Abuelas, Ancestors Atabey
The Spirit of Taíno Resurgence BY CHRISTINA M. GONZÁLEZ
“Prepárate, mi gente. Algo viene.” (Get ready, my people. Something is coming.)
I
tilted my head attentively towards the man in trance. I was with mem- bers of an Indigenous Caribbean Taíno community, all eagerly wait- ing to receive this message during a meeting-turned-spontaneous-chan-
neling-session at a private Brooklyn residence in August 2017. Back in April, and again in July, of that year, channeled ancestors issued repeated warnings to them through ceremo- nies in Puerto Rico of an impending disaster to strike the island and surrounding region. This disaster, they warned, would be particularly devastating, denying many food and water.
18 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2018
Community members were told to prepare for the difficulties ahead. Little did they know how imminent a threat this was and in what form it would take. A few weeks following this prediction
one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Atlantic arrived as Hurricane Irma. Irma swept across the Caribbean, devastating isles like the Virgin Islands and Saint Martin, sending Florida into a state of emergency and leaving more than a million people in Puerto Rico’s northern coast without power, and some without homes. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Maria unexpectedly appeared. With winds reportedly greater than 185 mph, Maria catapulted Puerto Rico into darkness, leveling its power grid and cutting
off telecommunications, roads and highways, contaminating its water supply and plummet- ing the U.S. territory into a humanitarian cri- sis from which, almost a year later, its people are still recovering.
“Prepárate, mi gente. Algo viene.”
More than 500 years ago, the Indigenous Peoples of the Greater Antilles – popularly referred to today as Taíno – were greeted by a different kind of storm: European coloniza- tion. From the late-15th
century, Christopher
Columbus and other representatives of the Spanish Crown carried out systematic cam- paigns of conquest over lands, resources, bodies and souls. The Caribbean was the experimental playground for what became
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