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Reprinted from A. E. Figueredo, (1971) "The Indians of Cuba. A Study of Cultural
Adaptation and Ethnic Survival." Círculo: Revista de Humanidades, 3(3):
121-145, by kind permission of the author.
The Indians of Cuba: A
Study of
Cultural Adaptation and Ethnic Survival
Alfredo E. Figueredo
The first documents relative to the Discovery and Conquest of Cuba, are
reminiscent of Classical periploi insofar as they deal with the native peoples,
and I found very little in them that can support any generalized assertion
regarding the native Indians. Our earliest lengthy description of the Cuban
aborigines dates from 1514 (Velázquez 1514), in the form of a letter "Carta de
Relación" by Diego Velázquez to the King of Spain, where some mention is made of
the Indian social structure (Raggi 1965). [1]
It is thanks to this document that we can see how the Island was divided into
large dominions held by great lords who apparently wielded considerable power
(op. cit., 10), and were the tip of an intricately complex social pyramid. There
was a multitude of smaller chiefs and sub-chiefs, an intermediate class of more
or less free landholders, and a lower stratum of serfs and slaves, with clear
indications that many of these classes were hereditary (loc. cit.; cf. Rouse
1948). [2]
Another document, roughly contemporaneous with the first, is the Memorial that
Bartolomé de Las Casas sent Cardinal Cisneros (Las Casas 1516). In it we learn
of ethnic differences between the various Cuban Indians, something Velázquez had
only touched upon (cf. Velázquez 1514: 21). There were five peoples living on
the Island then, to wit: [3]
-
The Lucayans, or
imported slaves from the Bahamas.
-
The fisher-folk of the many small outlying islands, who are not given a
distinctive name.
-
The Guanahacabeyes, which Velázquez had called Guanatabeyes (loc. cit.), and
were a rude, non-agricultural group living in the western extremity of the
Island (ibidem; Las Casas 1516: 8).
-
The Cibuneyes (or Ciboneyes), similar to the fisher-folk, yet somehow distinct,
and largely held in bondage by the last group,
-
which were the more advanced and dominant group, again unnamed, but of whom Las
Casas wrote elsewhere as being in some cases recent immigrants from Hispaniola
(Las Casas 1559: II, 507). [4]
In recent times archaeologists have referred to these last as the Taíno Culture,
a term popularized mainly by the Swedish anthropologist Sven Lovén during the
twenties and thirties (Lovén 1924), and which is a derivation from the adjective
meaning 'good' in the Xaraguá language of Hispaniola (cf. Martyr 1516: I, 123).
[5]
The available evidence indeed confirms a Hispaniolan origin for the more
advanced cultural complexes (Harrington 1921: II, 425), and non-agricultural
peoples of aceramic material cultures have been found to have lived
contemporaneously with and near to these higher cultures (Utset 1951: 101). [6]
Linguistically, the more advanced groups have been related to the Lokono or True
Arawak language of Guyana (Brinton 1871), though lately there is some doubt as
to this connection (Taylor 1960), the more venturesome linguists suggesting only
a very early split between the Arawak languages of the Mainland and Taíno, as
the insular variety is known (Noble 1965). At any rate, there is no doubt that
Taíno, or at least its Xaraguá form, was the general speech of Hispaniola and
parts of Cuba when the Spaniards arrived (cf. Las Casas 1556: II, 311). [7]
About the social structure of the Taíno, we can say that among them the
commoners were obviously numerically preponderant, and these included at least
three distinct classes (Raggi 1965: 10). At the very bottom appear to have been
a class referred to as tamemes (op. cit., 27-28; Velázquez 1514: 13), or
laborers wholly at the disposition of the local rulers, who could be sent to
work wherever their lord wished them to go, and may have been chiefly porters (ibidem).
