Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
(CAC)
Issues in Caribbean Amerindian Studies
JIGUANI, Cuba - In Cuba,
from the flat savannas of Camaguey and east to the foothills of the
Sierra Maestra, the cry was for water. The worst drought in more than 50
years had killed hundreds of thousands of cattle and threatened to
obliterate the country's ''bread basket.''
''Here the dryness has had us actually thirsty,'' said 90-year-old
Anselmo Fajardo Quesada, elder of the neighborhood of Palmarito, in a
hilly area of the town of Jiguani. ''Thirst among the people and thirst
among our little plants and animals as well. The earth cracked so that
you could put your whole arm in it. It brought tears to your eyes.''
We had stopped to visit with don Anselmo, who, as the elder of an
extended group of Indian families in the region, had asked to greet us
on behalf of his community. I was in Jiguani, in eastern Cuba, on a
visit with Cuban historian Alejandro Hartmann. Hartmann's ongoing
genealogical and cultural retention study among families of Indian
descent in the region has been turning up the most interesting places
and folks.
Jiguani, founded by the donation of land from an Indian pueblo in 1701,
is only the latest place where Indian elders are happy to tell who they
are. Don Anselmo, who asked his grandchildren to stand by him, still
joins the local families in planting his own buniato (sweet potato) and
corn crops. ''Our people are Indian,'' he said without hesitation. ''We
are Cuban, and we are Indian.''
I had already traveled with Hartmann through old Camaguey. There, in a
town called Najasa, we met with the heads of a family of some 50
extended relatives who still work on area farms. We enjoyed a lively
discussion with elder Gumersindo Rojas about the old customs and beliefs
still in use by Cuban ''guajiro people,'' particularly in regard to the
ancient moon-cycle cropping and forestry systems. Later, I was happy to
join Hartmann and Cuban Cacique Panchito Ramirez as we traveled to greet
and document families of Cuban Indian descent over the four Eastern
provinces of Camaguey, Las Tunas, Granma and Santiago de Cuba.
Hartmann's research of more than 30 years, and especially the past two
years of comprehensive study, reveals a more widespread Cuban Indian
identity in various mountain populations than previously reported.
Particularly in the island's seven Eastern states, Hartmann is
revisiting many places identified in the mountains and plains by the
expeditions of Dr. Rivero de la Calle in the 1960s and forward.
As Hartmann ardently detailed, the physical characteristics of Taino
descendants - short stature, strong physical stamina, copper skin color,
long black hair, etc. - are present in dozens of these places. As well,
many cultural elements such as the manufacture of traditional cassava
torts; the cropping of the old-style ''conuco,'' or companion planting,
usually guided by the phases of the moon; and the presence of types of
altars and cyclical ceremonies with natural-world elements are
associated with these mountain guajiro folks in the survey.
A mere two decades ago, this was a population dismissed out of hand by
census-takers and even historians as presumably ''extinct'' by the
mid-16th century. ''But the evidence to the contrary has mounted over
recent years,'' said Hartmann, historian and museum director, who
contends ''that the extensive Indian population of the region regrouped,
in legal and outlaw (cimarron) areas, and threw long roots in a large
number of families that survive to today.''
Since the 1940s, and the work of explorer Dr. Antonio Nunez Jimenez and
anthropologist Dr. Manuel Rivero de la Calle, the existence of clusters
of Native families has been accepted in scientific circles. These
included the much-studied clans of the Rojas and Ramirez families of
Caridad de los Indios, Guantanamo. These related and often inter-married
families extend throughout several municipalities and are estimated at
around 1,000 people.
In recent years - with the assistance of the Cuban Foundation for Nature
and Humanity and the partnership of the Onaway Trust (England) and the
Indigenous Legacies project by Plenty Canada - a series of seven
conferences held in Baracoa, Cuba from 1997 to 2003 brought together
Cuban Indians from the region with Native and academic representatives
from Canada and Central and North America.
More recently, Hartmann has gathered a team of well-trained historians
and other academics who are canvassing nearly 20 municipalities for oral
tradition and documentary records tracing the continuous
Indian-descended population, their land tenure and dispossession
histories along with local traditions such as the jigues, or ''little
people,'' and other natural world spiritual beliefs.
In tracking and interviewing the population of Indian descent, Hartmann
found that the Eastern region's Indian genealogical and documentary base
is sustained and widespread, as early work by Rivero de la Calle for
Cuba's Academy of Sciences had indicated. The myth of extinction is
quickly giving way to the light of scientific research and
documentation.
Jiguani, a sleepy town with a beautiful old plaza and dense with Cuban
history, is just one important enclave that yielded a surprise. Hartmann
introduced me to some 10 members of an association of Indian families of
Jiguani who assembled in the municipal library for our lively and
enthusiastic three-hour discussion.
