Viqueque (, ) is the largest of the
municipalities
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality' ...
(formerly districts) of
East Timor
Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the coastal exclave of Oecusse in the island's northwest, and ...
. It has a population of 77,402 (Census 2010) and an area of 1,877 km
2. The capital of the municipality is also named
Viqueque.
Etymology
The word ''Viqueque'' is a Portuguese approximation of the local
Tetun-Terik word ''Vikeke'' (or ''Wekeke''), which has been translated as both 'eroding water' and 'water' (''we'') 'bracelet' (''keke'').
The background to the latter translation is that a warrior leader, Luka, is said once to have been on a campaign with his warriors against the Wehali people, who had entered Luka's lands via Suai, Same, and Manatuto. During the campaign, he and the warriors came upon a
spring guarded by an old woman. After the woman had given the warriors the water they had asked for, they cut off her arm, on which she had been wearing a bracelet. They then took the arm and bracelet to their king, Nai Lu Leki, who hung the arm in a tree. He also kept the bracelet and declared it sacred, as ''We Keke''.
According to another tradition, a queen of the kingdom of Luka gave a bracelet to Viqueque as an heirloom, and today the municipality is named after it.
Geography
Viqueque is on the south coast of
Timor
Timor (, , ) is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...
, on the
Timor Sea
The Timor Sea (, , or ) is a relatively shallow sea in the Indian Ocean bounded to the north by the island of Timor with Timor-Leste to the north, Indonesia to the northwest, Arafura Sea to the east, and to the south by Australia. The Sunda Tr ...
. It borders the municipalities of
Baucau to the north,
Lautém to the east, and
Manatuto
Manatuto is a city in Manatuto Municipality, East Timor.
Manatuto Vila has 3,692 inhabitants (Census 2015) and is capital of the subdistrict and district Manatuto. It is on the north coast of Timor, (about as the crow flies) east of Dili
...
to the west. The borders of the then district were the same in colonial times.
On the south coast, the people report both myths and possible occurrences of crocodiles.
History
According to a list prepared by ,
governor of the colony of Portuguese Timor from 1859 to 1863, Viqueque was one of 47 kingdoms in that colony at the time.
Administrative posts
The municipality's administrative posts (formerly sub-districts) are:
*
Lacluta
*
Ossu
*
Uato-Lari (which was known in
Portuguese Timor as Leça, and, in Tetum, is spelled Watulari)
*
Uatucarbau (spelled Watucarbau, in Tetum)
*
Viqueque
The administrative posts are divided into 35 sucos ("villages") in total.
Demographics
Viqueque is a homeland of the
Malayo-Polynesian language
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeast ...
Tetum. In East Timor it is co-official with
Portuguese. In the east part of the municipality live speakers of the
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a ...
Makasae.
References
Notes
Bibliography
*
*
*
External links
* – official site (in Tetum with some content in English)
* – information page on
Ministry of State Administration site
{{Authority control
Municipalities of Timor-Leste