Next and of greater importance not only socially but economically as well, were
the naborías, who were servants bound to the soil (cf. La Torre 1530), though
they could also be used for domestic duties in households (Raggi op. cit.: 10,
27), and these may have formed the bulk of the population, because I find that
most early documents dealing with the distribution of Indian serfs among Spanish
conquistadores, speak only of naborías (cf. Fernández-Duro 1888); also, perhaps
both name and role were not ethnic in character, and most naborías were
ciboneyes as well, a fact that could account for Las Casas' statement that most
of the Cubans styled themselves ciboneyes (Las Casas 1559: II, 507). [8]
There was a class of free landholders without exceptional status other than
their relative individual independence (Raggi 1965: 10), and these were called
guaoxerís, which meant a deferential address much as the Renaissance Spanish
term vuestra merced as applied to a knight (ibidem; Las Casas 1556: II, 309),
and the name apparently gave rise to the modern Cuban expression guajiro, which
refers to a native-born white farmer (cf. Montori 1916: 91). [9]
All nobles but the behiques held territorial rights (cf. Raggi op. cit.: 27),
and then these I consider noble because of their exalted position and some
evidence for the post being hereditary; behiques were medicine-men or shamans,
who attended the cemís or household gods, and prayed to the Creator, Yócahu
Vagua Maórocoti, for certain visions (cf. Rivero de la Calle 1966: 139; Arrom
1971: 184-185; Las Casas 1559: II, 514-515). The Cuban behiques apparently
attended to visions chiefly, whereas their Hispaniolan counterparts were more
active in medicinal endeavors (loc. cit.). [10]
The nobles ruling small numbers of
naborías and their pertaining land were
usually called nitaínos (Rivero de la Calle 1966: 138; Las Casas 1559: I, 398),
meaning something like the Mediaeval French bons hommes, since taíno at any rate
originally meant 'good' (Martyr 1516: I, 123). Above these were the petty lords
of villages or provinces, called baharís in Hispaniola (Las Casas 1556: II,
309), but whose name in Cuba we ignore, since the sources prefer the term
cacique, which means 'lord over a land'; one author, at least, thinks this
Hispaniolan usage extended to Cuba as well (Raggi 1965: 27). The most powerful
of all the caciques were called matunherís, perhaps 'noble ones', since
matum
meant 'noble' (Raggi op. cit.: 7; Martyr 1516: I, 361). These could exact
tribute from other lords, and themselves be suzerains over other matunherís (cf.
Raggi op. cit.: 34-37). Since descent was recorded matrilineally, and the
husband resided in his wife's household in cases of political marriages "though
such appears not to have been a set rule" (cf. Oviedo 1535: I, 118-124),
occasionally a ruler came from a region other than the one he ruled, and in
Hispaniola a woman was once cacique of Xaraguá (Las Casas 1556: II, 308). [11]
We have already seen how primitive peoples whom we may very well by comparison
call barbarians lived side by side with the Taíno. Some evidence points to their
having been clients of the more powerful agriculturalists (Pichardo Moya 1945b:
81), and indeed since no record is extant for a single guanatabey chieftaincy or
political area (cf. Velázquez 1514), we may so believe for the present at least.
[12]
The artifacts which we know were in general everyday use among the more advanced
groups come mainly from the archaeological record, and include the usual
Neolithic tool kit: pottery (platters, dishes, bowls, cooking pots, water jars);
clay instruments such as whistles, spindle whorls and rings; polished stone celts; flint knives, scrapers, perforators, and points; shell gouges, cups,
dishes, and ornaments; bone awls, needles, spatulas, beads, and pendants, as
well as a largely lost assemblage of wooden objects, basketry and textiles (Tabío
and Rey 1966: 203-206; cf. Harrington 1921). [13]
Some ritual artifacts have been found such as bone swallow-sticks carefully
decorated and used to induce vomiting (Rivero de la Calle 1966: 151), and Las
Casas wrote of cotton-woven objects placed around an altar (Las Casas 1559: II,
534). There are also several ceremonial seats extant, carefully carved from wood
and inlaid with precious stones and gold (Rivero de la Calle op. cit.: 139,
148-149). [14]
One of the most outstanding traits of Taíno Culture was the worship of
cemís or
household gods along the lines of the Roman lares and penates (Las Casas 1559:
II, 514). These were represented by small fetishes carved of shell, bone, wood,
or stone, and are found profusely in most sites. Clay dolls, apparently
fertility deities, are also present (Tabío and Rey 1966: 204). [15]
