San José del Guaviare

Before settlers arrived, the river banks of the region were home to peoples of the Guahibo language family, such as the Guayabero and Sikuani, and to Arawak-speaking groups like the Piapoco and Kurripako, Tukano-speaking Cubeo, and the Tinigua and Puinave, who lived by hunting, fishing and growing crops. The interior of the forest has been the home of the Nukak, once known as the Makú, for centuries. Far older traces lie in the nearby Serranía de la Lindosa, where excavations at painted rock shelters such as Cerro Azul show that people lived in the area at least 12,000 years ago.

The town itself began in the early 20th century, when settlers came up the Guaviare River and built their huts on its right bank, followed by rubber tappers heading for Calamar. A small village had formed by 1910, and its founders named it after Saint Joseph, adding the name of the river. When the capital of the Vaupés commissariat moved from Calamar to the new town of Mitú in 1931, Calamar almost disappeared while San José grew. A first general store opened in 1943 and the first churches and schools in 1950, but the political violence of 1952 saw houses burned and the village almost entirely rebuilt.

From the 1960s San José became a base for the colonisation of the forest. It was made a municipality on 7 June 1976 and the following year became the capital of the new commissariat of Guaviare, which the 1991 constitution turned into a department. The area was deeply marked by violence and coca growing: the FARC made Guaviare one of its strongholds, and since the 2016 peace accord the ELN and FARC dissidents have continued to fight in the department.

The municipality is home to several Indigenous peoples. The reserve of the Nukak, among the last nomadic peoples of Colombia, covers more than a fifth of its territory, and there are further reserves of the Guayabero, Sikuani, Tukano, Desano, Piratapuyo and Kurripako. Local crafts include brooms and brushes made from the fibre of the chiquichiqui palm, along with handicrafts that are mostly the work of the Nukak.

The town's best-known cultural treasure is far older. The cliffs of the Serranía de la Lindosa carry tens of thousands of paintings in red and yellow ochre — people, hand prints, plants, animals and geometric patterns, with hunting scenes and figures that seem to climb ladders to reach the high walls. They were recorded by the mapmaker Agustín Codazzi in the 19th century and by the botanist Richard Evans Schultes in 1943, and were widely publicised in the 2020s. Their age is debated: some researchers link them to ochre found in layers about 12,600 years old and see extinct animals among the figures, while others argue they are much more recent.

Local sources also point to the rock formations of the 'Ciudad de Piedra', a natural rock arch, natural bridges and tunnels, waterfalls and river rapids in the wider municipality. Sport is popular, from football, volleyball and cycling to motocross and coleo, the plains sport of bringing down a running bull by its tail. The regional public television channel Canal Trece has its base in the town.

San José is a small town of some tens of thousands of people and the capital of a thinly populated department. It stands about 175 metres above sea level, around 400 km south of Bogotá, in country where the savannas of the plains meet tropical forest. The town is laid out on wide avenues with parks and a pier on the Guaviare, and it is divided into barrios such as the Centro, Veinte de Julio, El Porvenir and La Esperanza.

The economy rests on farming, cattle, fishing and services. Across the department the main crops are plantain, cassava, cacao, sugar cane and rubber, and shops in town sell products made from Amazonian plants. Tourism has grown in recent years as the rock-art sites have become better known, but the region still lives with the effects of coca growing and armed groups, and the forests of Guaviare have among the highest deforestation rates in Colombia, as land is cleared for crops and pasture.

Life follows the heat: business starts early, slows in the middle of the day and picks up again in the late afternoon. The river remains a route for people and goods, and the airport, with flights to Bogotá, is the town's quickest link with the rest of the country.

Food in San José del Guaviare mixes the cooking of the eastern plains with that of the Amazon. River fish are central: cachama and other fish are fried or grilled and served with cassava, plantain and rice, and fishing has been part of the town's economy since its first fishing business opened in 1958. From the plains come roast and grilled beef, pisillo — dried, shredded beef or fish — and gallina criolla, a stew of free-range chicken, with tamales made for celebrations.

Cassava is the staple of the forest peoples, eaten as casabe, a flat bread, and as fariña, a coarse toasted flour, and made into fermented and sweet drinks. Plantain, cassava and cacao are grown across the department, and tropical fruit is turned into fresh juices in water or milk. As elsewhere in Colombia, lunch for many people is the menú del día of soup, main course and juice, and the day is punctuated by small cups of sweet tinto coffee.