Indians in Cuba

By José Barreiro, in Cultural Survival Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 56-60 (1989) Punta Maisi, CubaThe old Indian woman, a descendant of Cuba'sTaino-Arawak people, bent over and touched theleaves of a small tree. Her open-palmed hand liftedthe round, green leaves in a light handshake. "Theseare good for inflammations of the ovaries," she said."I gave them to all my young women." "She knows alot," her daughter. Marta, said. "She doesn't need apharmacy. You have something wrong with yourbody, she can make you a tea - un cocimiento - andfix you up. The mother and two sisters, part of a large extended family known in this town for its Indian ancestry,continued to show me their patio. Around an oldwell, where they wash their laundry, they pointedout more than a dozen herbs and other useful plants.The Cobas Hernandez clan, from which Maria andher several daughters, her son, Pedro, and hisbrothers spring, counts several living generations offamilies from here to the city of Baracoa, about 12Okm west from Los Arados on Cuba's southern coast.They are not the only such extended family and theyare not the only people of clear Indian ancestry inCuba still living in their aboriginal areas. It may surprise many social scientists that nestledin the mountains of the Oriente region (easternCuba), from Baracoa on the southern coast all theway to the Pico Turquino, the highest mountain inCuba, there are numerous caserios, several barrios,and at least one community of more than a thousandIndian people. They were called Cubeños by FatherBartolome de Las Casas, who helped some of theircommunities to survive, and are ancestors of theoriginal Tainos who met Columbus. In March and April 1989, I traveled to Santiago deCuba to attend a conference, "Seeds of Commerce,mutually sponsored by the Smithsonian Institutionand a Cuban research center, the Casa del Caribe. Itook the opportunity to extend my visit for twoweeks, first in the Baracoa-Punta Maisi region andthen west to the plains country of Camaguey. Iwanted to ascertain the veracity of testimonies that Ihad heard as a child and that have been recentlypublished in Cuban academic journals, to the effectthat Taino-Arawak descendants inhabit the easternregion of Cuba. I wanted to reacquaint myself withthe people of guajiro background still prevalent inthe Camaguey countryside. I heard about the Indian families of Baracoa whileI was growing up in the Camaguey region, some 300km to the northeast of Baracoa, during the 1950s,before I migrated to the United States at age 12. Among my elder relatives, don Joseito Veloz (born1891) migrated to Camaguey from the vicinity of theoriental mountain city of Bayamo. Don Joseito toldstories about the old communities in and nearBaracoa. He was himself what is called in Camagueya "guajiro," and one who pointed out the Indianorigins of many of his customs and lifeways: thethatch-roof bohio made out of the royal palm soabundant in Cuba; and his yucca field and his custom of eating the yucca bread, casabe, and thetraditional Taino soup, called the ajiaco. Guajiroidentity, customs, and lifestyle still prevail throughout the Camaguey region.1 More recently, after writing for some years ondiverse Indian cultures, indigenous development,agriculture, and human rights issues, I noticed severalarticles in the Cuban press detailing studies carriedout among the Indian descendants in the Baracoaregion. The studies were carried out by investigatorsfrom the University of Havana, in cooperation withscientists from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and theSoviet Union.Rivero de Ia Calle Study At the University of Havana, I met the chief investigator of those studies, Manuel Rivero de laCalle, a gentle, soft-spoken scholar who is dean ofCuban anthropology. He started work in the Orientearea in the mid-1960s, leading a team that for severalyears conducted studies in physical and biological anthropology with an extended "base" population in theYateras municipality of the new province of Guantánamo, not far from Baracoa. Rivero's biological study, conducted in twostages - 1964 and 1972-1973 - focused exclusively oncertifying racial composition on a sample of 300 people of Indian origin in the Yateras municipality. Hismethodology included anthropometric measurementsand somastopic observations (following the International Biologic Program), serulogic characteristics,and family genealogies. The methodology of "physical anthropology,"which uses anthropometric measurements, is considered antiquated by North American scholars andinsulting by many Indians. Nevertheless, it provesfruitful in initially identifying the effusive Cuban indigenous population. Rivero's conclusions challenged official academicand sociological positions in Cuba - positions accepted by the international academy - that the