Large villages sometimes had elaborate courts surrounded by gigantic earthen
embankments, of which Monte Cristo is a typical example (Harrington 1921: I,
209), and these sometimes had inscribed stone slabs reminiscent of menhirs
inside them. Other earthen monuments are known, some really puzzling in shape,
whereas at least one is recorded and carefully mapped as having the outline of a
bat when viewed from the air (Rivero de la Calle and Núñez Jiménez 1958: 50),
which animal may have had some religious significance since it is found all over
art objects such as the fancier ceramic vessels which are thought to be
ceremonial (op. cit., 55; cf. Herrera Fritot 1952). [16]
Agriculture was practiced extensively and included such staples as both sweet
and bitter manioc (Manihot spp.), Indian corn or maize (Zea mays), sweet
potatoes (Ipomœa batatas), beans (Phaseolus spp.), and several varieties of
additional root crops of a more arcane nature (Calathea allouya, Xanthosoma
sagittæfolium, etc.). There is evidence for the cultivation of peanuts (Arachis
hypogæa) (Rivero de la Calle 1966: 26), and a kind of pepper, Capsicum frutescens, was widely cultivated (Pérez de la Riva 1951). It appears that
bitter manioc, in its preservable pancake or cassava form, supplied the staple
food, a case similar to that in northern South America, and which adds strength
to the theory that Taíno Culture may have found inspiration in, if not derived
from, the Venezuela-Guyanas area (Cruxent and Rouse 1958: I, 264-265). [17]
The Conquest of Cuba really began in 1509, when a shipwrecked group of Spaniards
won the friendship and respect of the Indians in the chieftaincies of Cueybá and
Macaca (also spelled Coyva and Mahaha in contemporary sources), even converting
all of the former area's people to the worship of a Fleming image of the Virgin
Mary (Las Casas 1559: II, 403-404, 513-514). It is not until Diego Velázquez
sets out from the Spanish settlement of Salvatierra de la Çabana in Hispaniola
with 300 men and the full backing of the Second Admiral at Santo Domingo, that
an effective occupation begins; this was around new year's eve, 1511 (Las Casas
op. cit.: II, 522). [18]
The Indians' puny weapons, such as bows and arrows, were no match to Spanish
swords, crossbows, and cuirasses (Las Casas op. cit., loc. cit.); few caciques
offered any resistance, most of the population actually welcoming the Spaniards
and showing themselves quite willing to learn new ways (Raggi 1965: 44). The
number of Indian deaths resulting from combat between 1511 and 1516 has been put
at between 15 and 20 by an eyewitness that was very liberal with numbers (Las
Casas 1516: 8). Indeed, Velázquez encountered very little opposition and then
mainly from recent fugitives that, fleeing Spanish colonial rule in Hispaniola,
had established themselves in eastern Cuba (Las Casas 1559: 523). The
conquistadores were quick to establish the encomienda system enforced on the
conquered islands, whereby Spanish settlers were assigned different numbers of
caciques and/or naborías to rule over as feudal lords and instruct them in the
Christian Faith. Encomiendas worked because they fitted nicely into the old
Indian social structure, and it was easy for the natives to accept a matunherí
who was a stranger to them; to facilitate the transition, many Spaniards married
the daughters of caciques in order to inherit or replace them as rulers of their
domains (Raggi 1965: 10-11). [19]
The encomienda system was abolished as most Indians acculturated and could no
longer be held in bondage over the objections of the Kings of Spain, who always
did their best to protect the Indians from their many unscrupulous white
subjects (cf. Despinosa 1553: 356-357; Rojas 1533: 324). By the second half of
the 16th century, most of the Indians had doubtless become Spaniards by all
counts save race, and there never was a racial line separating whites from
Indians (cf. Raggi op. cit., loc. cit.), as there was between white and Negro,
so that intermarriage seems to have been frequent. [20]
The Spanish Colonization was so thorough that by 1514 there were seven fully
instituted cities; true, they were puny by modern standards, but still
influenced very deeply the character of modern Cuban urban culture, which
remained nearly all-Spanish in character. Contrasting with this, the Indian
element seems to have blended with and influenced the Spanish settlers in the
countryside, who had to learn new subsistence techniques in their new country (García
Castañeda 1949). The crops grown and the technical terms used by the Spanish
farmers made them indistinguishable from their Indian neighbors, whereas in
dress used, language spoken daily, and general customs, much the same can be
said for the majority of the Indians with respect to the Spaniards (op. cit.;
