Reclaiming Taíno
Indigenous resurgence amid the longest history of colonization in the Americas
On a sticky afternoon in August, I sat on a bench outside the San Juan airport. I’d caught a ride with a friend and was three hours early for my flight. Luckily, I had entertainment: a movie was being filmed outside the JetBlue terminal.
The main action was happening several benches to my left where an older man (father?) was having an intense heart to heart with a young teen (son?). I watched them shoot the scene over and over amid the bustle of arrivals and departures.
A stocky man with streaming gray curls and a broad face caught my attention as he walked towards me, accompanied by a petite woman I assumed to be his partner.
Didn’t I just see him?
I watched as he stopped with his suitcase and turned to face the scene. When the director called out, the “couple” walked back into the airport, only to turn around and walk towards me again.
Wait a second…
I had an Inception moment. The reality I thought I was living in changed entirely as I incredulously began to identify the actors walking among actual travelers heading in and out of the airport.
I ended up chatting with the gray-haired man as the crew filmed another part of the scene. He lives in the mountains, I learned, and we bonded over our love of the campo life, walking barefoot in the mornings and living by candlelight after sunset.
He shared with me that he holds Taíno ceremonies on his land with a group of others around the island. He learned these traditions from his abuelo, he told me. We were speaking in Spanish so I was listening closely, leaning towards him to catch every word. Then, all the sudden, I was entirely lost… it took a moment to realize he was no longer speaking Spanish — he had switched to Taíno.
I was familiar with certain Taíno words, like Atabey (Mother of all waters) and Cemí (an ancestral spirit or spirit of nature), which I had learned from Taíno friends when I lived in Philadelphia.
But I had never heard someone speak fluently. Never felt in-person the vibrations of these tones. I stared in awe, watching his affect transform as he expressed himself in his Indigenous language. I tried to listen with a part of me that had nothing to do with my brain.
I’ve thought back to this moment many times since, and especially this week. As I’ve been sharing with you words from impactful Indigenous authors for this series, I have been rereading. I have been listening. And what I’ve heard has led me to where I’ll end this week: exactly where I am.
In the introduction to Indigenous Politics, which I highlighted in my post on Indigenous Peoples Day, Robert Warrior (Osage) writes:
“Regardless of whom in the Indigenous world you are talking to and where you are hoping to make an impact, the first thing you should do is take a good look around and figure out where you are.”
Here I am in Borikén (Puerto Rico), an island whose colonization story is horrendous and complex, with many devastating chapters including the one we’re living in this present moment.
As a refresher: the island was a Spanish colony for 400 years and has been a U.S. colonial territory since 1898. It has its own constitution and government but no representation in the federal government except for one, non-voting “Resident Commissioner” in the U.S. House.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. Citizens but cannot vote for President, nor Senators, nor Representatives.
In November, Puerto Ricans will vote for one of three non-colonial status options for the future of the island: statehood, independence, or “free association under international law”. But before you get too excited, this is the seventh status vote over the past 50 years, none of which (obviously) have led to a new, decolonized status — because only Congress actually has the power to make it happen. (The status vote could be seen as more of a demand for congress to take action.)
As Colombia professor of Legal History Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus put it in her recent Time article: “This is the colonial catch-22: Puerto Rico remains a colony because it has no leverage in Congress, and it has no leverage in Congress because it remains a colony.”
And it’s among the longest colonization stories here in the Americas; the Taíno were the first Indigenous peoples Spanish conquistadores encountered 532 years ago, first on the island of Guanahaní in the Bahamas, then Kiskéya (now Dominican Republic and Haiti), and a year later, Borikén (Puerto Rico). And so began a decimation of Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean via disease, enslavement and murder.
In Kiskéya, historians estimate that during the first 15 years of Spanish occupation, the native population dropped from 500,000 to 60,000.
440,000 Indigenous men, women and children slain in 15 years.
I encourage you to take a pause and really acknowledge this grief, this massive weight carried by descendants.
“Whenever I contemplate my history and think of the atrocities committed by the Spaniards I wonder: What were the grandmothers and mothers doing as they watched their children, siblings, and parents slaughtered and raped, their villages pillaged and plundered? They must have prayed hard, as all suffering people do. But what happened to those prayers? Did they vanish in the air like smoke from a camp fire? Then it hits me: we the descendants are their prayers. We’ve come back to make things right, to tell our story.”
