Paisa people
A Paisa is someone from a region in the northwest of Colombia, including part of the West and Central cordilleras of the Andes in Colombia. The Paisa region is formed by the departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío. Some regions of Valle del Cauca Department and Tolima Department culturally identify as paisas. The main cities of the Paisa region are Medellín, Pereira, Manizales and Armenia.
The name Paisa derives from the Spanish apocope of Paisano, but they are also known as "Antioqueños". Although many refer to Paisas as an ethnic group, they are a part of the Colombians and Latin American peoples.
Paisas can be found in other regions of Colombia and the Americas where they have migrated. They have a particular way of speaking Spanish that some writers refer to as español antioqueño.
File:La Raza-Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt.JPG|thumb|upright=0.9|Monumento a la Raza by Rodrigo Arenas. Bronze and concrete, 38 m height, located in La Alpujarra Administrative Center, Medellín, Antioquia.
Genetics
The Paisas have been considered a genetically isolated population according to scientific studies. As evidenced by the analysis of direct-line mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA and Y-chromosomal DNA or Y-DNA, the initial founding of the Paisa population occurred primarily through the admixture of male Iberians and female Amerindians.Ultimately, this led to the overall predominantly European ancestry of today's Paisa population according to testing of autosomal DNA or atDNA, despite the asymmetrical sex-specific genetic markers that they inherited from the founding population which indicates their Y-DNA as being predominantly from European male forebears and mtDNA as being predominantly from Amerindian female ancestors. Nevertheless, the average population does still carry a significant amount of Native American ancestry, ranging from 20% to 40%, and from 4% to 10% for African.
Extremadura
The ancestors of the Paisa are primarily Spanish immigrants from Extremadura, Spain. The first colonizers were Extremaduran like Gaspar de Rodas of Trujillo, who was the first colonial governor of the region. Several towns, cities and places in the Paisa Region are also Extremaduran: Medellín, Cáceres, Valdivia.Andalusia
Some Andalusias, like Jorge Robledo of Jaén, also came with the Extremadurans during the sixteenth century. During the seventeenth century, a group of Andalusian migrants is said to have settled the region.Basque people
The presence of Basque ancestry in the Paisa Region is exhibited by the proliferation of Basque surnames. Some scholars point out that this may be one of the regions of Hispanic America with the greatest concentration of ancestry from the Iberian region. The Basques arrived in Antioquia during the seventeenth century.The use of Basque language terminology in the present territory of Colombia goes back to the early exploration which occurred in 1499, during the third voyage of Columbus. It is said that from that time the territory experienced a strong influx of Basques including prominent figures such as the pilot and geographer Juan de la Cosa, nicknamed "El Vizcaíno".
Thereafter, the Basques began to come regularly and distributed throughout the country. Due to this presence, the Colombian department of Antioquia has been considered a major point of Basque-Navarre immigration. This occurred mainly during the colonial era, when thousands of Basques migrated to be linked to the Spanish colonization companies.
To people interested in investigating the presence of Euskal Herria in the department of Antioquia, one of the questions that troubles them relates to the use and retention of the Basque language in the department.
It is estimated that for Antioquia, a region where tens of thousands of Spaniards arrived, of which a good portion were Basque, limited aspects of the Basque language were brought over. It has been difficult to track the use of Euskera in Antioquia and Colombia because the Basque language was always an outcast, which apparently left no written evidence in Antioquia.
This is likely because the Spanish crown, to maintain the monopoly of its overseas companies and to restrict those people not belonging to Spanish rule, did not allow languages other than Castilian to be spoken. This meant that those invited to participate in the colonization of Indian companies, and foreigners in general, had to learn the official language, i.e., Castilian, hence the prevalence of Castilian-Basque-speaking bilinguals.
Despite these restrictions, it is still possible to trace the history of Colombia's ties to the ancient language of the Basques. A reference that has use of Euskera in Colombian territory occurred in relation to Lope de Aguirre, a native of Gipuzkoa nicknamed "The Madman". Aguirre's rebellion defied the Spanish empire, carrying out acts against the subjects of the Spanish crown. Pedro de Ursúa, a Navarrese faithful to the Spanish king, who was also the founder of Pamplona in eastern Colombia, said that he could persuade the soldiers to be part of Aguirre's revolt, if they spoke in Euskera.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Basque families from Northern Spain settled in the Aburrá Valley where Medellín and Envigado are located, as well as small towns in eastern Antioquia, such as Marinilla, El Retiro and El Santuario. This part of Antioquia reminded these families of northern Spain.
