Güicán de la Sierra, also known as Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Güicán, is a town and municipality in the

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 ...

n Department of Boyacá. It is close to the national natural park El Cocuy National Park. As of the year 2020, it has a total population of 6,426.

Etymology

The municipality was named after Güicán tribe, an indigenous people who inhabited this region and is related to the

U'wa people The U'wa are an indigenous people living in the cloud forests of northeastern Colombia. Historically, the U'wa numbered as many as 20,000, scattered over a homeland that extended across the Venezuela-Colombia border. Some 7-8,000 U'wa are alive to ...

. The name Güicán means "in the fence of the wife" in the indigenous language.

History

The conquistador of this territory was

Hernán Pérez de Quesada Hernán Pérez de Quesada, sometimes spelled as Quezada, (c. 1515 – 1544) was a Spanish conquistador. Second in command of the army of his elder brother, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Hernán was part of the first European expedition towards ...

, who arrived with his troops in search of gold. The aborigines withdrew behind the Sierra Nevada to escape from the Spanish. The municipality was founded by a

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

friar Miguel Blasco on February 26,

1756 Events January–March * January 16 – The Anglo-Prussian alliance (1756)#Treaty, Treaty of Westminster is signed between Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Prussia, guaranteeing the neutrality of the Electorate of Hanover, c ...

Geography

The municipality borders

Chiscas Chiscas is a town and municipality in the Colombian Department of Boyacá, part of the subregion of the Gutiérrez Province. Climate Chiscas has a subtropical highland climate (Köppen: ''Cfb'') with frequent rain and consistently mild tempe ...

and

Cubará Cubará is a town and municipality in Boyacá Department, Colombia also referred to as the Boyacá Frontier District for sharing an international border with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Climate Cubará has a very wet tropical rainforest ...

on the north,

Fortul Fortul is one of the seven municipalities of the Colombian department of Arauca. It limits to the north with Saravena; to the south with Tame; to the east with Arauquita and to the west with Güicán. It was founded on January 7, 1920. According ...

and

Saravena Saravena is a city and municipality in Arauca Department, Colombia. It is located south of Colombia's border with Venezuela. The municipality, with a population of 55,554, has had FARC and ELN activity as well as a Colombian military presence ne ...

on the east,

Tame Tame may refer to: *Taming, the act of training wild animals * River Tame, Greater Manchester *River Tame, West Midlands and the Tame Valley * Tame, Arauca, a Colombian town and municipality * "Tame" (song), a song by the Pixies from their 1989 a ...

and El Cocuy on the south, as well as Panqueba and El Espino on the west. Its average elevation is at 3,492 meters above the sea level.

Climate

Güicán has a

Tundra Climate The tundra climate is a polar climate sub-type located in high latitudes and high mountains. It is classified as ET according to the Köppen climate classification. It is a climate which at least one month has an average temperature high enough ...

(ET). It receives the most amount of rainfall in April, with 244 mm of average precipitation; and the least in January, with 83 mm of average precipitation.

Galleries

File:Rio Concavo Guican.JPG, Río Cóncavo as it passes through Güicán. File:Guican Rural.JPG, View of the rural sector of Güicán. File:ALTAR IGLESIA DE GUCAN - panoramio.jpg, Main altar of the Sanctuary of the Morenita Virgin File:NORMAL SUPERIOR NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL ROSARIO - GÜICÁN.JPG, Old physical plant of the ENS Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Güicán.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guican Municipalities of Boyacá Department