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The Cabécar are an indigenous group of the remote Talamanca region of eastern
Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...
. They speak Cabécar, a language belonging to the Chibchan language family of the Isthmo-Colombian Area of lower
Central America Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually ...
and northwestern
Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
. According to
census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...
data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census of Costa Rica (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos, INEC), the Cabécar are the largest indigenous group in Costa Rica with a population of nearly 17,000. Cabécar territory extends northwest from the Río Coen to the Río Reventazón. Many Cabécar settlements today are located inside reserves established by Costa Rican law in 1976 to protect indigenous ancestral homelands. These reserves exhibit ecological diversity, including vast swaths of tropical rainforest covering steep escarpments and large river valleys where many Cabécar still employ traditional subsistence livelihoods and cultural practices.


History


Language

Cabécar is one of sixteen remaining languages in the Chibchan language family of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, a region of southern Central America (specifically eastern
Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...
,
Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...
,
Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...
, and
Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...
) and northwestern Colombia bifurcating the areas of Mesoamerican and
South American South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...
linguistic traditions. The extensive geographic distribution of the Chibchan language family has sparked debate among scholars regarding the origin and diffusion of Chibchan languages. Two conceptual models have emerged to describe possible scenarios: the '' Theory of North Migration'' and the '' Centrifugal Expansion Theory''. The former postulates
Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
as the historical epicenter from which Chibchan linguistic groups migrated northwestward into present-day Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras. However, anthropological and archaeological evidence (see Cooke and Ranere 1992; Fonseca and Cooke 1993; Fonseca 1994), combined with glottochronological studies (see Constenla 1981, 1985, 1989, 1991, 1995), prefer the ''Centrifugal Expansion Theory'' suggesting that Chibchan-speaking groups developed in-situ over a long period of time from an origin at the Talamanca mountain range of present-day Costa Rica and Panama. From there, Chibchan linguistic groups migrated and settled as far north as eastern Honduras and as far south as Colombia.


Talamancan indigenous groups

Today the Bribri and Cabécar indigenous groups are known collectively as the ''Talamanca''. The term ''Talamanca'' is not indigenous; it was adopted in the early 17th century from the Spanish town of Santiago de Talamanca as an umbrella designation for the aboriginal groups living between the current Costa Rican-Panamian border and the Río Coen in Costa Rica. Spanish records document the names of many closely related groups (Ara, Ateo, Abicetaba, Blancos, Biceitas or Viceitas, Korrhué, Ucabarúa, and Valientes) living in this area who became known collectively as the Talamanca. A scarcity of historical documents describing aboriginal groups in southeastern Costa Rica has made it difficult for scholars to differentiate the culture histories of the present-day Bribri and Cabécar. Spanish
Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...
fathers in the early 17th century noted linguistic differences among the various Talamancan tribes mentioned above, but generally these groups became known more broadly as the Bribri or Cabécar according to their geographic location east or west of the Río Dyke. Bribri elders maintain that their name is a derivation of ''dererri'', the Bribri term for "strong" or "hard." Conversely, Cabécar elders suggest that their name derives from the words ''kabé'' ( quetzal) and ''ká'' (place), in reference to the Cabécar ancestral tradition of eating the quetzal. Modern Bribri and Cabécar languages are similar in
lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word () ...
,
orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...
, and tonal levels (high and low pitches), but they are not mutually interchangeable.


Subsistence livelihoods

A variety of activities characterize Cabécar subsistence livelihoods today. These include small-scale agriculture, hunting, fishing, and harvesting wild flora for food,
medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...
, house materials, and a host of other uses. Cabécar subsistence in the natural environment takes place in two realms: the ‘near space’ in and around the house or village, where human activity has modified the landscape; and the ‘far space,’ where natural, primary forests remain unchanged and where human activity must coexist harmoniously with the environment. Subsistence agriculture in near space is one of the most important activities in which Cabécar households employ three distinct agricultural systems: tropical home gardens, slash-and-burn, and plantain cultivation.


Tropical home gardens

Cabécar households maintain tropical home gardens with a variety of trees and plants for domestic consumption. These gardens generally are very dense with a multi-layered canopy. Cedar ('' Cedrela odorata''), laurel ('' Cordia alliodora''), balsa ('' Ochroma pyramidale'') and peach palm (''pejibaye'' or '' Bactris gasipaes'') are among the tallest trees often found in Cabécar tropical home gardens. Lower strata include permanent crops such as coffee (''
Coffea arabica ''Coffea arabica'' (), also known as the Arabica coffee, is a species of flowering plant in the coffee and madder family Rubiaceae. It is believed to be the first species of coffee to have been cultivated and is the dominant cultivar, represe ...
'') and cacao ('' Theobroma cacao''). The lowest stratum is characterized by medicinal plants, shrubs, and tubers, including chili pepper (''
Capsicum annuum ''Capsicum annuum'' is a fruiting plant from the family Solanaceae (nightshades), within the genus Capsicum which is native to the northern regions of South America and to southwestern North America. The plant produces Berry, berries of many color ...
''), manioc ('' Manihot esculenta''), and tiquisque ('' Xanthosoma violaceum''). The Cabécar maintain their tropical home gardens by removing undesired underbrush to allow for growth of wild species that can also be harvested to supplement Cabécar everyday needs.