Sephardi Jews
There is debate about Jewish ancestry in the Paisa people.It was known that some Spanish and Portuguese New Christians of Sephardic Jewish ancestry fled the Cartagena de Indias Inquisition and took refuge in the Antioquian mountains during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Some Colombian authors like Jorge Isaacs and Miguel Ángel Osorio have claimed that it is indisputable that Paisas have Jewish ancestry. Several Paisa surnames are known to have been prevalent among New Christian conversos of Sephardic Jewish origin, for example Espinosa, Pérez, Mejía, and many others.
Some scholars state that the presence of Sephardic Jews among the ancestors of Paisas is a fact, but it does not mean that all Paisas descend from them, nor that it is the only or predominant element among those that do, as is proven by the Paisas' descent from other groups like Basques, Extremadurans, and Andalusians.
Canarians
There are records also of presence of some Canarians and Canarian families, at least some of them known to be from Lanzarote, who settled in Cáceres, Antioquia, in the second half of the 16th century. Others emigrated in 1678 by the terms of the Tributo de Sangre to Santa Marta. In 1536, Pedro Fernández de Lugo led an expedition of 1,500 people, 400 of whom were Canarians from all the different islands that make up the archipelago), for the conquest of the area around what became Santa Marta. This contingent pacified the warring tribes on the coast and penetrated into the interior. On the way, they founded several cities, two which, Las Palmas and Tenerife, still exist. In addition, Pedro de Heredia led 100 men from the Canary Islands to Cartagena de Indias.Etymology
The expression "Paisa" is of popular use as apocope of "Paisano". Consequently, "Paisa Region" is the region where the Paisa people live. A more ancient expression is Antioqueño. All the region once made up the Province of Antioquia. In 1905, the Caldas Department was created from the southern part of Antioquia, limiting the use of the term Antioqueño only to those of Antioquia, while "Paisa" could refer to people from both the smaller Antioquia and the new department.History
Although some sources argue that the American Indians that populated most of the Paisa Region were extinguished through European diseases and fights against the Spaniard conquerors, this has not been fully demonstrated.Francisco César made an expedition in 1537 from Urabá to the Cauca River to the lands of Dabeiba, but his troops were rejected by the Nutibaras. In 1540 Marshall Jorge Robledo founded Cartago. In 1541 he founded Arma in what is today the south of Antioquia, near today Aguadas and Santa Fe de Antioquia, at the banks of the Cauca River. This last town would become the provincial capital in 1813.
The first colonial governor was Don Gaspar de Rodas. The mountains of Antioquia attracted the Spaniards for its gold and lands for cattle, and the first towns were located near gold mines and rivers. Despite that, the region did not attract a population interested in creating important centers for the Spanish civilization like Cartagena de Indias, Popayán or Bogotá and it remained almost entirely isolated from the rest of the colony. This is the main reason for the cultural identity of the Paisas within the Colombian national context.
Since the seventeenth century and until the end of the nineteenth centuries, Paisa families moved to the southern regions of Antioquia, in what is today the Colombian Coffee-Growers Axis or the "Viejo Caldas", though now most Colombian nationals refer to this region as the Eje cafetero. This constant internal migration is known in history as the "Colonización Antioqueña". Most of the cities and towns founded in the Old Caldas are from that time.
During the wars for the independence of Colombia, the most important Paisa figure was General José María Córdova. He was from Rionegro and fought important battles to free the region from the Spanish regime under the orders of Simón Bolívar, who never went to the region. During Bolívar's campaign to liberate New Granada, Córdoba participated in the Battle of Boyacá and was entitled "Lieutenant Colonel" by the Libertador, despite his young age. Then he was charged by Bolívar to defend the Province of Antioquia and in fact he defeated the Spaniards during the Campaign of Nechí between the end of 1819 and the beginning of 1820.
In 1826 Medellín was declared the capital of the Province of Antioquia. In 1856 a Federalist Political Constitution created the State of Antioquia and it faced some civil wars among Liberals and Conservatives. In 1877 the president of the federal state was Pedro Justo Berrío, who was one of the most prominent political leaders of the region at the end of the century and developed an active politic in education, transportation and economic development.
In 1886, with a centralized Political Constitution, the "Department of Antioquia" was created. Although the region was not affected directly by the Thousand Days War, one of the main characters of the fighting, General Rafael Uribe Uribe at the side of the Liberal Party rebels, came from the area.
The progressive government of General Rafael Reyes was of benefit in the development for the region. One of his projects was the creation of new departments, including the Caldas Department to be taken from the southern part of Antioquia in 1905. During the twentieth century both Paisa departments, would continue their development in industry, mining and agriculture. In 1966 the Caldas Department was divided in three parts: Caldas itself, Quindío and Risaralda.
At the end of the century the region faced the crisis of growing drug traffic mafias, paramilitary groups and guerrillas, especially in Antioquia with the Medellín Cartel and the north of Valle del Cauca. However, development has proved to be a Colombian model in regions like the Metropolitan Area of Medellín according to the Inter-American Development Bank.