By: Ana Mar\u00eda Zabala G\u00f3mez<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anacaona was a Taino cacica and poet from Jaragua. Jaragua was one of the five chiefdoms of the island that the Tainos knew as Ayiti or Quisqueya and that the Spaniards named Hispaniola, where the Dominican Republic and Haiti are today. She was born in 1474 in Yaguana, Jaragua, a town known today as L\u00e9og\u00e2ne, Haiti.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anacaona was one of the most important leaders of Taino society. She was the cacique of Jaragua’s sister and the cacique of Maguana’s wife with whom she had her daughter Hig\u00fcemota. She was celebrated as a composer of ballads and narrated and sung poems called areitos. The name of this important woman means “golden flower” in the Taino language. In 1492, Anacaona participated in the encounters with Christopher Columbus’ ship that had stumbled upon this island in December of that year looking for a new route to “the Indies”. The Tainos welcomed these strange people with corn and gold, which led Columbus to believe that he would find large deposits of the precious metal there.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the remains of the ship Santa Maria, Columbus and the other men built a fort they called La Navidad. Although curious about the foreigners at first, Anacaona witnessed the abuses to which the men left by Columbus subjected her people. The Tainos were kidnapped and enslaved to satisfy the demands of the Spanish crown and many women were sexually abused. From that moment on, she identified them as a threat.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upon returning to the island in 1493, Columbus found Fort La Navidad destroyed and its inhabitants murdered. Despite having no evidence of it, Alonso de Ojeda accused Caonabo of the destruction and took him prisoner by deception, along with other Taino nobility, on a ship to Spain, which was later shipwrecked. After the death of her husband, Anacaona retired to Jaragua, her brother’s chiefdom, where she planned to consolidate her rule as many Tainos were being assassinated at the hands of Spanish violence. She decided that resisting them by force would be useless because even though they were fewer in number, the Spaniards possessed more powerful weapons. She opted for more diplomatic policies and even promoted marriage between Tainos and Spaniards.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During Bartolom\u00e9 Columbus’ visit to the Jaragua chiefdom in southeastern Quisqueya, Anacaona and her brother Behech\u00edo held negotiations with the Spaniard who established Spain’s first protectorate (Santo Domingo). Anacaona and Behech\u00edo agreed to pay tribute in cotton and food for the Spaniards under the command of Columbus. In “History of the Indies” Bartolom\u00e9 de las Casas states that the visit took place in a friendly atmosphere.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the death of her brother Behech\u00edo in 1500, Anacaona succeeded him as cacica of Jaragua. As cacica of Jaragua and Maguana, Anacaona maintained her friendly relations with the Spaniards. In 1503 the new governor of Hispaniola traveled to Jaragua where Anacaona and her nobility received him with a lavish ceremony. Although the areito1<\/sup> was a welcoming gesture, Ovando saw it as a distraction. The Spaniard and his retinue of three hundred men suspected that Anacaona and other Taino caciques were planning a rebellion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the party were present several caciques (according to some chronicles there were eighty) whom the Spaniards summoned to meet in a caney (long house) and carry out a supposed peace agreement. Then, with a trick they tied them up and tortured them and set fire to the caney with the caciques inside. Anacaona was captured and taken to the public square of Santo Domingo where she was hanged accused of conspiracy. Ovando obtained the “evidence” by torturing the caciques before murdering them so that they would confess to Anacaona’s alleged crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to certain chronicles, Anacaona was offered the possibility of saving herself just before being hanged. Her sentence would be pardoned if she agreed to be the concubine of a Spanish officer. The twenty-nine year old woman that Bartolom\u00e9 de las Casas described as “a very remarkable woman, very prudent, very graceful and palatial in her speech and arts and movements and very friendly with the Christians” refused the offer. She preferred to die at the hands of the Christians than to be the concubine of one.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anacaona’s death was a key moment in Caribbean history. After her assassination, Ovando continued a lethal campaign of persecution against the Tainos. The same year Anacaona died, Queen Isabella of Castile signed a document legalizing the institution of the encomienda. The idea was put forward by Ovando and other colonists so that they would be allowed to demand labor or tribute from the Indians in exchange for “Christianizing” them. Yet the result was not Christianization but the devastation of a people. Bartolom\u00e9 de las Casas accused Nicol\u00e1s de Ovando of having promoted the destruction of “the Indies”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Taino people were declared “extinct” on paper by the colonial censuses in 1802. However, many people in the Caribbean identify themselves as Taino Indians and have been able to confirm this with DNA studies. According to Taino chief Jorge Baracutei Estevez, 61 percent of Puerto Ricans, 23 to 30 percent of Dominicans and 33 percent of Cubans have Native American DNA. In 2016, a Danish geneticist extracted ancient DNA from a 1,000-year-old skull found in the Bahamas that had Taino DNA. Then 164 Puerto Ricans were tested and all matched Taino DNA. Estevez describes the experience of these contemporary Tainos:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “For us, knowing this history is like finding a lost relative, a part of yourself that you knew nothing about. When I realized that much of our oral traditions, material culture, spirituality and language were indigenous, I realized how triumphant the Taino people were.”<\/p>\nJorge Baracutei Estevez<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Anacaona was triumphant and her history is alive, as well as that of her people. Through the centuries, the memories of her areitos echo in poems, songs and places that bear her name.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1<\/sup> \u00a0\u00a0The areito is a cultural and religious manifestation of the Tainos that celebrates an important event with songs, narration of myths and dances.\u00a0 Baracutei Estevez, J. Conoce a los supervivientes de un \u00abgenocidio sobre el papel\u00bb. En National Geographic. Retrieved<\/a> on 10\/05\/2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carrasco C., M. 2022. Anacaona: The Golden Flower Queen Killed For Refusing To Be A Concubine. Retrieved<\/a> on 10\/05\/2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Casas, fr. B. de las, [(1547-1559) 1875] 1965, Historia de las Indias, ed. de Agust\u00edn Millares Carlo y estudio preliminar de Lewis Hanke, M\u00e9xico, FCE, 3 tomos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fern\u00e1ndez, Tom\u00e1s y Tamaro, Elena. 2004. \u00abBiografia de Nicol\u00e1s de Ovando\u00bb. En Biograf\u00edas y Vidas. La enciclopedia biogr\u00e1fica en l\u00ednea. Retrieved<\/a> on 10\/05\/2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nReferences<\/h4>\n\n\n\n