The silence of the Kogi in front of tourists

•This study adopts an ethnographical approach to explain silence in front of tourists.•Silence is analyzed to interpret the relation between tourists and local community.•This study explores indigenous cosmology to interpret the treatment of outsiders.•This study focuses on tourist destinations as scenes of social contradictions.

This article sets out to explain the silent behavior of the indigenous Kogi people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta when in front of tourists. It was found that silence corresponds to indigenous cosmology, to Kogi behavioral protocol when faced with outsiders, and to a defense strategy in front of tourists. Understanding the interactions between tourists and indigenous peoples has practical implications for designing cultural policies in these territories. The work is original in its use of ethnography in place of quantitative methods for studying the factors that determine the behavior of the residents in front of tourists. Equally it constitutes a contribution to the few studies that exist on silence as a rhetorical strategy in power relations.