Indianpopulation of Cuba was totally extinguished by 1550.Indeed, the scientists found that at least 1,000 peopleconforming to physical characteristics associated withthe Arawak branch of Amazonian Indian peoples livein Yateras alone. The studies assert what oral andwritten historical sources have also attested: theYateras Indians are a core group in a larger patternof extended families and communities of similar Indian origin, now increasingly intermarried with otherCubans of Iberian and African ancestry.Historical References The existence of an Indian population and identityin Cuba was vehemently denied for most of thetwentieth century, primarily by the Cuban scholarFernando Ortiz. A liberal professor of Hispanicancestry, Ortiz saw the question of Indian identity asa ploy by the right wing to obfuscate black issues.Deeply conversant in all the social sciences, Ortizwas limited by a Havana base and by a purist, "belljar" anthropological perspective of Indian-ness. Thisperspective maintains that American Indians cease tobe "real" Indians as they adapt Western tools andmethods. Indian "cultures" are assumed frozen at themoment of contact with "the West." Although heframed the theme of "transculturation" in Cuban letters. Ortiz provided the tree of Cuban multiethnicitywith a strictly Ibero-African trunk. The assertionbecame that all Cuban Indians, purportedly a weakand timid people, were exterminated by 1550. Nevertheless, the historic and ethnographic recordsupports the Indian presence in eastern Cuba - the existence of its actual population of descendants and itscultural extensions. Both Rivero and Antonio NunezJimenez, a prominent Cuban naturalist - and otherhistorical references - confirm the existence of dozensof Indian family nuclei (caserios) in the extendedregion of Oriente, from Baracoa to Punta Maisi, tothe Sierra Maestra and the Pico Turquino. In theabsence of a proper census, it is hard to hazard aguess as to the total population of Indian descendantsin the general Oriente area, but it probably comes toseveral thousand people. Miguel Rodriguez Ferrer, a Spanish scientist whovisited the area in 1847, wrote in the 1870s aboutfinding Indian communities at El Caney, in Jiguani,and on the banks of the Yumuri River (Baracoa). Hewrote that the people lived in bohios, and "gifted mewith a dance" - possibly an Areito, the round danceof the Tainos - during which they recitedcosmologies. Jose Marti, the poet and revolutionary apostle ofCuban independence, traveled in the area in his finaldays, camping with Indian families. His diary entriesjust prior to his death in a Spanish ambush in May1895 describe the "indios de Garrido," direct ancestorsof the Yateras families. Marti wondered at reportsthat some Indians were scouting for the Spanishtroops against the insurrectionists. In a letter of 23June 1895, possibly in answer to Marti's inquiry.another major historical figure, General AntonioMaceo, who commanded troops in the area, commented that the "Indians of Yateras" had now passedinto the Cuban insurrectionary ranks (Marti 1964). A French doctor and anthropologist, Henri Dumont, who for decades lived in the eastern sugarplantations and provided care for black slaves, wrotein 1922 about the existence of Indians in the interiorprovinces of Cuba - "but where they abound withmost frequency is in the eastern department" (Dumont 1922). The Cuban historian Felipe Pichardo Moya wrotein 1945 that during the 1840s Indians in El Caney,near Santiago, could muster "several hundred pure-blood warriors." In March 1845, Remigio Torres, a"pure-blood Indian" clerk of the municipality, claimedlands for the Indian population of the "many Indiansin the extended semi-circle from the Paso de IaVirgen to the foothills of the Sierra de Limones." Asproof of cultural continuity, the Indian clerk assertedthat every Sunday Indian people held their originaldances. In 1849, the same clerk, still arguing Indianland rights, told a meeting of the Cabildo: "Youknow that it is very rare for a natural of the Peopleto mix his Indian blood with that of the Spanish, andinsofar as marriage with the people of color, this wasnever permitted to them as per arrangement with thesovereign dispositions." As late as 1936, an officialCuban map of Oriente Province showed Indian reser-vations at Tiguabos (between Baracoa and Santiago)and at Palenque (Moya 1945). Oral history of Yateras Indians corroborates courtrecords indicating that the Indian caserios atTiguabos and Palenque and Indian settlements in theSan Andres valley were dispossessed, farm by farm,during the nineteenth century. Those Indian populations, many with the family names of Rojas andRamirez, resettled in the more remote valley ofYateras and formed a community called Caridad delos Indios. All along that valley of the Rio Toa anddown to Baracoa and Yumuri, and along the