Chorotega

The Chorotega, also called the Mangue, are an Oto-Manguean-speaking people who at Spanish contact in the sixteenth century occupied the Pacific lowlands of Nicaragua and Honduras and north-western Costa Rica. Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests their ancestors split from the Chiapanec and moved south out of central Mexico around the seventh century, reaching the Rivas region of Nicaragua by about 800, where Papagayo polychrome ceramics mark their arrival; around 1200 the incoming Nicarao displaced them onto the Nicoya Peninsula.

Their towns were laid out around central plazas with temples and markets, and councils of elders appointed provincial rulers in a kind of elective monarchy. They made the painted Nicoya polychrome ware and farmed maize, cotton and tobacco.

After the Spanish conquest of the sixteenth century many Chorotega were enslaved and shipped to Panama and Callao in Peru, and their communities declined under colonial rule.