Uru

The Uru are an ancient lacustrine people of the Collao plateau, scattered across the lakes and rivers of what is now Bolivia and Peru, from Lake Titicaca and the Desaguadero to Lakes Poopó and Coipasa. Calling themselves men of the water, they believed they owned the lake; the name uru was given by their Aymara neighbours.

They fished and hunted birds, built movable floating islands and reed boats from totora reeds, and kept fields and llama herds beyond the reed beds.

Older than Aymara and Quechua polities, they were subdued by the Inca Empire, which taxed them and often reduced them to servitude. Under Inca and later Spanish pressure most groups abandoned the Uru tongue for Aymara by the early sixteenth century; only the Chipaya language survived. From 1722 the Uru of Lake Poopó waged a long legal and territorial struggle against neighbouring Aymara communities.