San José de Suaita is a former industrial village (mill town) located about 200 km north of Bogotá in the Department of Santander, Colombia. It became a corregimiento in 1924, by decision of the local council.
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There are 1,212 residents (323 urban, and 989 rural). There are 280 households, of which 40.2% have children under 18, 59.8% are single-person, and 9.2% include a person over the age of 65. The average family size is 4.35. San José de Suaita is transforming from an industrial town to an agricultural one. There are very few jobs remaining, and many people are leaving for larger cities.
San José de Suaita was a plot of land given to the bourgeois Caballero family, a political family which claimed several properties in the area, including Silvania and Tipacoque. The other properties had been owned by the Caballeros since colonial times, while San José de Suaita was granted to them more recently. Alfonso López Michelsen, former president of Colombia, detailed some of the history of the town in his book Pending Words.[1]
San José de Suaita has a private wildlife sanctuary containing 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of hardwoods including oak.