Two elders and the town historian, don Hugo Armas, also of Indian
extraction, explained that their association of some 40 Indian families
in the Jiguani area was formalized 16 years ago, in 1989. As to their
objective, a second elder said: ''It is true for many years we have
confronted many problems, which has taken our attention. But we are born
of the Indian blood. Now we organize to rescue our roots and value our
knowledge.''
The group described the Indian history of Jiguani, the only town in Cuba
whose official shield depicts an Indian warrior in rebellious posture. A
documented enclave of Indian population through the colonial period,
Jiguani was always a highly rebellious place, much given to the wars of
independence against Spain and expressly pro-revolution at this time in
history.
Similar encounters in the Jiguani area, as well as in Camaguey, Najasa
and, later, in Santiago, tended to confirm the growing strength of the
research. A surprising range of indigenous cultural expression is
turning up as people open up to the topic.
Indian roots of eastern Cuba
Cuban Journal, Part Two
JIGUANI, Cuba - Indigenous roots
and identities in Cuba, as elsewhere in the Caribbean, were both assimilated and
layered into the growth of national consciousness. Recent research by Alejandro
Hartmann and others shows that it did not dissipate.
Jose Antonio Molina, of the National Library of Cuba, has recently published
historical literary evidence of many early Taino practices that are still in use
by the guajiro population. As Taino agricultural and medicinal practices
transferred to the new campesinos, both Spanish and African, the families of
Indian ancestry blended into various valleys in the extensive eastern mountains,
a few small communities held together but mostly dispersed as regular country
folk who still lived a great deal of their material culture and important pieces
of their spiritual systems, but not noticeably so.
Families with long roots in the Taino pueblos of the early conquest - once
thought extinct by the late 1600s - are now showing up, represented by caciques
(leaders), in land disputes right into the 1840s. Areitos (dances), condemned
and thought forgotten at the conquest, now show up in 19th-century records,
apparently incorporated into spiritist cults dating from the same era.
In local church records in Camaguey, new research reveals cases of marriages of
''Indios'' to ''Blancos'' (whites), ''Negros'' (blacks) and other listed
''races,'' for instance, up to the 1880s - some 300 years beyond the supposed
''extinction'' of Indians. Curiously, once married to a white, an Indian no
longer was listed as an Indian but was passed to the ''white'' designation.
Still, the families clearly value their ancestry and are inclined to engage the
dialogue encouraged by the new research.
''For 50 square kilometers around us,'' said one of the diminutive elders who
met with us at the Calixto Garcia Library in Jiguani, ''every other family has
Indian roots; our families have oral tales and much knowledge of the land, a
strong Cuban people.'' The old man remembered the public carnivals of the 1930s,
when the ''Indians of Jiguani'' provided their own dancing and music groups.
The agriculture in the region, by guajiros of various ethnic backgrounds, has
deep Indian roots. Among the most enduring sufferers of the horrendous drought
are these natural farmers who still plant many crops by hand, who use the
organized ''conuco'' concept - the traditional Indian science of inter-cropping.
The ''coa,'' or ancient Taino planting stick, is much in use among farmers in
the mountains.
Cycles of weather, as the United States so plainly has experienced, can do huge
harm. Highly dependent on direct and market agriculture, the farmers of eastern
Cuba saw three crop seasons disappear and two normally rain-laden seasons pass
without a drop.
In Santiago, we met and visited with the old man, the cacique Panchito Ramirez,
whose first topic was also water. ''The drought hit us hard, hard, hard. I
thought, 'My Virgen, is this the end of us, the Indians of the mountain?''
In Cuba and even outside of Cuba, Ramirez, from the province of Guantanamo, is
well-known for his participation in the international event ''Indigenous
Legacies of the Caribbean,'' and through the book ''Panchito: Mountain
Cacique,'' which was an ''as-told-to'' narrative. Panchito's mountain community
of Caridad de los Indios is possibly the most-documented of the Indian enclaves.
Guantanamo historian Jose Sanchez Guerra has traced the migration pattern of
Panchito's community from the valley lowlands to the more remote mountain
region.
At the altar of the Virgen del Cobre - the major Cuban Catholic deity also
represented in Taino and African traditions - Panchito made a wonderful prayer.
Panchito prayed for rain - water - to slake all the thirst in nature and he
prayed for the waters of women in labor, an ancient intonation that gathered
nearly everyone walking through the revered chapel before he was done.
Panchito was happy to hear about the Indian families of Jiguani. Hartmann got
the old chief going by repeatedly praising the cassava torte produced at
Jiguani, so a cassava bake-off appears in the works. Panchito was quite happy
about the recent rains that had replenished his crops. From all three regions,
the Indian folks wished and sent each other good rains.