the first written accounts of them.

Scientific digging began in the 20th century. In 1913 the German ethnologist Konrad Theodor Preuss excavated here for the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and took 21 smaller sculptures, which reached Berlin in 1919; in 2022 the Colombian government said it would seek their return. The archaeological park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, together with nearby Isnos, and it now forms part of an archaeological corridor with Tierradentro. Tourism has since grown into one of the town's main livelihoods alongside farming.

San Agustín calls itself the archaeological capital of Huila, and its identity is bound up with the statues: their eagle-and-snake motif appears on the municipal coat of arms. Local guides lead visitors to the sites on foot or on horseback, and riding along the country tracks is part of everyday life in the surrounding veredas, the rural districts.

The San Agustín culture worked not only stone but also pottery and gold, and the park's museum and the small museum at Obando keep some of these finds. For local people the statues are both heritage and a source of pride, and the removal of some to Europe a century ago is still a live question.

The town shares the Andean traditions of Huila, whose capital Neiva holds the national bambuco festival with the Sanjuanero as its anthem, and Catholic feast days centre on the parish church. Some of the hostels and farm stays around the town are run by settlers from abroad, and the visitor trade gives it a relaxed, outdoor character.

The municipality had about 34,000 inhabitants according to a 2019 projection by DANE, Colombia's statistics agency. It covers about 1,574 square kilometres, running west to the high peaks of the Central Cordillera, close to the source of the Magdalena, and the town itself stands at about 1,730 metres on the eastern side of the Colombian Massif, the knot of mountains where the Andes divide into three ranges.

The economy rests on coffee, sugar cane, cattle and tourism. Coffee grows on small farms across the hills, and southern Huila is one of Colombia's leading coffee areas. Tourism brings hostels, guiding, horse hire and craft shops, and it is busiest in Colombian holiday periods and the drier months.

Life follows the rhythm of a farming town, with quiet evenings on the main square. Pitalito, the larger town about 27 km away, is the place for banks and onward transport, and shared taxis run between the two through the day. Away from the town, families live on scattered farms reached by dirt roads, and many households combine a coffee plot with cattle, cane or work in the visitor trade.

San Agustín eats like the rest of Huila. Asado huilense, the traditional roast of the department and a fixture of the San Juan and San Pedro festivities in Neiva, is the dish most visitors seek out, and grills on the way to the archaeological park serve it in big plates.

Achiras, small crunchy biscuits made from achira flour with a taste of cheese, are the classic Huila snack. Simple restaurants in town serve set lunches, and the grills on the park road offer grilled meat with grilled fruit and vegetables, which make a filling meal after a long walk between the sites.

Drink is local too. Coffee is grown on the surrounding farms and is the everyday drink in the countryside, and Huila's beans are prized by specialty roasters. Jugo de caña is sugar-cane juice pressed fresh with a squeeze of lemon, and guarapo and chicha are fermented drinks made from cane and maize, long brewed in the countryside and still drunk by local people.