Guane 800 – 1200 A.D.

The few archeological remains that are known give us an idea of their textile industry. Also, the chroniclers mention their agriculture, their religion and their respect for other men

GUANE FACE

If in the search for the face of the past, through art and design, I find nothing but portents, after the second epoch of Colombian history, that of the Spanish invasion, I see nothing but disasters. The confirmation of this can be found in the Guane face, which was completely erased in race as well as in image

Through several centuries, there pass al I types of plagues through the territory known today as Santander, the most travelled and worn portion of our national . territory. Conquistadors, feudal lords, inspectors, regents, bishops, viceroys, capitants and tall, blond Nordics have passed though. Santander received a terrible last blow of destruction in the period of the Commune, from which it has not yet recovered. In order to confirm this, it is enough to observe the towns that participated in the Commune and the lamentable state that they are in. These regions have received very well-placed low blows in order that the words “Guane” or “communards” not be heard again. Neither were the tombs, like those of the rest of the nation, left in peace; later, the salt mines which had been stolen from the Indians, produced the element which began the Commune. The bones of those patriots who participated were exhibited in cages, yellowing with the sun and the wind; they were not sung to, like their brothers, whose remains were smoked in the wind in rites of veneration and appreciation. Rather, their remains were treated with the most terrible expression of savagery

Santander has suffered from all kinds of Attilas; it is sufficient to remember how the mercenary Federman was known, and feared, in this region The population of Santander has been left stupified and exhausted as a result of its calvary. Just now, after five hundred years, the first steps have been taken to organize a museum dedicated to one of the most interesting nations found by the barbaric Iberians, who destroyed everything in the name of God, satisfying an ancestral hunger which has not yet ended All of the chroniclers of the invasion are in agreement with respect to the description of the Guane nation: the large population, their poise and beauty. “Beautiful” is the word most often used to describe the men; the women were known not only for their beauty but for their “gentility, grace and finery”

The few archeological remains that are known give us an idea of their textile industry. Also, the chroniclers mention their agriculture, their religion and their respect for other men

From Fray Pedro Simon, we know that Bochica was .also their god, their protector, as he was of the Muisca nation, the neighbors and brothers of the Guane, who ,poke a language which came
from the same Chibcha Dots

When I feel the horrors that America, the continent of peace, liberty, love and natural splendor, has seen, I am filled with fear and I ask, “What is man? Where is his ethical behavior? “We fool ourselves with the false idea that we have been made in the image and nature of God; we show none of His characteristics. Pride, ambition, the desire for power, greed, the dark and unmentionable zones of the mind, the lack of respect for other human beings do not allow us to believe ourselves rational beings instead of animals; we act, based on our dark sub-conscious, pushed by libido and sexuality, full of complexes, encouraged by destruction and death. Being thus, we still dare to call and consider the native inhabitants of America inferior beings, animals without a soul, unthinking. Who was more unthinking, the Spanish or the Indians? In the confrontation, it has been the Indian who has given more signs of sanity and reason, and who has left signs of a better political and social order. They have demonstrated that they were men who played, laughed, made tools and instruments, thought about philosophy, literature, poetry, art, science, religion and morality. There were signs of all of this, which the great white beast destroyed, putting apartheid, slavery, officially-approved sacking and mass destruction in its place. Before Hitler were the Spanish in America.

The Guane face is a face which is not present; we guess it from the mummies, we can see it in their textiles, their spinning wheels and in the colors they used: indigo for the profound blues and the sky-blue tones; native flowers for the vermillions and violets; cochineal for the purples. With these colors, they dyed their cloaks and blankets, which are still produced in the regions of Boyaca and Santander, although they are no longer made of alpaca and vicuna wool, nor of the fiber of the silk-cotton tree; rather, they are made with sheep’s wool and dyes from Germany

One must search for the Guane face in the song of the blackbird, the thrushes, the troupials and the mockingbirds of Santander. Perhaps the quail or the dove which fly near Guapota know of it, or the vigorous, pot-shaped armadillos of Charala. Perhaps the screams of the wood chickens will tell us something; the enchanted woods of Guazaque may have an answer. The guama forest and cornfields of Oiba might have seen it; ask them. Lets play guessing-games with the seeds of the pumpkin and the gusms fruit; in the spells against the evil eye we’ll find the face