Malibu

Malibú was the language of the Malibú people of the lower Magdalena valley in Colombia, spoken along the river between Tamalameque and Tenerife. It gave its name to the Malibu group of extinct, poorly documented languages; only a handful of words were recorded, and malibú itself is said to have meant cacique, or chief.

Early scholars placed these tongues within the Chibchan family together with Chimila, but later specialists judge that link to rest on no solid evidence, so their classification remains uncertain.

From the early 1500s the riverbank Malibú were among the first peoples encountered by Spanish expeditions entering the Magdalena lowlands, and their speech died out in the colonial period, surviving only in fleeting mentions by 17th-century chroniclers such as Pedro Simón.