The Piapoco are an Arawakan-speaking Indigenous people found in eastern Colombia, including areas connected to Guainía, Vichada, and the wider Orinoco-Amazon region. Their communities are shaped by rivers, savannas, gallery forests, gardens, fishing, hunting, and craft traditions.
The Piapoco live in transition landscapes. These are places where rainforest, river, and savanna meet. Their knowledge reflects adaptation to seasonal movement, changing waters, fish migrations, forest foods, and open-land ecosystems.
Historically, Piapoco communities have faced colonization, missions, cattle expansion, displacement, and outside economic pressures. Yet they continue to maintain identity through language, family networks, community authority, and ecological knowledge.
For Dulce Amazónica, the Piapoco help correct the stereotype that Amazonian peoples all live in the same kind of jungle environment. The Amazon world is diverse, and its peoples have developed different ways of living with water, forest, savanna, and seasonal change.
One of Many Voices
This community is one of many Indigenous peoples whose presence, knowledge, and artisanías are represented through Dulce Amazónica in Guatapé, Colombia. When you visit, you meet an ambassador from one of our partner communities in person.