Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Highlands
» Aymará The Aymará culture emerged on the southern shores of Lake Titicaca after
the fall of Tiwanaku. These strong, warlike people lived in city-states and dominated
the areas around the lake. Today, Aymará live in the areas surrounding the lake and in
the Yungas, with La Paz' El Alto area being the capital of Aymará culture. They
speak - you guessed it - Aymará.
» Chipaya Perhaps the direct descendants of the Tiwanaku.
» Kallawaya A remote tribe with a dying language.
» Quechua Descended from the Inca, some 9 to 14 million Quechua speakers live in
Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and Argentina today. These people lived
across the former Inca empire. With the decline of mining in the 1980s, many
Quechua speakers moved to the Chapare to harvest coca.
Lowlands
» Chiquitano Living primarily in the Chiquitania tropical savanna outside Santa
Cruz, but also in Beni and in Brazil, there are about 180,000 Chiquitanos in Bolivia
and about a quarter of them speak Chiquitano. Before the arrival of the Jesuits in the
region there were numerous disparate ethnic groups. During the evangelization they
were forced to live in small townships where a common language and dress were ad-
opted.
» Guaraní This tribe shares a common language and lives in Paraguay, Brazil and
parts of Uruguay and Bolivia. You can learn about their culture at the Guaraní Mu-
seum in Santa Cruz.
» Mojeño This significant ethnic group from the Beni department was quite large be-
fore the 17th century, with more than 350,000 people. Many were killed off by
European diseases, but the language and culture survives today. Many early European
explorers believed El Dorado would be found in Mojeño territory.
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