Yukpa

The Yukpa are an Indigenous people of the Serranía del Perijá, straddling Colombia and Venezuela, whose older territory ran from the Cesar River valley to Lake Maracaibo. Their language belongs to the northern branch of the Cariban family. After the Spanish founded Valledupar in 1550, colonists called them Motilones, meaning shaved heads, a name also applied to the neighbouring Barí.

Yukpa society was decentralized: each independent band, led by a kapeta or chief, comprised a few extended families in a hilltop settlement, with a tomaira directing ceremonies and a tuano serving as healer and shaman.

They grew maize, manioc and plantains by slash-and-burn cultivation, supplemented by hunting, fishing and gathering. Away from the main Spanish routes, they kept their language and social organization largely intact through the colonial centuries.