Wayuu Culture

WAYUU CULTURE

Culture Wayuu or community is upholding the tradition of moral, spiritual and ethical values. These are transmitted from generation to generation by their elders. All cultural realities have a formalized symbolic content. Each village has a certain way of formalizing the reality that is expressed in language, way to dress and religion.

WAYUU FAMILY

The Wayuu society has a complex structure because it has 30 different clans each with its own territory and its own totem animal. There are still the traditional authorities, and there is a specific form of administering justice, the figures of the putchipu who are carriers of the word and also to help resolve conflicts between clans. Within the extended family, the ultimate authority rests with the maternal uncle, who has to do on all family and domestic problems. Within the core family, the children are led virtually by the brother of their mother and not by the biological father himself. Women have an important role that can be said is to be the host and organizer of the clan and are politically active in their society, they are also very active and independent

HABITS 

MARRIAGE: Marriage is always contracted with a person from another uterine lineage, with the particularity that implies, by the man's parents, the dowry to the parents of the woman. The Wayuu occasionally practice polygamy, which is a prestigious setting. Within the Wayuu society, women play an important social role. 

RITES: The Wayuu have male and female shamans, who use traditional techniques for healing: singing with maraca, use tobacco, suction of pathogens, etc.

FUNERAL-RITES: The bones of the deceased are placed in an urn and women should bathe the deceased. Two burials are conducted.

WAYUU HOUSING 

The house is built with mud and roofed yotojoro. The same wood is used to make doors, windows, trolleys and benches among. Almost always the kitchen is built next to the house, ie all the materials can be found around the ranch.

THE GUAJIRA LAW

In the Guajira there are no courts, no judges, no prisons, only the Guajira law. Everything is done orally, especially in contracts of sale, exchange, personal works, for the Wayuu people there is no civil or criminal liability, it’s understood that there is a compensation. If there are dead people or bloodshed this should be paid in cattle or money, otherwise there will be deaths and bloodshed between the families involved.