The Cubeo are an ethnic group of the
Vaupés Department (
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
). Cubeo is a generic name that is used in local
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas
**Spanish cuisine
**Spanish history
**Spanish culture
...
and appears in the literature in reference to a social and linguistic group. Although the term does not have any meaning in
their language, the Cubeo refer to themselves by that name in interactions with others. There is no common native name, aside from referring to themselves as "people" (''pâmiwâ'') or, more precisely, "my people" (''jiwa''). An individual's social identification is based on his or her adscription to a mythical clan forebear whose name is used as an eponym.
Location
The Cubeo live in the area of the
Vaupés Department
Vaupés () is a departments of Colombia, department of southeastern Colombia in the Amazon rainforest, jungle covered Amazonía Region. It is located in the southeast part of the country, bordering Brazil to the east, the department of Amazonas ...
in Colombia, near the center of the Northwestern Cultural Area of the Amazon. Their villages are distributed along the median course of the capital
Mitú
Mitú () is the capital town of the department of Vaupés in Colombia. It is a small town located in South eastern Colombia in the Amazon Basin. Founded in 1936, Mitú lies next to the Vaupés River at 180 meters above sea level. It is where th ...
and, above all, alongside its affluents the
Cuduyari and
Querary rivers.
Population
Reports of the population vary between 3,000 and 5,000 individuals. The national census of 1985 established the number of inhabitants at 4,368.
Language
The
language of the Cubeo has been classified as belonging to Eastern Tukano. Recently, however, a reclassification has been suggested to Middle Tukano, a subdivision of a possible Proto-Tukano. This language is one of the rare
OVS languages in the world.
Wals.info
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Notes
References
*Goldman, Irving (1963) ''The Cubeo. Indians of the Northwest Amazon''. Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
*Zambrano S., marco Aurelio (1975) ''Los Cubeo. Algunos aspectos de la cultura''. Bogotá: Universidad de Los Andes.
See also
*Indigenous peoples in Colombia
Indigenous Colombians (), also known as Native Colombians (), are the ethnic groups who have inhabited Colombia before the Spanish colonization of Colombia, in the early 16th century.
Estimates on the percentage of Colombians who are indigenou ...
*Tucanoan languages
Tucanoan (also Tukanoan, Tukánoan) is a language family of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.
Language contact
Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Arutani language, Arutani, Paez language, Paez, Sape language, ...
Indigenous peoples of the Amazon
Indigenous peoples in Colombia
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