Diaguita

Diaguita is the name given to the Indigenous peoples of the dry Andean valleys on both sides of the mountains, in Chile's Norte Chico and in north-western Argentina. Never a single state, they lived in many chiefdoms, built irrigated farms and made fine painted pottery, and resisted first the Incas and then the Spanish, holding out in some valleys for more than a century after the Spanish arrived. Today well over 200,000 people in the two countries identify as Diaguita.

The label is partly a modern one. The scholar Ricardo E. Latcham applied it to a group of peoples and archaeological cultures in the early 20th century, and in the 16th century the name was used more narrowly, for the peoples of Catamarca and La Rioja. The western Diaguita lived in the transverse valleys that cut across Chile's semi-arid mountains; the eastern Diaguita held La Rioja and Catamarca and parts of Salta, San Juan and Tucumán, including the Calchaquí Valley. Groups such as the Calchaquí and the Quilmes, whose stone town survives as the Ruins of Quilmes, are counted among them. Coastal and inland communities traded, as sea shells found high in Andean valleys show.

Early Spanish writers said each valley spoke a different language, but some modern scholars think these were dialects of one tongue. The usual candidate is Cacán, also called Kakán, whose own word for "village inhabitant" is thought to be the origin of the name Diaguita. Cacán is unclassified and now extinct; a grammar written by a Jesuit missionary is lost, and only scattered words, place names and surnames survive.

In Chile the Diaguita culture is traced back through the Las Ánimas complex, of about 800 to 1000 CE, to the earlier El Molle complex, which is dated variously from the last centuries BCE or around 300 CE to about 700 CE. The archaeological Diaguita culture itself emerged around 1000 CE. Its classic phase is known for skilled irrigation and for pottery painted in black, white and red. The relationship between the southern Diaguita valleys and Mapuche communities, whose place names are found throughout the area, is still debated.

The Inca Empire took Diaguita lands by war, causing severe depopulation in the Chilean valleys. Why it did so is disputed: some scholars point to mineral wealth, others to a need for labour for mines. The Incas appointed local lords and settled colonists, and the Diaguita adopted Inca pottery designs, farming and metalworking techniques.

Spaniards under Diego de Almagro reached the Copiapó valley in April 1536, when perhaps 20,000 Diaguita lived in what is now Chile. Rebels there were crushed under Governor García Hurtado de Mendoza (1557–1561). East of the Andes the Spanish Empire could not at first subdue the valleys, and instead ringed them with towns: Santiago del Estero in the 1550s, Tucumán in 1565, Salta in 1582, La Rioja in 1591 and Jujuy in 1593. The Calchaquí Diaguita rose in 1630, with the last rebels fighting until 1642–1643, and came fully under Spanish rule only after 1665. The defeated were deported, emptying the Calchaquí Valley; the Quilmes were moved to the site of the present-day city of Quilmes near Buenos Aires.

Chile has recognised the Diaguita as an Indigenous people since 2006, and they are now its third-largest Indigenous group, with 153,231 people in 2024. In Argentina's 2022 census 90,794 people identified as Diaguita or Diaguita-Cacano.

Our 1492 map draws an approximate Diaguita territory astride the southern Andes, next to the area labelled Kolla-Atacameño and near the Chango of the Pacific coast. See also Chile and Argentina.