Pasca

Pasca lies in a narrow valley on the western slope of the Eastern Cordillera, near the high páramos of Sumapaz. Before Spanish rule, the district included the Indigenous communities of Pasca and Chiayzaque, in a region associated with the Sutagao and Fusagasugá peoples. Its position brought the highlands of the Bogotá plain into contact with the warmer country farther south. Colonial authorities grouped Pasca and Chiayzaque together in an Indigenous resguardo by the end of the sixteenth century. A church was built for the two communities in 1579 and replaced in 1604 on the orders of the official Luis Enríquez. The shared church became a focus for the colonial settlement, while the resguardo preserved a defined territory for its Indigenous inhabitants.