Culin 1902: 191). [21]
It is in one of the first and most complete lists of
encomiendas granted,
detailed by Spanish civil jurisdiction and caciques and naborías involved, that
we find the earliest clear evidence of Indian towns kept as such and granted in
toto to individual Spaniards (La Torre 1530). Another document mentions the town
of Yara, known as an Indian settlement to this day (Burgos 1546: 290). With the
granting of freedom to the Indians, some of these towns and their adjacent lands
were made into reservations for the protection of the Indians, inside whose area
no white man could live (Culin 1902). [22]
In western Cuba, the area most densely settled by Spaniards and still the
demographic center of the Island (Marrero 1957), we only have information for
two Indian settlements persisting alongside Spanish ones and retaining an Indian
flavor. These are Guanabacoa, and the town of the Macurixes. Guanabacoa was soon
turned into a Spanish town by the influx of white settlers from nearby Havana (Roig
1937: 49), while the Macurixes were runaways from Hispaniola, and subsisted more
or less independently in the wilderness until they were subdued in the early
XVII Century (Escoto 1924). [23]
In eastern Cuba the situation was far different, and Indian towns such as Yara
we have seen, persisted until our times. There have been considerable migrations
of Indians from one area to another (cf. Culin 1902: 199), and the modern Cuban
city of Jiguaní, now indistinguishable from other urban centers in the Island,
was founded as an Indian town by Indians in the early 1700's, and as late as
1777 was recognized as such (Pichardo 1957: 75). In recent years, there have
been other recorded migrations caused by the economic expulsion of the Indians
away from good lands to more remote areas, victimized by the industrial
expansion of their white neighbors who kept encroaching upon their lands and
establishing plantations run with slave labor (Oramas 1969: 5). [24]
From the above one would suppose that the Indian was persecuted and oppressed,
yet such is not the case. As of 1553 we saw that practically all Indians in Cuba
were free, and what they suffered at the hands of the slavocrats could not have
been worse than what was the lot of the independent white farmers. Displacement
from that date on seems to have been based upon the inability of free labor to
compete with slave labor, a situation that was reversed in Cuba after
approximately 1850, and which led to the abolition of slavery (Moreno Fraginals
1968: 44-45). [25]
Again, one would believe that western Cuba, having no specifically Indian towns,
was devoid of an aboriginal population. In spite of this, the parochial records
of Guanes, the most westerly town in Cuba, show Indians present there much after
1600, and in nearby Pinar del Río there was still a separate baptismal book for
Indians in 1773 (Pichardo Moya 1945a: 30). In 1803, a party of Indians rebelled
in far western Cuba, and were so many that the Spanish governor was obliged to
mount an expedition against them (Pezuela 1866: IV, 217); unhappily, these were
massacred, and they may have been the last cohesive western community. [26]
Occasional uprisings notwithstanding, it is clear that many Indian communities
aided the Spaniards effectively, and even helped the slavocrats of eastern Cuba
in putting down slave revolts (Estrada 1876: 507). Indian militias played a very
prominent part in the defense of such cities as Bayamo, always troubled by foes
from without and within (ibidem). Indeed, this alliance of the white ruling
class with the Indian farmers, which really harked back to the intermarriage
between the ruling classes of both groups during the early Colonization, allowed
many an Indian to become fully incorporated in the Spanish social body, and
'pass for white' by assuming the role of a small freeholder loyal to the King
and a bulwark for the institutions of the Realm (op. cit.; Raggi 1965). [27]
The Romantic Revival, and incipient aspirations of Cubans for independence,
brought about a substantial concern for the Cuban Indian, yet for the most part
as the autochthonous savage of the past (Henríquez Ureña 1963: I, 174), noble
precursor of the rebellious Nation. In spite of Romantic poems such as the one
that begins: [28]
Por la encantadora orilla que riega el Cubanacay, donde lindas flores hay y el sol más hermoso brilla, donde la tierna avecilla corta el aire en blando giro, y vegeta el caguajiro a orillas de la sabana, sobre una jaca alazana iba un rústico guajiro.
Perfecto tipo de aquellos habitantes primitivos, con sus ojos expresivos y con sus negros cabellos, tostados como eran ellos, este rústico guajiro la cumbre azul del Capiro contemplaba con despecho, y ahogar no pudo en su pecho un doloroso suspiro.