coast toLos Arados, in Punta Maisi, the families of Rojasand Ramirez, as well as the Romeros, the Cobas, theRiveros, many of the Jimenez, Hernandez, Veloz, andCabrera, retain history, identity, and customs rootedin the Cuban Arawak traditions, the old Tainohomeland.2Among the People Alejandro Hartmann, the criollo historian ofBaracoa. accompanied me in my initial rounds in thearea. A good citizen and a critical thinker, Hartmannheads the restoration of Baracoa, the first colonialvillage founded in Cuba (1511). He pointed out thatas late as 1561, Baracoa's actual population wasmade up of three Spanish and more than fifty Tainohomesteads, A native Baracoan of German ancestry,Hartmann marveled at the fuss about the Indianpresence in the area, He pointed out that until the1900s the region was relatively unpopulated by Europeans and Africans. "Of course, the Indian presenceis all around us," he said. "I know many families whoare clearly Indian." Hartmann pointed out that "from Baracoa to PuntaMaisi, the people use more Taino words thananywhere else in Cuba."3 He introduced me to severalhouseholds in Baracoa, Guirito, and Yumuri, where Iconducted interviews. One early morning we tookthe coastal road to Punta Maisi (maisi is the Tainoword for "maize"), where we met Pedro Hernandez'sfamily at Los Arados. "Here I can say, our Indian people, we have beenlike a fish in a cooler, our eyes wide open but notseeing," Pedro Hernandez Cobas said. His sisters andmother had brought us into the living room of thefamily's wood-frame, thatch-roofed house. Hismother and sisters nodded when he said, "We havealways been Indians. Our family, and there are manyother families just here in Los Arados, this is ourancestry. But I must tell you, it is only in recentyears that we discuss it openly with other people." Hernandez, curator of a small museum at LosArados, is in his thirties and is a militant of theCuban Communist Party. He greatly admires FidelCastro and particularly the late revolutionary commander, Camilo Cienfuegos. However, his professedpassion is learning about his Indian past. Hernandezworked with Rivero's team during their study atYateras. "There are a lot of Indian families there," hesaid. "But for a long time, we have been isolatedfrom each other. It has been good for us that otherpeople pay attention now. I took a ride with Hernandez to the lighthouse atPunta Maisi, easternmost point in Cuba, 50 milesacross the Windward Channel from Haiti. Along theway we stopped several times to visit with other Indians walking along the road. Two young women,from another Indian family, were walking to town toget milk. They agreed to be photographed and toldus that their father had been a guide to Cuban ex-plorer Nunez Jimenez during his expeditions in thearea in the 1950s. Their grandfather, they said, guided the North American archaeologist Mark Harrington at the turn of the century. The women's features had been measured for astudy in 1964, and they joked about having highcheekbones when I went to photograph them. Onemimicked how the investigators had marveled at theirstraight, black hair. As we drove away, Hernandezapologized for their grandfather guide, whom he"respected" but whose knowledgeable eye had ledHarrington to valuable Indian pieces hidden andcarved in caves. That Harrington took many Indianpieces from here to New York. He even sawed off astalagmite statue and carted it away," he said. Over several days, often with Hartmann, I visitedand interviewed 14 members of five extended familiesclaiming a Cuban Indian ethnicity. Besides PuntaMaisi and Los Arados, people received me along theRio Toa valley north of Baracoa, along the banks ofthe Yumuri, east of the city, and in a barrio ofBaracoa itself. To the unpracticed eye, but for theirlooks, many of my interviewees appeared muchlike other Cuban campesinos. Among all of them Ifound a casual sense of Indian identity, and most retained important aspects of physical and spiritualculture. On the way from Baracoa to Punta Maisi, westopped at a guajiro cemetery near the coast. An indigenous touch: many of the simple graves werecovered by small, thatch "houses" and surrounded bylarge sea shells. The shells (Strombus gigas Linneo),known in the area by their Taino name, guamo, arebelieved to protect the deceased from bothersomespirits; guajiro families still use them to call oneanother across remote valleys. One evening in Baracoa, I witnessed a communaldance, kept alive by only one Indian caserio atGuirito. The dance, called quiriba, has been passeddown the generations by several related families. Thequiriba certainly has French elements to it (manyFrench people settled in the general region of Orienteafter the black revolution in Haiti in the mid-1800s),but is significantly unique in that it has survivedwithin an Indian community. All the agriculturalists