Diaguita

The Diaguita people are a group of South American Indigenous people native to the Chilean Norte Chico and the Argentine Northwest. Western or Chilean Diaguitas lived mainly in the Transverse Valleys that incise semi-arid mountains. Eastern or Argentine Diaguitas lived in the provinces of La Rioja and Catamarca and part of the provinces of Salta, San Juan and Tucumán. The term Diaguita was first applied to peoples and archaeological cultures by Ricardo E. Latcham in the early 20th century.

Ancient Diaguitas were not a unified people; the language or dialects used by them seems to have varied from valley to valley and they were politically fragmented into several chiefdoms. Coastal and inland Chilean Diaguitas traded, as evidenced by the archaeological findings of mollusc shells in the upper courses of Andean valleys.

According to the 2022 census, 90,794 people in Argentina self-identify as Diaguita or Diaguita-Cacano. In Chile, Diaguitas are the third-most populous Indigenous ethnicity after the Aymara and the Mapuche, numbering 153,231 in 2024. The Diaguitas have been recognised as an Indigenous people by the Chilean state since 2006.