(Nápoles Fajardo 1856)
with obvious allusions to surviving Indians (habitantes primitivos), the urban
literateurs capitalized upon a fantastic story which held that all Cuban Indians
had been massacred by the Spanish conquistadores, a story which was supposed to
portray the Peninsulars as cruel juxtaposed to the suffering Cubans, but which
missed the mark widely since modern Cubans are of course descended from the
conquistadores; not so the Spaniards then, who descended from those that had
remained in Europe, and were quite innocent of what their overseas brethren may
have done. Actually, the Indians were then a tiny population compared to the
rapidly expanding 'white' mass, constantly fed by immigrants from Europe, and
thus could be easily ignored by popular opinion as a living entity. [29]
Intermarriage with Indians was so evident in some areas that by 1845 it was
ruled that the lands in the former Indian town and reservation of El Caney
should revert to the Crown (Pichardo 1945: 35); in 1849, this decision was
modified, and those that could prove 'pure' Indian blood or the absence of
'inferior admixture' (i.e., Negro blood), were allowed to retain their lands as
individuals (op. cit.). Still, after this date we hear no more of exclusive
Indian lands anywhere, and white encroachment in the specific case of El Caney
becomes so strong that when a mission from the Royal Academy of Sciences at
Havana visits the town in 1890, it is stated without reserve that no Indians are
left there (La Torre 1890: 327). [30]
When Cuba's first war for independence breaks out in 1868, we find many Indians
fighting on both sides. One Cuban general, Jesús Rabí, was an Indian from
Jiguaní (Culin 1902: 199), and commanded a famous unit of cavalry composed
mainly of other Cuban Indians from his home town. However, I find that official
Cuban communiqués refer to all forces, Negroes inclusive, in equal terms, and
the aboriginal contribution to the wars of independence has been thus obscured,
for no record is left of the presumably numerous Indian contingent that fought
in the rebellious armies. [31]
After the founding of the Sociedad Antropológica de la Isla de Cuba in 1877,
there was a mild rebirth of interest in the minuscule Indian population. Montané's speech at the opening of the Society, for instance, mentions the fact
that Indians (of the 'raza mongólica') lived alongside the predominant white
population (Montané 1877: 366). However, archaeology and the study of the larger
Negro and Chinese minorities occupied most of the Society's time (Sociedad
Antropológica 1966), and no full report was ever read before it nor published
dealing with the Indian population of modern Cuba (cf. ibidem). [32]
We briefly saw how the Royal Academy of Sciences, which was influenced by the
Anthropological Society, sent some expeditions to eastern Cuba during the last
quarter of the 19th century; these were primarily archaeological in nature,
though they collected some data on the extant Indians, but very sketchy in
nature. However, the idea that these in effect existed was kept alive by the
physical observation of living specimens (La Torre 1890: 328 et seq.). [33]
It is not until 1901 that a more or less carefully recorded expedition visits
the remaining Indians in eastern Cuba (Culin 1902). From this report, which,
owing to its place of publication (Philadelphia) never circulated widely in the
Island, it is that we have the first considerable set of ethnographic data for a
modern Cuban Indian community. Stewart Culin, who himself was the whole
expedition, observed firstly that several stevedores in the port of Guantánamo
had marked Indian features and were referred to as indios. Though the most
specific he ever gets as far as physical traits is concerned is the following
description: [34]
The Indians have black hair, light-brown complexions, and
pleasing, regular features.
(Culin 1902: 195).
Culin nonetheless does recognize them as different from the rest of the
population (ibidem). [35]
As far as culture is concerned, perhaps the most significant attribute he finds
is the fact that many families preserve a tradition of being Indian and try
never to marry outside their race (Culin op. cit.: 194). Another interesting
trait he found among remote villagers was a matrilineal reckoning of ancestry
(idem: 206), though the wife went to the husband's house (ibidem). [36]
In the town of Yara, the men had 'serrated, pointed teeth' (op. cit.: 208), a
peculiar trait which, as far as I know, is not documented archaeologically for
the Cuban Indians, who had undeformed teeth when the Spaniards found them, and
this filing of the teeth may be a late cultural creation, perhaps influenced by
African slaves in Colonial times (cf. Ortiz 1929); at any rate, I have read no
posterior testimony reporting it among a living community, and the custom, along
with any reasons that may have been gathered orally for it, may have disappeared
altogether. [37]
Linguistically, Culin was unable to find anyone who spoke a native language (Culin
op. cit.: 192, 194), and the most peculiar trait he found was that some remote
individuals, forming a community of about a hundred families, spoke a variant of
old Spanish (op. cit.: 209). Since then, not even this has been reported, though
the families in question were investigated (Oramas 1969). [38]
There was still living memory then of men who had been
caciques (Culin op. cit.:
205), though no rigid class structure (indeed, no class structure: they were all
farmers) seems to have survived in the groups surveyed. There was a community
reported but not visited by Culin, where the Indians were still living under a
cacique (op. cit.: 209), and this would have been the place to look for any
remnants of the old social structure. Notwithstanding the need to observe
beforehand, I think it is likely that the caciques we deal with here were
descended from lower-class individuals who filled the role according to need,
and the old distinctions between hereditary classes had disappeared. Unless some
communities be still left that have such headmen or caciques, we may never know.
