Puquina is a small city in the Moquegua Department of southern Peru. It is located in the highlands of the region, in the Andean interior rather than on the Pacific coast, within a department whose other main centres include the city of Moquegua and the port of Ilo.
The name Puquina is also that of an extinct language once spoken around Lake Titicaca and in northern Chile, often associated with the culture that built Tiwanaku and today counted among the official languages of Bolivia. Written records of that language are limited, chiefly the 1607 Rituale seu Manuale Peruanum of the Franciscan Luis Jerónimo de Oré. A Puquina substrate survives in the Quechua and Spanish spoken in southern Peru, mainly in Arequipa, Moquegua and Tacna, and in Bolivia, and Puquina vocabulary forms much of the Kallawaya language, a mixed language combining Quechua grammar with Puquina words.
The city lies within this broader southern Peruvian area where that linguistic influence is documented, in the department of Moquegua.