The Vilela language has been considered extinct or near extinct. During the sixties and the seventies, Clemente Balmori and Elena Lozano, both linguists from the University of La Plata, located some Vilela consultants in the Chaco province and elicited relevant linguistic information.

In the last thirty years this language has shifted to Toba, Mocovi, and Spanish. Nowadays, only a few Vilela speakers manifest varying degrees of competence in their native language.

Although there is scant information about the Vilela language, published sources in the twentieth century (Balmori 1967 and Viegas Barros 2001, among others) claim that it belongs to the Lule-Vilela linguistic family.