The word peasant or goajiro, refers to the original peasants of Cuba or Puerto Rico who fought in the Spanish-American War in 1898. However, it is a term that can have other meanings.
The indigenous population that lives mainly on the La Guajira peninsula, located in the Caribbean Sea, between the territories of Colombia and Venezuela, is called guajiro. This ethnic group is also known as Wayú, part of the Arawak family. Guajiro is also called a parish in the southwest of the Falcón state in Venezuela.
It is also applied as a name for the town of La Guajira, located in Colombia; of the inhabitants of the province of Guadajoz in southern Spain; and those from the La Guajira peninsula in general are called that.
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Guajiro is what is related to any of the aforementioned geographical locations or what is related to the ethnic group of the Guajiros. In addition, the word guajiro is used as a synonym for peasant in certain areas of the United States and the Caribbean, as an extension of the Cuban and Puerto Rican peasants of the late nineteenth century..
In its meaning of Caribbean peasant, the word guajiro comes from a deformation of English war hero, which translates to war hero.
In other meanings, relative to the La Guajira peninsula or to the aboriginal people that inhabit this territory and other parts of Venezuela and Colombia, the word comes from wahiro, Arawak word and from the Wayú language that means "lord".
At the end of the 19th century, the great European powers divided up the colonized territories, including the Caribbean Antilles..
Cuba and Puerto Rico were in turn coveted territories by the United States, both for their strategic geographic location and for their economic value as farmland..
In 1898 a warlike conflict broke out between the Spanish crown and the inhabitants of Cuba and Puerto Rico, mostly peasants, who aspired to their independence. The US Army intervened in this confrontation from the beginning.
The war lasted three months and a few days, and the army of peasants or guajiros supported by the United States was the winner. Since those events, in part of the United States and other parts of the Caribbean, peasants are called guajiros.
The Guajiro or Wayú people are an offshoot of the Arawaks. They reside mainly in the La Guajira peninsula and in areas near the coast of Colombia and Venezuela. They are the largest indigenous population in both countries, representing 11 or 12% of the total population of the state of Zulia in Venezuela..
Their language is Wayuunaiki and their predominant economic activities are herding and handicrafts. Socially they are organized into clans and there are currently more than 30 clans of guajiros. They call themselves guajiros and everything related to their culture and customs is called in the same way.
The word guajiro is also used in the phrase “guajiro dream”, which is used in the context of a fanciful or unrealizable expectation. It is an expression that is used mainly in Mexico and the Spanish-speaking region of the United States.
- Marta is wearing a guajiro bag.
- Guajiros tend to enter US territory undocumented.
- When Luis traveled to Colombia, he became friends with a Guajira girl.
- Alexander is called a guajiro by his companions, since in Cuba he worked in the fields.
- Paula's boyfriend is guajiro, his whole family is in Falcón.
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