Slash-and-burn agriculture

Cabécar subsistence farmers practice rotating slash-and-burn agriculture for basic food requirements. This technique is employed during the driest month to clear dense underbrush from a plot using a machete or axe. The plant biomass is left to dehydrate and decompose for several weeks and then eliminated in a controlled burn. After the plot cools, the farmer can sow basic grains by placing seeds into shallow holes in the topsoil made by the sharpened tip of a branch fashioned from the pejibaye palm (''Bactris gasipaes''). Cabécar farmers generally select a plot roughly one
hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...
in size in either alluvial valleys or on steep upland slopes where basic grains like rice ('' Oryza sativa'') and maize (''
Zea mays Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout Poaceae, grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago ...
'') are cultivated with beans ('' Phaseolus vulgaris'') and rotated with alternating
fallow Fallow is a farming technique in which arable land is left without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles. The goal of fallowing is to allow the land to recover and store Organic compound, organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting ...
(rest) periods. It is not uncommon for one Cabécar household to work two or three plots, rotating cultivated crops both within and among them. Once a plot has yielded two or three grain harvests, it is left fallow for as long as twelve years to regain its fertility. During this lapse, secondary growth covers the plot, and the Cabécar harvest non-cultivated species to supplement their dietary, medicinal, and material needs.


Plantain cultivation

Cultivation of the exotic plantain hybrid ( ''Musa x paradisiaca'') in both monoculture and
polyculture In agriculture, polyculture is the practice of growing more than one crop species together in the same place at the same time, in contrast to monoculture, which had become the dominant approach in developed countries by 1950. Traditional example ...
plots has become increasingly prevalent in Cabécar communities and has changed the structure of their traditional tropical home gardens. Cabécar households now rely on plantains for domestic consumption and as a cash economy to generate monetary income. Home gardens that have incorporated plantains tend to exhibit less plant diversity and lower density, and some Cabécar farmers have abandoned traditional indigenous agroecosystems in favor of larger plantain monoculture plots.


Social organization


Villages

Cabécar villages have houses and other structures are not nucleated around a central location. Instead, dwellings are often dispersed, sometimes a few kilometers apart. The notion of densely nucleated towns or villages was introduced in the region by the Spanish in the colonial era to coerce Talamancan indigenous groups into concentrated settlements, but these attempts were met with resistance. Stone observes that the word for ‘town’ or ‘city’ does not even exist in Bribri or Cabécar languages; instead ‘city’ is represented in Bribri as ‘great place or extension’ and in Cabécar as ‘place of many houses’. Most Cabécar and Bribri villages reflect patterns of dispersed settlement today, an indicator of the geographic isolation of the Talamanca region and of the limited contact these indigenous groups had with the Spanish.


Clans

Cabécar
social organization In sociology, a social organization is a pattern of relationships between and among individuals and groups. Characteristics of social organization can include qualities such as sexual composition, spatiotemporal cohesion, leadership, struc ...
is predicated on matrilineal clans in which the mother is the head of household. Matrimonial norms restrict an individual from marrying a relative within the blood group related to the individual's mother. On the father's side, marriages are not prohibited beyond the father's sisters and first cousins. Each matrilineal clan controls marriage possibilities, regulates
land tenure In Common law#History, common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land "owned" by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement betw ...
, and determines property inheritance for its members. Private land tenure, like the nucleated village system, was foreign to the Cabécar before contact with the Spanish. Each clan traditionally has maintained its own designated area for the subsistence activities of its members. Personal property is inherited or passed on to clan relatives after the death of an individual. When a man dies, his personal effects can be inherited by his siblings, unless his mother is still alive, in which case she would assume possession. When she passes away, the belongings are inherited by whomever she designated as the subsequent owner. Contact with non-indigenous peoples has exposed the Cabécar to Western forms of land tenure based on private ownership. Some Cabécar villages have begun to recognize land as property, evident in the construction of fences that demarcate boundaries around agricultural plots or household gardens, but traditional Cabécar land tenure regimes in which land is controlled communally by the matrilineal clan still persist.


Persecution

The tribe's sovereignty of their land is being threatened by Latino farmers who have killed chiefs and disarmed tribals in the 21st century.


See also

* Talamancan mythology * Sibú, the primary deity of the Cabécar mythology * Indigenous peoples of Costa Rica *
Indigenous peoples of the Americas In the Americas, Indigenous peoples comprise the two continents' pre-Columbian inhabitants, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with them in the 15th century, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with the pre-Columbian population of ...
* Isthmo-Colombian Area * Chibchan languages * Bribri people * Cordillera de Talamanca


References


Further reading

* Berger, Marcos Guevara and Rubén Chacón Castro (1992). ''Territorios en Costa Rica: Orígenes, Situación Actual y Perspectivas''. San José, Costa Rica: García Hermanos S.A. Print. * Constenla, Adolfo (1991). ''Las Lenguas del Area Intermedia''. San José, Costa Rica: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica. Print. * García-Serrano, Carlos Ramos and Juan Pablo Del Monte (2004). "The Use of Tropical Forest (Agroecosystems and Wild Plant Harvesting) as a Source of Food in the Bribri and Cabecar Cultures in the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica." ''Economic Botany'', Vol. 58, No. 1: 58–71. Print. * Hoopes, John W. (2005). "The Emergence of Social Complexity in the Chibchan World of Southern Central America and Northern Colombia, AD 300–600." ''Journal of Archaeological Research,'' Vol. 13, No. 1: 1-88. Print. * Quesada, Diego J. (2007). ''The Chibchan Languages''. Cartago, Costa Rica: Editorial Tecnológica de Costa Rica. Print. * Stone, Doris (1962). ''The Talamancan Tribes of Costa Rica''. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. XLIII, No. 2. Print. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cabecar people Indigenous peoples in Costa Rica