ABSTRACT
The Antioqueno country" includes much more than the old Province of Antioquia, within which lives only half of the four million Colombians who call themselves Antioquenos. The rural society of Antioquia is composed of small landholders and homesteaders and is in sharp contrast to most of latifundian Latin America. The quest for gold was the immediate cause of the sixteenth-century Spanish settlement of the Province of Antioquia. In 1720, when the Crown ordered all foreigners expelled from the colonies, only two were found in the Province of Antioquia, both Italians. Sonson and Abejorral in the south, and, later, Fredoma to the west, became general headquarters for pioneers advancing into the present Caldas and Tolima and westward across the Río Cauca into the Occidente of Antioquia. The heart of the settlement area is bisected by a belt of darker-skinned peoples living in the hot lowlands along the Cauca, which cuts a furrow through the western Colombian highlands.
