Bust from the statue of Taino Chief Hatuey (~ / 1512) in Baracoa, Cuba. Hatuey was burned alive by Spanairds for leading a defense of his homeland against Spanish invaders.
By Pamela Nagler
Published 10/11/2022 6:00 Am PST
October 11 is Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day depending on where you live and what your perspective is. To say the least, celebrating Columbus these days can be a very complicated business. Too many people have read his journals and studied the history, too many people have examined the meaning of discovery, to fall into those old tired tropes of Columbus hero worship. Columbus statues have been removed in Chicago, Mexico, NYC, Boston, Baltimore and many other places including LA.
Suffice to say, there remains much to deconstruct about Columbus landing on the island he called Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Republic) where he and his men proceeded to massacre and subjugate the Taino - all by his own admission.
But Columbus’ sphere of influence was vast. Even in his own time, the Spaniards extended their reign of terror beyond Hispaniola to include other islands Columbus misnamed the West Indies, the present-day Caribbean Islands.
When potential landowner who later became a Dominican Father, Bartolomé de las Casas arrived on the islands, in 1509, Las Casas explained how Columbus influence other Spaniards who “perpetrated the same outrages and committed the same crimes as before, devising yet further refinements of cruelty, murdering the native people, burning and roasting them alive, throwing them to wild dogs and then oppressing, tormenting and plaguing them with toil down the mines and elsewhere.” 26, penguin
And, in 1511, when the Spaniards invaded Cuba, the story was really no different from the earlier stories on other islands, except for maybe, one singular figure emerged - Hatuey, a leader of Native resistance.
Earlier, Hatuey, a cacique or leader had fled his homeland of Hispaniola, arriving in Cuba with canoes holding 400 of his people. Las Casas reported that Hatuey warned the people of Cuba:
“we have to throw them [the Spaniards] into the sea . . .They tell us, these tyrants, that they adore a God of peace and equality, and yet they usurp our land and make us their slaves. They speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, and yet they rob our belongings, seduce our women, violate our daughters. Incapable of matching us in valor, these cowards cover themselves with iron that our weapons cannot break.” 28, penguin
Hatuey and his people battled against the Spanish, but the Spanish managed to capture him. Before tying him to a stake and burning him alive, the Franciscan Father preached to him about the everlasting life and the consequence of Hell if he did not accept the Christian God. Hatuey, in turn, asked the Father if Spaniards went to heaven. Las Casas reported:
“When the reply came that good ones do, he [Hatuey] retorted, without need to further reflection, that, if that was the case, then he chose to go to Hell to ensure that he would never again have to clap eyes on those cruel brutes.” 28-9, penguin
After Hatuey’s execution, the Spaniards continued to massacre large settlements of Cuban Natives - the Arawaks. Of those that they did not enslave or murder, some attempted to flee, but others chose death by suicide: “Men and women hanged themselves and even strung up their children.” 30, penguin They saw this as an alternative to being tortured or worked to death.
Children, without their parents, died of starvation. The Spaniards pursued those who ran away, until Las Casas noted that the “whole of the island [of Cuba] was devastated and depopulated . . . transformed . . . into one vast, barren wasteland.” 30, penguin
Present-day Cubans are forthright about their colonial history. A bust of Hatuey sits in front of the oldest Church in Baracoa, in the main town square of the first city the Spanish colonized. Some tour guides will tell you that the nearby Yumurí River, lined on each side by sheer limestone cliffs, means ‘beautiful river,’ but others will tell you that Yumurí means ‘I kill myself’ because this is where the Arawaks threw themselves off of the ten-story drop-offs to escape the oppressions of the Spanish. The coffee plantations on Cuba display the chains, shackles and goads next to the excavated farm implements at ground level, just downstairs from the colonists’ former opulent dwellings upstairs.
REFERECES
Casas, Bartolomé de las. Nigel Griffin, trans., Anthony Pagden, intro. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. 1st Edition. London: Penguin, 1999. pages 26-30.
