History
Although some sources argue that the Indian Americans that populated most of the Paisa Region were extinguished through European diseases and fights against the Spaniard conquerors, it is not fully demonstrated.

Francisco César made an expedition in 1537 from Urabá to the Cauca River to the lands of Dabeiba, but his troops were rejected by the Nutibaras. In 1540 Marshall Jorge Robledo founded Cartago. In 1541 he founded Arma in what is today the south of Antioquia, near today Aguadas and Santa Fe de Antioquia, at the banks of the Cauca River. This last town would become the provincial capital in 1813.

The first colonial governor was Don Gaspar de Rodas (1518–1607).
The mountains of Antioquia attracted the Spaniards for its gold and lands for cattle, The first towns were located near gold mines and rivers. Although that, the region did not attract a population interested in create important centers for the Spanish civilization like Cartagena de Indias, Popayán or Bogotá and it remains almost isolated from the rest of the colony. This fact is the main element of the cultural identity of the Paisas within the Colombian national context.
The Paisas are a people who inhabit a region over the northwest Colombia in the Andes.[1]

The region is formed by the departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío. Some regions of Valle del Cauca Department (north) and Tolima Department (west) belong to the cultural identity of paisas. The main cities are Medellín, Pereira, Manizales and Armenia.

The name of Paisa derives from the Spanish apocope of Paisano (one from the same country), although they are also known as "Antioqueños" (those from the old Antioquia that included the other Paisa provinces and that was a single administrative body until the creation of the Caldas State in 1905.) Although many refer to Paisas as an ethnic group (raza antioqueña or raza paisa), they are a part of the Colombians and Latin American peoples.