Qualla: San Vicente del Caguán

San Vicente del Caguán: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Claudia2709, CC BY-SA 3.0. For four years, this cattle town on the Caguán River held the attention of the world. Between 1998 and 2002, San Vicente del Caguán sat at the heart of the demilitarized zone - a piece of Colombia the size of Switzerland that the government had ceded to the FARC guerrillas as the price of talking peace. When the talks collapsed, the cameras left. The people who had lived through the experiment stayed. Today, sixty-eight thousand of them still do.

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Image: Claudia2709 | CC BY-SA 3.0

San Vicente del Caguán: Where the Andes End

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Seamless20, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Caguán basin lies at the threshold where the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes breaks apart into the Amazon lowlands. San Vicente itself sits at roughly two degrees north of the equator, in the basin shared by the Caguán and Yarí rivers, 151 kilometers northeast of the departme...

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Image: Seamless20 | CC BY-SA 4.0

San Vicente del Caguán: Cattle, Axes, and Exotic Fruit

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jukahogo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The economy runs on livestock, aquaculture, and fruits with names most Colombians outside the region have never heard: arazá, cocona, cupoazú, maraco. In the Parque de los Fundadores stands the Monument to the Colonizers, an ax-shaped sculpture cast in ferro-concrete by Fabio Sep...

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Image: Jukahogo | CC BY-SA 4.0

San Vicente del Caguán: The Zone

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jukahogo, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 7 November 1998, President Andrés Pastrana withdrew the Colombian military from a zone of roughly 42,000 square kilometers - including San Vicente - to begin peace negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. San Vicente became, in effect, the negotiating capi...

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Image: Jukahogo | CC BY-SA 4.0

San Vicente del Caguán: Waterfalls and Canyons

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jukahogo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Outside the urban area the land turns wild. The Salto de la Danta drops eighty meters in a series of falls, collecting in a deep pool where catfish hunt. Salto de San Venancio falls forty meters through heliconias and bromeliads where primates move in the upper canopy. The Pato R...

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Image: Jukahogo | CC BY-SA 4.0

San Vicente del Caguán: Three National Parks

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jukahogo, CC BY-SA 4.0. San Vicente's municipal jurisdiction touches three of Colombia's most significant protected areas. The Cordillera de los Picachos National Natural Park holds the tropical mountain ecosystems of the Pato River basin, home to páramo tapirs and the torrent duck. Sierra de la Macaren...

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Image: Jukahogo | CC BY-SA 4.0