UN Expert Meeting on Indigenous Languages

United Nations (UCTP Taíno News) - An Expert Group Meeting on Indigenous Languages was held from 8-10 January 2008 at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Organized by the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the meeting was held in accordance with a UN Economic and Social Council decision, which authorized a three-day international expert group meeting on indigenous languages and requested that the results of the meeting be reported to the Permanent Forum at its seventh session.

The meeting was attended by indigenous language experts, UNPFII members as well as interested Member States, UN Agencies, Indigenous Peoples' Organizations, and Non-Governmental Organizations. Some of the issues discussed included the importance of linguistic diversity, the connection between language rights and all other fundamental rights, a concern for the lack of urgency while a majority of all indigenous languages are threatened with extinction and proposals for the revitalization, promotion and protection of indigenous languages.

Represented at the meeting, the United Confederation of Taíno People was one of several organizations submitting interventions which form part of the final report now available at the PFII website.

UCTPTN 01.29.2008

Taino Cultural Presentation in NY

Ancient Antillean Sloth Exhibited in Havana

Havana, Cuba (UCTP Taino News) – A recent discovery of an ancient sloth and other fossils are set to be exhibited in Havana’s Natural History Museum. Cuban scientists believe the sloth fossil, which was found in the central province of Sancti Spiritus, is between 18 and 20 million years old.

Similar discoveries of what are termed “the Caribbean’s oldest fossils” have also been made in the area known as Domo Zaza since the 1970s. Fossil remains found at the site include giant sloth, giant ostriches, giant crocodiles, rodents, a shark, a new species of primate, turtles, and several manatees. Research indicates that the occurrences of some of these animal groups are as old if not older then similar groups on the South American mainland. The fossils were found close to the banks of the Cayajana River, 350 km east of Havana.

The Domo Zaza site is known as a “unique” and an important paleontological and geological investigation area as the only other Antillean locality that has yielded similar land-mammal materiel of significant antiquity is located in Yauco, Puerto Rico.

Having undergone significant study in cooperation with American Museum of Natural History in New York, the fossil of the most ancient sloth of the Antilles is now a part of the permanent collection of the Havana Museum of Natural History.

UCTPTN 01.27.2008

Tracing Taíno Ancestry in Puerto Rico

Since 1994, Dr. Juan Carlos Martínez Cruzado has been working on the quest to find the origins of the Taínos. The genetic professor from the Biology Department of the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez (UPRM) confessed that the only thing that he knew before about the first inhabitants of our island was what his 5th-and 11th-grades history classes taught him.

He recalls that the archaeologist Juan José Ortiz Aguilú, director of the Archaeology Program of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, was the person who awoke his interest on this topic, when he offered Martínez Cruzado the chance to investigate the mitochondrial genetic material (mtDNA) of an ancient skeleton.

Although the majority of our genetic material is inside the nucleus of our cells, the mtDNA can only be found outside the nucleus in an organelle called mitochondria. Martínez Cruzado, a Harvard Ph.D., clarified that the mtDNA is 200,000 times smaller than the nuclear DNA.

“We all possess the mtDNA, but it’s only transmitted by mothers,” explained the
professor. Also, in the mtDNA a mutation or change in composition occurs each 3,000 years.

Because of this, the mtDNA can be preserved through many generations and help trace human migrations around the world. Although racial mixing has been a common historical phenomenon in the Caribbean, there are mtDNAs that have maintained their original state and can be identified as African, Taíno or Caucasian. “The evolution of human kind is written on the mitochondrial DNA”, he stated.

At the beginning of his research Martínez Cruzado searched for Taíno ancestry by
extracting mtDNA from bones. This technique was discarded because the results didn’t show variety in the genetic material extracted, and the technique was too expensive and complicated.

The professor, then decided to collect hair, saliva and blood samples from people with typical Taíno traits to obtain their mtDNA. Between 1998 and 1999, the investigation was based on analyzing the mtDNA of voluntaries from UPRM and Indieras, Maricao. The study revealed a higher incidence of Taíno DNA in people from Indieras whose physical appearance resembled Taínos: black hair and slanted eyes.