confirmed, with great certainty, the practice of planting root crops by thewaning moon (luna menquante). The assertion is thatboth yucca and boniato (a native sweet potato) will"rot early" (se pica temprano) if not planted by thewaning moon. In cutting wood, too, local guajirosargue that it will rot faster if cut in the full or ascending moons. One old man near the banks of theRio Toa spoke of fishing by the moon for a fishcalled the teti, which is scarce at other times. At Los Arados, I also visited an elementary school;the principal asked the Indian children to gather, andabout 25 students quickly surrounded us. Some weremore reticent than others, but all affirmed their Indian background. Many of their names correspondedto the family names identified with Indian-ness. My questions concentrated on a person's basis orrationale for claiming an Indian identity. All pointedto family history: "We are an Indian family. It hasbeen always that way." "We do Indian things, likemy mother, she drinks from a jicara, nothing else,she won't use a glass or a cup." "We know thewilderness [manigua]." Going toward the Punta Maisi lighthouse, I askedHartmann about the reluctance of some Cubanacademics to accept the Indian identity in this area ofCuba. He responded, "Well, even Rivero, he refusesto say the people here are Indians - he defines themas 'descendants' of Indians. It is common to say thatthere are no Indians left in Cuba." "But I am here," Pedro Hernandez said from theback seat. "Indians or descendants, it's the samething. They, the old Tainos, were here. Now, we,my generation, we are here. We don't live exactlylike they did, but we are still here." Not only Hernandez, but everyone interviewed expressed interest in a conference or congress of Indianfamilies. The idea that people with Indianbackgrounds and identity could meet and exchangeoral histories and natural knowledge was appealingto everyone I interviewed. Several people had heardabout the Columbus Quincentenary, coming up in1992, and expressed interest in some kind of event toobserve the occasion. Since the aboriginal ancestorsof this region, the Taino, were the first American Indians to greet Columbus, the idea seemed pertinent.The Legend of Yumuri At Guirito, I talked with Dora Romero Palmero,78; her son, Pedro Cobas Romero, 53; and herdaughter, Mirta, 48. Grandmother Dora, as withMaria Cobas Hernandez in Los Arados, had been amidwife and was still a well-known herbalist. DoraRomero, from an Indian family, had earlier marrieda Cobas. Her son, Pedro Cobas Romero, was acousin to Pedro Hernandez Cobas from LosArados - yet the two had never met. Pedro Cobas said, "Our people have suffered a lot.I myself went to work as a boy of six, picking coffee. That was the time you started work then. Theadults in our families recognized each other as Indian, but we children were directed not to talk aboutit. He retold a legend about the promontory at themouth of the Yumuri, a river that flows into theAtlantic not far from Guirito. It is said that duringthe Spanish conquest the Indian families who couldnot escape enslavement by the conquistadors climbedthe mountain and cursed their pursuers. Entirefamilies committed suicide by jumping. "How horrible that was," Hartmann commented. "But it isunderstandable, a proper thing," Cobas responded."The conquistadors treated them so bad in the minesand the fields. After they had lost in combat, thiswas their only way left to defeat the Spanish, by killing themselves. That way they could not behumiliated. And they died with their dignity." Cobas also retold the stories of Hatuey andGuama, two Taino caciques who led the wars againstthe early Spanish conquest. "Hatuey was from whatis now Haiti, but Guama was a cacique here. Hatueycrossed over to warn Guama and other chiefs aboutthe evil of the Spanish, what they had done to theTainos on that island. They say Hatuey brought abasket of gold in his canoe and told our people thisgold was the only god the Spanish adored." Both Hatuey and Guama were killed. but notbefore leading a 10-year resistance to the conquest.Other uprisings occurred in the area into the late1500s. "They say a Spanish friar wanted to baptizeHatuey as the soldiers got ready to burn him at thestake," Cobas said. "He informed Hatuey that if baptized as a Christian, he would go to Heaven; butHatuey, who despised the Christians, refused thebaptism. He preferred to go to hell, he said."The Way of the Yerbas Three older women, all grandmothers of extendedfamilies, discussed herbal traditions with me. "Greenmedicine," as their traditional knowledge is nowcalled in Cuba, is of great interest to the government,which is presently testing herbal substances inmedical laboratories in Santiago and Havana. The tropical fecundity of the region generates alush plant life, much of which is named with Indianwords. The