They are an Amerindian people who live in the jungles of the Catatumbo River, on both sides of the border between Venezuela and Colombia. The resistance of the motilones was intense between 1530 and 1730, when the Capuchin missionaries studied their language and began to catechize some groups and form indigenous villages. At first these towns were attacked by the Spanish, but from 1772 the Maracaibo government managed to initiate a peaceful contact that came to include at least 21 indigenous communities.