Fosca is a municipality and town of

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 ...

in the Eastern Province, part of the department of Cundinamarca. It is located in the

Ubaque Ubaque is a municipality and town of Colombia in the Eastern Province of the department of Cundinamarca. Ubaque borders the municipalities Choachí in the north, Fómeque in the east, Cáqueza and Chipaque in the south and in the west is the ...

Valley with the urban centre at a distance of from the capital

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...

at an altitude of . Fosca borders

Cáqueza Cáqueza () is a municipality and town of Colombia in the department of Cundinamarca. The town, located on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, is from the capital Bogotá. The municipality borders Fosca in the south, Ubaque in the north, Une and Chi ...

and Une in the north,

Quetame Quetame is a municipality and town of Colombia in the Eastern Province, part of the department of Cundinamarca. The urban centre of Quetame is located at from the capital Bogotá at an altitude of . The municipality borders Fómeque in the nort ...

in the east,

Guayabetal Guayabetal is a Colombian municipality in the department of Cundinamarca, located in Eastern Province,65 kilometers southeast of Bogotá. History Guayabetal was formed on October 12, 1941, in the place it currently occupies during the 1920s a ...

in the south and

Gutiérrez Gutiérrez (, , ) is a Spanish patronymic surname of Germanic origin, meaning "son of Gutier/Gutierre". '' Gutierre'' is a form of ''Gualtierre'', the Spanish form of Walter. Gutiérrez is the Spanish form of the English surnames Walters, Watkins, ...

in the west.Official website Fosca
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History

In the time before the

Spanish conquest The Spanish Empire, sometimes referred to as the Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy, was a colonial empire that existed between 1492 and 1976. In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery. It ...

, Fosca was inhabited by the Mau or Maco and Guaypi or Buchipa indigenous tribe. The

Muisca The Muisca (also called the Chibcha) are indigenous peoples in Colombia and were a Pre-Columbian culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Muisca spe ...

, living north from the area, had a

fortification A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Lati ...

of guecha warriors stationed in Fosca to defend themselves from the

Guayupe people The Guayupe are an Arawakan languages, Arawak-speakingDescription Guayupe

who inhabited the region south of Fosca.Rodríguez Montes, 2002, p.1639 About the discovery and foundation of Fosca three different versions are given;

Nikolaus Federmann Nikolaus Federmann (, ) (c. 1505, Ulm – February 1542, Valladolid) was a German adventurer and conquistador in what is modern-day Venezuela and Colombia. He is a significant figure in the history of Klein-Venedig (1528–1546), the concessio ...

would have founded the town on September 1, 1538, captain Pedro de Limpias reached and discovered Fosca on his expedition from the

Llanos Orientales The Llanos (Spanish ''Los Llanos'', "The Plains"; ) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the tropical and subtropical grasslands, sa ...

on February 5, 1538, or Juan de Valcárcel passed through the area and moved the town centre to a different location on February 5, 1627.

Economy

The economy of Fosca is concentrated around

agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

and

livestock Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...

farming. Main agricultural products cultivated are

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

potato The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...

es,

coffee Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially a ...

arracacha ''Arracacia xanthorrhiza'' is a root vegetable that originates in the Andes, whose starchy taproot is a popular food item across South America where it is a major commercial crop. Common names Being a South American plant, its most common names ...

bean A bean is the seed of some plants in the legume family (Fabaceae) used as a vegetable for human consumption or animal feed. The seeds are often preserved through drying (a ''pulse''), but fresh beans are also sold. Dried beans are traditi ...

s and

pea Pea (''pisum'' in Latin) is a pulse or fodder crop, but the word often refers to the seed or sometimes the pod of this flowering plant species. Peas are eaten as a vegetable. Carl Linnaeus gave the species the scientific name ''Pisum sativum' ...

References

Bibliography

* {{Municipalities cundinamarca department Municipalities of Cundinamarca Department Populated places established in 1636 1636 establishments in the Spanish Empire Populated places of the Muisca Confederation