— Jorge Baracutei Estevez (Taíno de Kiskéya) from this story for National Geographic
Despite a continued narrative of erasure of the Taíno peoples — an insistence for decades that they were “extinct” and their language entirely lost — there are of course many proud descendants.
And, as the eradication of traditions, ceremony and culture has been so severe over the past five centuries, there are many Boricuas who don’t know — or don’t speak — about this aspect of their ancestry.
I lived for half a year with a retired professor of nursing and self-described jíbara from Moca, helping her plant her small finca with yautía, papayas, and habichuelas. Teresa always brought lessons from her father into the field. “Como papa decía…” was a common refrain; like dad would say, “always plant extra… the birds need to eat, too,” as we sprinkled semillas de habichuelas blancas into the red earth.
Her father was light-skinned with green eyes; for most of his life, he assumed he was of mostly Spanish descent. But late in his life, Teresa told me, the University of Puerto Rico came to collect one of her father’s hairs for a DNA study. He learned he had 35% Taíno ancestry.
Teresa said she always wondered, because her grandmother looked native, short and strong and wore her hair long and parted down the middle… but it was never spoken about in her family.
A study of 800 randomly selected Boricuas published in 2005 found that 61% had American Indian mitochondrial DNA. But with centuries of erasure and no reservation nor a federally recognized tribe with rights on the island, the Taíno presence in Borikén has been largely hiding in plain sight.
I thought of the man at the JetBlue terminal, his true identity as an actor entirely hidden unless you looked very closely; his true identity as a Taíno entirely hidden unless you heard him speak.
Little Doe Baird’s words about reclaiming the Wampanoag language (from one of the interviews I referenced in this post earlier this week) echoed in my mind. She talks about Indigenous people who haven’t been raised “at home,” within a tribal community or reservation. “Language gives them a better understanding of their own people and the motivations of their own people and the processes that take place within the community. All those things are reflected in the language.”
And one of her last points, directed towards non-native readers, really stuck with me: “I would like people to consider that if they want to look at history, to understand the “whys” and the “what for” of history, that they consider learning about a peoples’ language before they start to study that culture.”
Which is why a few nights ago, I found myself searching “learn Taíno” on Youtube. And up came Casa Areyto, a Taíno language reclamation project founded by Priscilla & Ely Colón.
At Casa Areyto, we envision a world in which Taíno descendants know who they are and where they come from.
The organization has produced tons of incredible language and culture lessons which they make available for free via YouTube. I’ve learned that the Taíno language is hiding in plain sight as well, in words like hammock (jamáca), yuca (yuka), canoe (kanowa) and hurricane (hurakan).
And in our music. I love the episode where Priscilla shares her discoveries of Taíno words in songs. She shares lyrics from La Esquinita, a song that Vicente García wrote after his father died. He mentions planting a guava tree in his heart where his father can visit him, where he finds Coaybay, the Taíno underworld where spirits go when the body dies.
(Also: ever wonder about the line in Bad Bunny’s Enséñame a Bailar “Que rico se pasa en Kiskéya”? Like… donde esta Kiskéya? Pues, ahora sabes.
… Scroll up if you forgot.)
The work of Casa Areyto is among many Taíno resurgence efforts — people across the Caribbean and diaspora reclaiming their culture, ceremonies and reviving their language. And it’s not always through DNA tests or conversations with family that people are getting in touch with their Indigeneity.
As Christina Marie González writes in Abuelas, Ancestors and Atabey: The Spirit of Taíno Resurgence:
“A pivotal, yet overlooked, feature of what inspires and drives Taíno resurgence is what people describe as profound and personal experiences of the “spiritual” kind. Prophetic dreaming, clairvoyant or clairaudient phenomena and relationships with india/o spirits have propelled many people towards an urgent reconnection with neglected ancestors and forgotten traditions…
Taíno see the “world alive” of Caribbean lands, beings, and ancestors as actively supporting their restoration as a people.”
Nice article Katherine!