[39]
The everyday utensils used by the Indians that Culin was able to observe, were
all those used by the modern white Cuban farmer, of European or recent settler
origin, and thus he does not detail them carefully (Culin op. cit.: 191,
194-195, 206). Indeed, his listing of peculiar traits was compiled from
ignorance, and I can testify that all are of Spanish origin, including a wooden
mortar (loc. cit.). The outward cultural uniformity of both Indians and rural
white Cubans has been amply dealt with elsewhere (Rivero de la Calle 1966),
though one should qualify that since no Spanish Cuban ever reckons ancestry
through the mother, nor does he file his teeth, these similarities are but
superficial in many cases, and detailed studies of the everyday life and customs
of both groups are in order. One may very well find that, in spite of
transculturation, both may still be defined as distinct cultures, though this is
contingent upon field work. [39]
Architecturally, there was the peculiarity of round huts (Culin 1902: 195),
which Culin did not think distinctive, but which we know were not used by the
white Cubans nor their Negro servants (Marrero 1957), and such structures have
not been recorded again since then. [40]
When Montané published a brief and sketchy report on the same subject as Culin (Montané
1911), he was completely unaware of the latter's work, yet both concluded that
scarcely anything was left of the Cuban Indian culture and barely any Indians at
that. Their attitude I think was ethnocentric: they expected to find a romantic
wild tribe of Indians, and found peaceful farming communities instead; their
subsequent disillusionment may have further prejudiced their reports, and they
may have overlooked important cultural data merely because it was not flashy and
exotic. Their underestimate of Indian population is based upon Western
prejudice, which expects numbers in the tens of thousands. This is significant
because the breeding population of the Cuban Indians has been misconstrued so
often that one gets the impression that one must hurry to see them before they
die; in reality, there are several thousands of them, and they are in no danger
of extinction I can foresee. [41]
Here I would like to clarify an error that found its way into the
Handbook of
the South American Indian, when Rouse therein states that Culin recorded the
Cuban Indian population at no more than 400 (Rouse 1948: 519; cf. Culin 1902:
195). Actually, in Yara alone Culin estimated the Indian population at between
six and seven hundred (Culin op. cit.: 206), and we have already seen how the
remote mountaineers speaking old Spanish numbered one hundred families, which
even conservatively would give us twice four hundred in those two localities
alone, and half a dozen other towns are mentioned. Culin records Cuban Indians
as extremely fertile (op. cit.: 204), a situation that still holds (Oramas
1969), and the population must then have increased since 1901. [42]
Three or four thousand persons are lost in a population of several millions, and
this accounts for the obscurity of the Cuban Indian in Insular literature. Even
reputed sociologists accounted the Indians gone in the early forties (cf. Azcuy
1941), and not until Ruggles Gates climbed a few hills in 1952 were they
rediscovered (Oramas 1969: 5). [43]
However, this new sense of discovery did not produce any one viable monograph on
the ethnology of the modern Cuban Indians, with the possible exception of a
manuscript I was unable to consult (Rivero de la Calle 1966: 55). Some new
information, however, has become available, chiefly that in at least one village
there is a folk tradition of a time when idols of stone were made, and the Sun
and the Earth were worshipped (Oramas, op. cit., loc. cit.), these last two
being the chief attributes of the Supreme God of the Taínos, Yócahu Vagua
Maórocoti (Arrom 1971: 190), though strangely, the third attribute (Vagua), the
sea, is not mentioned, and this may be due to a loss of contact with the sea.
[44]
Concluding, and on the basis of the scanty evidence available, it seems possible
to assume that strong cultural forces have effected a peculiar case of ethnic
survival. Anthropologically, the study of precisely what factors account for
this should prove rewarding. For now we can imagine that remote locations
coupled with poor transportation over mountains account for their survival, yet
what about the towns as close as three miles from a populous modern port city. (Culin
1902: 204) I was able to trace the phenomenon historically for the first time,
and present a diachronically structured body of evidence coupled with a
bibliography. It is to be hoped that future field work will resolve the many
ethnographic lacunæ now so evident. If, as it has promised, the Revolutionary
Government spurs cultural anthropology in Cuba (Guas 1968: 16), or foreign
scholars are allowed to work there, we can reasonably expect very substantial
results. [45]
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Azcuy, Fanny, 1941. Psicografía y supervivencias de los aborígenes de Cuba. La
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An archaeological chronology of Venezuela.
Washington: Pan American Union. 2 vols.
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Figueredo, Alfred E. (2006).
The Indians of Cuba:
A study of Cultural Adaptation and Ethnic Survival. KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean
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