Maku and Macusa are pejorative Arawak terms applied to many local languages, not anything specific to Carabayo.

[3] However, the only information on the Carabayo language was obtained when a family was kidnapped during a violent encounter and held in a mission for several weeks.

During this time, one of the priests wrote down words that he overheard, or that were used in exchanges with him, sometimes with a context that suggested their meaning.

The fact that Tikuna speakers were able to recognize some of the Carabayo phrases suggests the languages are, or were once, part of a dialect continuum.

[2] Seifart & Echeverri (2014) conclude that the Carabayo likely descended from the Yuri and voluntarily isolated themselves during the Amazon rubber boom at the turn of the 20th century, when atrocities were being committed against the local indigenous peoples on a massive scale.