The professor then obtained funding from the National Foundation of the Science of United States to analyze the mtDNA of a representative sample in Puerto Rico.

Martínez Cruzado found 19 maternal lineages; nine of which have enough frequency and variability to suggest that they go back to the pre-Columbian period. “All the members of each lineage share a great-great-grandmother. These great-great-grandmothers are responsible for all the lineages in the world and share an African great-great-grandmother,” explained the scientist.

The study shows that the majority of the Indian lineages in Puerto Rico originated in the Amazonic region.

Martínez Cruzado’s study has been published in many scientific journals, including the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in September, 2005. The professor has extended the investigation of Indian migrations in the Caribbean region to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where he has also found mtDNA with Indian heritage. The results are expected in 2008.

Author: Margarita Santori López, PRENSA RUM
Source: http://www.uprm.edu/news/docs/UPRMNews2008009.pdf

A relic José Martí had in his offices in the USA was donated to the Museum – House of Martí in Cuba.

“A document recently found at the National Archive shows also the authenticity of the ax. It is a document writen by hand by Marti’s friend in which he tells how effectively he gave it the ax to Martí in New York for his 41 birth date”.

“I had the ax in my house among my dearest souvenirs for a Little more than 27 years” says profesor Jorge Juan Lozano Ros.

The day he brought the Taino Petal ax to the editorial department – considered the oldest object the Hero had in his office in the USA – he gave the chance to the journalists to touch it with the pride of someone who keeps a very valuable object and with the wish of its energy accompains all us.

“I carry the request made by Gonzalo de Quesada y Michelsen, who gave it to me in 1980 in his home located in Paseo 656 and until now it has been my dearest talisman”, comented to the newspaper Professor Lozano, a specialist of the Office of the Program of Marti in Havana City.

The piece will be donated with the request that it can be exhibited at the Museum Birth House of José Martí in Old Havana.

The donor also explained that this valuable piece was used by Martí as paperweight in his offices at the 120 – 122 Front Street in Manhattan, New York, a place that later became the seat of the Delegation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC, after its initials in Spanish), while, at the same time, the publishing house of the Patria newspaper.

“This ax – cleared Lozano – is a work instrument and a combat weapon that belonged to the ancient Cuban agro – potter culture of our indigenous population and it was given by Fermín Valdés Domínguez to Martí the 28th of January of 1894 when the Maestro was getting 41 years old”.

“It was already time that the work object of Martí, made out of rock by one of our remote ancestors, belonged to all the Cubans”, confessed Lozano.

He added: “Having keep it for such a long time was a healthy pride for me, as it was also very proud to have had the revolver of the Hero a mambi (Cuban Independence fighters) gave it to him in 1868 and that is exhibited today at the Fragua Martiana Museum of Havana University”, indicated.

The ax – a solid and mysterious object, rounded on one end and sharp on the other – was obtained by Fermín Valdés Domínguez in Baracoa, when he was working as a doctor in that fabulous part of the Eastern Cuban geography, where he was doing at the same time, archaelogical researches about the taino cultura.

“The same day Martí received the gift from his soul brother – as he called Fermín once – he placed it in his working table of the stated New York office. Martí always used the ax as a paperweight and always caressed it because, he cofessed, “this way I touch Cuba”.

The idea that the ax must be exhibited in the Museum – House is because the working table is on exhibition at that Museum. It was there where the Swedish painter captured the image of Martí as a writer, thinker, lawyer and journalist.

“I know that the shiny souvenir belonged to the Hero due to the oral tradition of Gonzalo de Quesada y Aróstegui, his son and his grandson. Aróstegui, who was the sectretary of Martí, told that when he received the letter of Martí, considered his literary testament, the first of April 1895, he said:

“Out of the portraits of my office you should choose two of them and the other two to Benjamin (Guerra) and to Estrada (Palma), Wendell Phillips*”.

Aróstegui chose the one of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and the petal ax, the Hero had in the same table where he wrote his leters and articles for the Patria newspaper.

Source: Juventud Rebelde