Who are the Maleku people?
A story of survival against the odds
Costa Rica used to be the home for dozens of different indigenous groups and tribes but Spanish colonization meant the demise of the vast majority. Most of them were either driven from their land by farmers or killed by diseases, and it is believed that today they make up only 2.4 % of the Costa Rican population.
The Maleku tribe is the smallest of the few surviving groups, and the only one in the Zona Norte of the country. It was the last indigenous tribe to encounter the Spanish invaders reportedly back in 1778. This late confrontation is likely to have helped the Malekus escape the effects from the early wave of infectious diseases and genocide and as the Malekus were also fierce defenders of their territory against soldiers and missionaries they held their own deep into the 19th century.
However, Nicaraguan rubber merchants – the “huleros” - found vast resources in the dense forests where the Malekus lived and they eventually invaded the territory starting in 1868 with dire consequences for the lives of the Malekus. A systematic ethnic crime began when the huleros started capturing mostly women and children and sending them north to work as slaves. Meanwhile the male Malekus who took up the fight were killed – it is estimated that the Maleku population of roughly 2,000 individuals in mid 19th century was decimated to just a couple of hundred over the next half century.
The Maleku community today can count 600+ individuals living in the Indigenous reserve around the town of San Rafael de Guatuso. But they are a very fragile group and exposed to the Hispanic culture as they really only control about 20% of their own territory. Other Costa Ricans have bought into their lands, and deforestation has been detrimental to the Malekus’ chances of preserving their traditional way of life – living off the forest and its resources in a balanced way.
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