Short Film on Taíno Chief Premiers at Venezuelan Embassy in Barbados

Barbados (UCTP Taíno News) - A short film, highlighting the bravery of Taíno Kasike (chief) Guamá premiered at the Venezuelan Embassy in Barbados on Friday, January 27, 2023. The work of First Nations Productions, a fledgling Indigenous media group, led by Lokono Hereditary Chief, Damon G. Corrie was the first ever to feature the chief’s story.

The 23-minute film was premiered along with ”The Last Arawak Girl of Barbados,” another film short by First Nations Productions in collaboration with Poste Creativo based in Venezuela. It was the first and only film ever made entirely in the ancient Lokono-Arawak language. First Nations Productions again collaborated with Poste Creativo on the Guamá project.

 “As Indigenous Peoples we need to tell our own stories,” said filmmaker Damon Corrie. “This is a story that needed to be told. We’ve started with this short, G-rated presentation, but our goal is to make a feature film on Kasike Guamá, as well as other Taíno chiefs.” 

The Guamá film project was financially supported, in part, by the United Confederation of Taíno People, and grassroots donations. The project was commended by the Cuban government, as well as one of the remaining Taíno communities in Cuba, the Ramirez-Rojas clan. Guamá will be available on the Eagle Clan Arawaks’ You Tube Channel on January 28, 2023.

UCTP Taíno News 01.27.2023

Reproducen rostro de un indio taíno*

Rostro de un indio taíno
Foto: Jorge Luis Merencio y archivos del Museo Arqueológico

(For the English version of this story click on article title above photo)*

Restauradores del Museo Arqueológico de Baracoa y antropólogos extranjeros reprodujeron el rostro del taíno cuya osamenta se cree pertenezca al líder Guamá
Por: Lisván Lescaille Durand
Correo: corresp@jrebelde.cip.cu

BARACOA, Guantánamo.— Cualquiera sea la identidad del indio cuyo cadáver fue encontrado en febrero de 2003 en las serranía de Boma, en la primera de nuestras villas y ciudades, no caben dudas de su espíritu inquieto. Se resiste al sosiego de las almas en manos de Hades. Quiere revelarnos su historia. Ahora, presumiblemente, da la cara a la modernidad.

Un equipo de restauradores del Museo Arqueológico baracoense Cueva El Paraíso, con la colaboración de antropólogos extranjeros, reprodujo el rostro del taíno, cuya osamenta, exhibida allí, se cree pertenezca al cacique Guamá.

La presunta imagen del líder indocubano —protagonista de la más cruenta, larga y efectiva rebelión aborigen contra el exterminio de España en Cuba, entre 1522 y 1532—, se obtuvo a partir del cráneo del cadáver descubierto a principios de 2003 en la cueva La Vigía, con numerosas evidencias histórico-arqueológicas que lo relacionan con Guamá.

Durante más de seis meses los expertos trabajaron en la confección de un molde de yeso con la cavidad craneana del extinto, y aplicaron la técnica de pivote para el apuntalamiento del tejido blando facial alrededor de la cara, informó a JR uno de los autores, el joven restaurador Andrey Guilarte.

"Vaciamos en yeso el molde original del cráneo del cadáver y le colocamos 32 pivotes en torno a su fisonomía, luego se rellenó el rostro con una plastilina especial hasta lograr los detalles específicos", explicó Guilarte.

"Se trata de un complejo proceso que requirió tiempo, precisión y exactitud, indispensables para acercarnos fielmente a la imagen del nativo estudiado", abundó el coautor del proyecto junto a los también escultores Noel Coutín y Bernardo Milhet, además de la arqueóloga estadounidense Sharyn Thompson, la canadiense Susan Hurlich y la colaboradora local Yanexi Pelier.

"Posiblemente esta sea la primera reproducción fisonómica de un arahuaco realizada en Cuba, al menos que tengamos noticias", opina el profesor Roberto Ordúñez Fernández, director del museo y de la Sociedad Arqueológica de Baracoa.

EVIDENCIAS QUE PESAN

El investigador Ordúñez es el más fervoroso defensor de la teoría de que el individuo de marras puede ser Guamá o alguien muy influyente dentro de la jerarquía taína. Su hipótesis gana sustento con los resultados de la prueba de carbono 14, conocidos en agosto de 2004.

Una muestra de basura arqueológica recogida en el lugar del hallazgo, y examinada por expertos internacionales, arrojó que el cadáver yacía en un sitio de enterramiento de los llamados grupos arcaicos, llegados a Cuba 160 años antes que los taínos.

La edad estimada es de 1020 AP (Antes del Presente). El año de la muestra es + 0 -20, o sea 472 años antes de la llegada de Colón a Cuba y 160 años antes de los grupos agroalfareros. Por tal razón la cueva de donde se extrajeron los residuos de basura arqueológica estuvo habitada por un grupo humano alrededor del año 1000 d.n.e.

