Guaribes

The Guaribes, also called Guarives or Cuaribes, were a Cariban-speaking people of the Venezuelan llanos whose villages lay along the middle and lower Guaribe River and across the Unare basin, in what became the states of Guárico and Anzoátegui. They gave their name to the later town of San José de Guaribe.

The conquistador Juan de Urpín, campaigning along the Unare, was the first Spaniard to clash with them and founded a settlement on their lands. The Guaribes kept their reputation for ferocity throughout the seventeenth century: when Franciscan missionaries attempted to reduce them, they destroyed the mission and in 1679 killed two of the friars.

Colonial sources describe them as indomitable and even accuse them of cannibalism, while finds of their pre-Hispanic pottery in the Guaribe valley attest to settled village life long before the European arrival.