I went to Trujillo for the weekend. There is a wayuu girl who moved there from the north coast with her husband and has a little artesanias shop in the village. I bought a colorful pulsera from her, one mil.
I have always found interesting the fact that in the US unless you are near an Indian Reservation you rarely see people with Amerindian features despite the fact that there were large populations when the Europeans arrived. Of course those Europeans (well English) were religious refugees who came with wives and children so there was relatively little mixture of the races and of course later as the Europeans expanded westward there were huge conflicts that together with diseases resulted in major decimation of the native populations.
In Colombia by contrast it was wasn't whole families that arrived but legions of soldiers i.e. the Spanish Conquistadores who like soldiers from all cultures everywhere immediately intermixed with the local populations. Add to that the fact that most of the Colombian Amerindian populations weren't nearly as warlike (there were exceptions) as the Shoshone, Apache etc. of North America and it is easy to see why the department stores in Cali are filled with cashiers who have pretty brown skin, straight black hair and beautiful black eyes.
I can just imagine myself as a Spanish soldier in that long ago time finding myself in a distant land far from home and encountering a nubile indigena like this shop girl.No wonder things panned out the way they did.
