Sillero

The silleros, cargueros or silleteros (also called saddle-men) were the porters used to carry people and their belongings through routes impossible by horse carriage.

[6] Another traveler who described the practice was Captain Charles Cochrane of the British Navy, who criticized the infrastructure of Colombia and, as Humboldt did, refused to mount silleros.

He wrote that "I have been told that the Spaniards and the natives mount these chairmen with as much sang froid as if they were getting on the back of mules, and some brutal wretches have not hesitated to spur the flanks of these poor unfortunate men when they fancied they were not going fast enough".

[7] Cochrane also noted that the 300 silleros of Ibagué rarely lived past the age of 40 and that a leading cause of death was the bursting of a blood vessel or pulmonary problems.

[8] According to nineteenth-century anecdotes, sometimes, when hired by particularly demanding or demeaning masters, the Indian porters would tire from the heavy burdens put upon them and eventually, would throw their riders into the abyss and escape into the forest.