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Timoto-Cuica

1000 – 1558
Native nationSouth America

The most complex society in pre-Columbian Venezuela, terracing the cold páramos around Mérida with irrigated fields, stone-lined ponds and planned villages high in the northern Andes.

Not an ending exactly, but effectively so: in 1549 the Timote and Cuica defeated a Spanish force at Escuque and forced its retreat to El Tocuyo, but Spain returned and founded Mérida in the middle of their territory in 1558 (refounded 1559), fixing permanent colonial rule over the Mérida-Trujillo-Táchira Andes. Descendants still self-identified in Venezuela's 2001 Indigenous census (66 people declared themselves Timotes), and advocates have reportedly worked with the Universidad de los Andes toward demarcating an ancestral territory, but no completed land recognition could be verified in any source consulted; the Timoto-Cuica are generally described as having disappeared as a distinct people.

Borders in 1558 · drawn from 2 sourced border frames
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Borders over time

The atlas holds 2 border frames for Timoto-Cuica — the shape you scrub through changes in 1000 · 1558.

Moments from the Chronicle

Further reading

Sources