grandmothers. were slow at first to revealtheir knowledge, but warmed to the subject as weestablished mutual respect. Walking with DoraRomern around her bohio in Guirito, I noted what Icould as she pointed out small herbs and specifictrees with medicinal properties. With each plant, sheexplained when and how to pick it, and what part ofthe plant to use and how to use it. No longer an active midwife (government doctors, who provide freemedical care even in these remote parts, have pushedaside the traditional midwifery), Romero claims tohave delivered more than 200 infants in her time,mostly cousins, daughters, and granddaughters of herextended family. I asked both Romero and AleidaHernandez about the source of their herbal traditions."From my mother," Romero said. "From the grand-mothers," Hernandez responded. It was Hernandez,too, in Los Arados, who first pointed out the wildtobacco plant growing on a trail behind her house. The tobacco was most important to me, in that itis a peculiarly American plant, used by many Indianpeople in spiritual ceremonies. I asked her if she usedthe tobacco in any way. She looked away. "My father smoked tobacco," shesaid. "He liked the cigar" (el tabaco). I said, "Not just to smoke, like anybody does.Many people smoke tabacos in Cuba. But the tobacco plant itself, do you use it as a connection?" "For the collection of the little leaves from theplants," she said quickly. "Yes?" "An offering," she said (una ofrenda). "To themother plant. We give her the little seeds of thetabaco.~' "So. you offer it to the plant or herb you are goingto pick?" "Yes, that is to ask the permission," she said. "Sothe cocimiento does you good." These responses indicated the perpetuation of arather ancient indigenous practice of the WesternHemisphere: the use of tobacco, leaf, seed, as a communication to spirit beings or the Creator. Often thetobacco is burnt or is left, wrapped in small bundles,in designated places. In Aleida Cobas' case, it was a"leaving" of small tobacco seeds to the mother"plant. The grandmother asserted that the "plantsknow" and can "help you or hurt you," depending onhow you approach them. Later, with Dora Romero at Guirito, and in yetanother instance, with the old couple by the RioToa, both Hartmann and I would hear of a similaruse of tobacco as a spiritual gift to the medicinalplants.Future Work A relatively short visit yielded good preliminary information for the continuing study of Cubanaboriginal customs still vital among a widespread,genealogically continuous population of Taino-Arawak ancestry. A contemporary people, countingmany small agriculturalists among them and withvaluable knowledge of tropical flora and fauna, theIndo-Cuban families of eastern Oriente are descendants of the first American indigenous people to greetColumbus. José Barreiro is editor-in-chief of Northeast IndianQuarterly at Cornell University.NotesJoseiio Veloz. interviews with the author. 1983, 1989. Camagueyis an agricultural region. Many of the traditions of the guajirocountry culture in Camaguey are quite similar to those found inthe Baracoa area. The term guajiro is synonymous in Cuba withcampesino or countryman-peasant. There are contending schoolsof thought on the etymology of the word, but everyone agrees it isdeeply rooted. Caribbean scholar Jose Juan Arrom gives it a Tainoetymology. meaning "one of us." It would have been the term applied to the new mestizo generation by the Taino elders. Somescholars, including Fernando Ortiz. point to a Vucatec, Carib. orColombian coastal origin for the term, though all concur that guajiro describes what is most autochthonous in the increasinglytransculturated Cuban identity. Return.As recently as 18 June 1989 ("Indians of Cuba." Granma Newspaper), a Cuban historian. Marta Rey, asserted that the Indianfamilies are limited to two families. the Rojas and the Ramirez.She is in error. Rey proclaims the Indian families are too raciallymixed to be called Indians. and states. with unwarranted rigidity."There are no absolutely legitimate Indians left in our country. Return.Havana linguistics professor Sergio Valdes Bernal later pointed outabout 200 active words of Arawak origin in the fauna, flora, andtopography of the region. Arrom, in conversation with the author,thought Valdes' estimate conservative. See "Indoamericanismos noaruacos en el espanol de Cuba," by Sergio Valdes Bernal, in CienciasSociales (Havana. 1978). and "Aportes antillanos a espanol deAmerica," by Jose J. Arrom, in Areito 7 (27). Return.ReferencesDumont H.1922 Antropologia y patologia camparadas de los negrosesclavor. I. Castellanos, trans. Colleccion Cubana delibros y documentos ineditos o raros. Vol. 2. Havana.Dunn. 0. and J.E. Kelley, Jr. 1989 The Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America, 1492-1493. 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