"El cadáver objeto de investigación pertenece, por la deformación fronto-occipital y el ajuar cerámico, a los grupos taínos que arribaron a nuestras costas a partir del año 1100 o 1200 de nuestra era", sostiene el arqueólogo Ordúñez.

"Tratándose del único entierro ceramista en la gruta del hallazgo, suponemos que este cadáver fue trasladado a un contexto funerario de los grupos arcaicos, por razones aún desconocidas, aunque puede suponerse que lo escondieron o practicaron algún culto especial."

"No se puede olvidar que ya en época de la conquista se estaba llevando a cabo la práctica bochornosa, por parte de los españoles, de profanar y saquear las tumbas aborígenes para robar las riquezas de altos personajes de esas comunidades", considera Ordúñez.

La osamenta que se exhibe en el Museo arqueológico de Baracoa perteneció a un individuo que fue sepultado en la posición de cuclillas y a su alrededor se colocaron objetos y piezas ceremoniales típicos de los enterramientos indígenas: "una esferalita, muy grande, según el rango del personaje; un collar de serium con amuleto colgante; una cazuela con ofrenda de caracolus-caracolus y polidantes, obsequio para el viaje al ultramundo, además de otras piedras ceremoniales", recuerda Ordúñez Fernández.

Precisa el especialista que el esqueleto encontrado tiene una fractura en la frente, resultado de un golpe mortal, a lo cual se une la confirmación, mediante peritajes, de que se trata una persona masculina, de algo más de 40 años, lo cual coincide con las señas de Guamá.

Y para colmo de coincidencias, la sombra de una presumiblemente atractiva mujer adereza esta enigmática historia. Existen documentados testimonios —reitera el profesor Ordúñez— que confirman la muerte del líder indígena no por las balas españolas, sino de un hachazo en la frente propinado por su hermano Olguama, mientras el cacique dormía. La agresión pudo estar impulsada por los celos, ya que Guamá raptó a la cuñada, según atestiguaron indios de esa guerrilla.

"Cuando tengamos los resultados del ADN —una prueba muy costosa que acomete el antropólogo noruego Richard Daly—, podríamos tener la antigüedad exacta del personaje, las enfermedades que padeció, los alimentos que consumía y con ello su ubicación en el área geográfica del descubrimiento, entre otras valiosísimas informaciones", sostiene el director del Museo Arqueológico de Baracoa.

*******************************************

Guamá: un héroe no suficientemente estudiado

La vida de este indio que conocía las serranías de Baracoa como la palma de su mano no ha sido suficientemente estudiada. Como afirma Juan Jiménez Pastrana en su libro Guamá, "el cacique no tuvo la suerte de que sus hechos heroicos fueran divulgados por el padre Las Casas en sus famosas crónicas: sus acciones fueron ignoradas o poco conocidas...".

Sin embargo, está documentado que provocó quebraderos de cabeza a los gobernadores de la Isla en esa década de explotación y exterminio. En 1522 se internó en las montañas de Baracoa con 50 bravos guerreros y puso en práctica la guerra de guerrillas, luchando con arcos, flechas, macanas y hachas de piedra contra las lanzas, espadas y arcabuces españoles.

Incendió en varias ocasiones el poblado de Baracoa, asaltaba haciendas de los conquistadores y sumaba a los indios a la contienda. Se ha podido conocer, según el profesor Ordúñez, que Guamá llegó hasta la región de Camagüey e intentó unir a otros caciques y negros africanos para la rebelión contra los españoles.

*Por Juventud Rebelde.co.cu 11 Dec. 2006

Historians work to set record straight on Cuba's Taino Indians

BY GARY MARX
Chicago Tribune

YARA, Cuba - (KRT) - In a sweltering coastal settlement, Alejandro Hartmann pulled out a spiral notebook and jotted notes as a local peasant described his family's ties to a long forgotten indigenous group that is witnessing a modest resurgence.

"What is the name of your mother and father?" Hartmann asked Julio Fuentes, a wisp of a man parked on a wooden bench. "Where do they live? How old are they?"

Hartmann fired off a dozen more questions as part of his effort to complete the first census of the descendants of the Taino Indians, an indigenous group that once thrived in this remote region of eastern Cuba and later were thought to be extinct.

"Julio is a mixture of Spanish and Indian like many people," explained Hartmann, a historian and Taino expert. "I want to eliminate the myth once and for all that the Indians were extinguished in Cuba."

For years, anthropologists widely believed this island's once-powerful Taino Indians were exterminated shortly after Christopher Columbus sailed into a pristine bay and walked the steep, thickly forested terrain more than 500 years ago.

