Gachetá, Cundinamarca 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 ...

, capital of the

Guavio Province The Guavio Province () is one of the 15 provinces in the Cundinamarca department, Colombia. Guavio borders the Capital District of Bogotá and the Central Savanna Province to the west, to the north the Almeidas Province, to the east the Boyac� ...

, part of the department of Cundinamarca. The urban centre of Gachetá is situated at an altitude of in the

Eastern Ranges The Eastern Ranges is an Australian rules football team that currently competes in the Talent League, the Victorian statewide under-18s competition. History Inaugural playing squad (1992) Honours *Premiers (2): 2002, 2013 *Runners-up (6): 199 ...

of the Colombian

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

. The municipality borders

Machetá Machetá is a municipality and town of Colombia in Almeidas Province of the department of Cundinamarca. Machetá is situated on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense at from the capital Bogotá and from Tunja. It borders Tibiritá and Manta in the eas ...

and

Manta Manta or mantas may refer to: * Manta ray, large fish belonging to the genus ''Mobula'' Arts and entertainment App & Website * Manta (platform), a Korean digital comics provider Fictional entities * Manta (comics), a character in American Marve ...

in the north, the department of Boyacá and

Ubalá Ubalá is a municipality and town of Colombia in the department of Cundinamarca. It is located in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes. It is the only municipality of Cundinamarca that is split in two parts. Climate Etymology In the C ...

in the east, Gama and Junín in the south and Guatavita in the west.Official website Gachetá

Etymology

The name Gachetá comes from Muysccubun and means "behind our farmfields".

History

Gachetá 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 ...

was inhabited by 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 ...

, organised in their loose

Muisca Confederation The Muisca Confederation was a loose confederation of different Muisca rulers (''zaques'', ''zipas'', ''iraca'', and ''tundama'') in the central Andes, Andean highlands of what is today Colombia before the Spanish conquest of the Americas, Spanis ...

. Gachetá was part of the domains of the ''

cacique A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (; ; feminine form: ), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European cont ...

'' of Guatavita. Modern Gachetá was founded on April 2, 1593, by Miguel de Ibarra.

Economy

Main economical activity of Gachetá is agriculture, with main products

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 ...

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 ...

yuca ''Manihot esculenta'', commonly called cassava, manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes. Although a perennia ...

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 ...

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,

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 ...

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

and

blackberries BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

cultivated.

Climate

Gallery

File:Gacheta.JPG, Central square File:Iglesia de Gacheta Cundinamarca.jpg, Church File:Guaviio.JPG, Guavio Reservoir

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gacheta Municipalities of Cundinamarca Department Populated places established in 1593 1593 establishments in the Spanish Empire