Choco

Choco, or Chocoan, is the small language family of the Pacific lowlands of western Colombia and eastern Panama, centred on the Atrato and San Juan river basins of the Chocó. In 1337 its two living branches were already taking shape: the Emberá continuum of riverine forest villages, whose name ẽberá means person or human being, and Wounaan on the lower waterways. The family has never been convincingly linked to any other.

Spanish entradas of the 1500s found the flooded, densely forested coast hard to hold, and Emberá groups long kept their autonomy by retreating upriver.

From the late 1700s several Emberá bands moved north into the Darién, clashing with the Guna and pushing them toward the Caribbean shore. Emberá and Wounaan remained everyday community languages through the colonial centuries rather than being replaced by Spanish.