The explorer spent only a week in the area in 1492 but described the Taino as gentle, hard-working people growing crops and navigating the crystalline waters in huge dug-out canoes.

But, in a familiar story throughout the Americas, war and disease decimated the Taino, whose sense of identity was further razed over the centuries by racism and by generations of intermixing with whites, blacks and others who settled here.

Today, it's difficult to differentiate Taino descendents from the average Cuban peasant, or guajiro, as they are called.

Yet, Hartmann and a group of experts continue to press ahead, rewriting the tale of the Taino's demise in an effort to set the historical record straight and foster recognition among the island's 11 million residents of the group's contribution to Cuban life.

With a new museum, academic conferences and other projects, they also are trying to nurture a nascent sense of identity among the hundreds - perhaps thousands - of Taino descendents who are scattered along Cuba's impoverished eastern tip.

"We are recovering knowledge that was forgotten, knowledge that my parents and grandparents had," said Fuentes, 51. "A lot of people had knowledge but lived and died without knowing its Indian origin."

Experts say Taino influences are everywhere.

The palm-thatched huts common in the region are similar to those built centuries ago by the indigenous group. Some farmers till the soil using a long, sharpened pole known to the Taino as a coa.

Fuentes said he uses a coa to remove old plantain trees and dig latrines, while harvesting beans, sweet potatoes and other crops according to the four lunar phases - a belief system of indigenous origin.

Some coastal residents fish with small nets in the Taino style and crabs are trapped using a crude, box-shaped device that has changed little over the centuries, experts say.

Although the Taino language, Arawak, has all but died in Cuba, hundreds of indigenous words are peppered throughout the local Spanish. Many of the names of the island's most well-known places - from Havana to Camaguey to Baracoa - come from the Arawak language.

"The Taino culture permeates the culture of Cuba in a fundamental way," explained Jose Barreiro, a Cuban-American scholar of Taino history. "It's the base culture of the country along with Spanish and African influences."

Experts say the Taino migrated north from South America's Amazon basin centuries ago, populating much of what is now Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba.

The Taino arrived in Cuba about 300 years before Columbus and eventually numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Organized in villages under the authority of caciques or chiefs, the Taino cultivated beans, yucca, corn and other crops, along with something they called cohiba, or tobacco.

They hunted turtles, snakes, iguanas and a giant rodent called a jutia, while also adhering to a complex set of spiritual beliefs whose primary deity, Yucahuguama, represented agriculture and the ocean.

Roberto Ordunez, an anthropologist and director of the Taino museum in Baracoa, a picturesque colonial town of 50,000, said Columbus described a large, thriving agricultural community.

"I climbed up a mountain and found the flat lands planted with many things," Ordunez said Columbus observed in his journal in 1492. "It was a pleasure to see it and in the middle of it was a large population."

Although the Taino left no large monuments, they built canals for channeling water, caves for storing food during drought and a network of stone footpaths for travel and to escape their enemies, a raiding tribe known as the Carib.

But the Taino had no chance against the Spanish, who brought malaria, smallpox and other deadly diseases, along with modern weapons.

Still, some put up a fight.

An indigenous leader named Hatuey traveled from the island of Hispaniola to Baracoa to warn the Tainos about the conquistadores. He was captured, refused to convert to Christianity and was burned at the stake.

Hatuey remains a revered figure in Cuba, where his story is among the first lessons taught to schoolchildren.

"Hatuey is considered the first rebel in America because he was the first to understand the abuses of the colonialists and rebel against them," explained Noel Cautin, a guide at the Taino museum.

A second indigenous leader, Guama, launched hit-and-run attacks against the conquistadores for a decade before he was killed, perhaps by his own brother, in 1532. By then, the Taino numbered only a few thousand, a figure that continued to plummet. Historians in the 19th century declared there were no indigenous left on the island.

"Those who remained were in remote areas and the historians were primarily in the cities," Barriero said. "The Taino also had adopted Spanish technology and language."

Barriero and others say that not a single Taino community remains intact, though the group's culture is best preserved in La Caridad de los Indios and a handful of other remote villages in the mountains southwest of Baracoa.

In a sign of growing international recognition, the Smithsonian Institution last year returned bone fragments from seven Taino Indians to the La Caridad community for a sacred reburial.

The human remains along with thousands of indigenous artifacts were taken almost a century ago by American archaeologist Mark Harrington and later fell into the possession of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

Another source of pride is Baracoa's modest Taino museum, which opened last year in a hillside cave and displays pendants, necklaces and other pre-Columbian artifacts made of shells and other materials.

Fuentes has visited the museum twice.

"I felt pride because I hadn't see these things before and because I'm part of this culture," he said.