Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas from 1492 to the Present
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Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas From 1492 to the Present The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Nin, Leonardo W. 2020. Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas From 1492 to the Present. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School. Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37365626 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA P a g e | 1 Thesis in the Field of Anthropology and Archeology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Liberal Arts Degree Harvard University Extension School May 31, 2020 Leonardo Wilson Nin [email protected] ALM degree candidate Anthropology and Archeology Harvard ID: 7078149 Extension ID: @00275296 P a g e | 2 CHAPTER I | AN INTRODUCTION I. Title “Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas from 1492 to the Present” II. Research Problem My thesis will demonstrate a broad impact of Taino language and culture on the languages of the Americas following the European invasion based on linguistic evidence from first-hand accounts of explorers, invaders, priests and indigenous scribes in the first fifty years after European contact. The extent of the contribution of the Taino to the general culture of the Americas will also be shown to extend from early in the subjugation of the Aztec empire in 1521 all the way to the present. For more than four hundred years it was believed that the Taino (the inhabitants of the Caribbean at the time of European arrival to the continent) had gone extinct. Chronicles such as the writings of Dominican missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas seem to place their disappearance within the first fifty years of the conquest1. However, the abundant evidence of the incorporation of Taino words in the language used by the Spanish who invaded Mexico overturns much of the traditional narrative and has compelled me to 1 Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies: Original Title La Brevísima relación (N.P.: Createspace Independent Publishers, 2013), 167. P a g e | 3 ask a whole series of questions. What if the Taino did not disappear as commonly believed? What if the great army of Indians accompanying the conquistadors and depicted in the many codices such as the Codex Azcatitlan2 where their descendants? What if instead of disappearing, they left food, language and culture as silent witness of their existence among the other conquered people of the continent such as the great Mayas, Aztecs and Incas? If so, historical accounts, sociolinguistic patterns, general culture analysis, and recent DNA findings could force us to reinterpret their place in history and help us reestablish their true importance in the conquest, thus challenging the Spanish accounts of their disappearance. For generations, countries like Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica were ridiculed when stating their claim of Taino ancestry. It was not until a recent DNA study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science3 that many of these countries’ claims became confirmed. Nevertheless, DNA studies like this one done in the population of the countries of the Greater Antilles only reveal the Taino’s biological survival. Their cultural presence across the continent represents a far greater challenge to establish. There had to be a cultural legacy, a reason for these countries to maintain a Taino presence despite the historical accounts challenging those beliefs. Some 30% of all Native American words adopted by Spanish and other 2 Federico Navarrete Linares, “The Hidden Codes of Codex Azcatitlan,” Aesthetics and Anthropology 45 (2004): 157. 3 Hannes Schroeder, Martin Sikora, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Lara M. Cassidy, Pierpaolo Maisano Delser, Marcela Sandoval Velasco, Joshua G. Schraiber, Simon Rasmussen, Julian R. Homburger, María C. Ávila-Arcos, Morten E. Allentoft, J. Víctor Moreno-Mayar, et al., “Origins and Genetic Legacies of the Caribbean Taino," PNANS (2018): 2346. <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1716839115>. P a g e | 4 European languages such as English and French are of Taino origin4. How did they cross the continent if they were already gone? In the words of historian Matthew Restall “there were many invisible warriors, many native peoples alongside the Spaniards”5. What if many of these “native peoples” described by Restall and mentioned across the many records of the conquest were the extinct Taino? What if their language and implied physical presence could establish that the Taino played a bigger role in the conquest of the continent than previously thought? My hypothesis is that research will find that the Taino did not disappear as commonly believed and that their descendants were among the armies accompanying the Spanish during the conquest of the rest of the continent, thus leaving a linguistic and socio-cultural legacy in all the countries of the Americas today. To test my hypothesis, I will use the Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s True History of the Conquest of New Spain as central text for analysis. I will then use the primary sources of the chronicles of the conquest prior to this event to identify Taino culture, social structure, food, and language. These sources will be cited as they become relevant to the analysis of the word in question. Then, I will create a comprehensive outline of words, expressions, names, places, foods, and traditions mentioned in those accounts in order to find any resemblance or relation across the different countries of the Americas. After that, these words identified as Taino will be cross referenced against the Spanish Academy of Language official dictionary and reference database to establish continuance of usage. By collecting all the evidence found in the primary sources of the 4 (Granberry and S.) 5 Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 51. P a g e | 5 conquest and comparing it with the modern identifiable cultural and linguistic trends I seek to establish the level of Taino presence and influence during the transcontinental invasion of the continent from 1492 to today. It is important to mention that this text was chosen because, a great deal of ink has been spilled debating the veracity or even the existence of Bernal Diaz del Castillo. For some, a soldier of fortune and encomendero trying to tell his feats in Darien and Guatemala, seeking to be granted land by the King of Spain. For others, it shows that it was a figment of Cortes’ imagination to tell a version of history that places him as the rightful conqueror of New Spain. This sociolinguistics analysis doesn’t try to debate the identity of the writer or writers of the chronicle. Instead, it uses Linguistics’ Comparative Method to analyze words, customs, and general sociocultural patterns within the text that could be identified or argued to be Taino or of Taino origin. The text used for this research was the Spanish version of Real Academia Española Aparato de Variantes, edited and commented by Guillermo Serés in 19916. This text compiles the three main variants of this primary source: The original work from 1552-1554 revised in 1563 and written in Guatemala as Memorial de Guerra; The prínceps edition of fray Alonso Remón published in Madrid in 1532 and the final version of the text called Manuscrito Alegria published in 1605 by Francisco Diaz del Castillo, son of Bernal Diaz del Castillo. This primary source was selected as the central document for this research because (chronologically speaking and unlike very few other primary or secondary source of the history of the Spanish conquest) it is a historical narrative where for the 6 (Diaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España | Aparato de Variantes, 2011) P a g e | 6 first time the language and culture of the Caribbean Taino and the language and culture of the natives of the continental lands interacted with one another as separate distinct tongues. Prior to it, the narratives of Columbus, Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, Peter Martyr, Fernandez de Oviedo and Fray Ramon Pané, among others, describe the Taino and the inhabitants of the Caribbean within that geographic, historical and sociolinguistic context. After it, writers such as Bernardino de Sahagun, Francisco López de Gómara, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Garcilaso de la Vega, Guamán Poma, etc., refer to an already mestizo culture carrying the cultural weight of the Maya, Inca, Aztecs and the other conquered groups of the transcontinental cultural exchange or American conquest. In this comparative analysis, the Díaz del Castillo text is going to be analyzed by pages and paragraphs that mention any element of language, culture or ethnography believed to be Taino or of Taino origin. Those elements are then going to be cross referenced against other primary or secondary source that could support or at least make the argument for the Taino connection or origin. Finally, they are going to be crossed reference against the Linguistics Database of the Real Academia Española or any other cultural or literary source for continuity or usage. Furthermore, the Taino elements are going to also be linked or associated with colloquial uses in the different countries where they could be identified in use today based on my own in-depth experience since childhood with the languages and its meanings and relevant linguistic studies.