T AÍNO RESUR GENCE


AGUA DULCE IN KISKEYA:


Tobacco, Casabe, Water and Stone BY JORGE BARACUTEI ESTEVEZ A


s part of a research trip for the Caribbean Indigenous Legacies Project, my good friend and island guide Milton Sanchez Velasquez and I drove through a


baguada (fierce rain storm) in Kiskeya (Do- minican Republic), from the Maguana region in the western provinces towards the east, where the international airport is located. We headed there to pick up Dr. José Barreiro, scholar emeritus of the National Museum of the American Indian, who was arriving that afternoon. I was suffering from chronic back pain that was especially bad that day. Mil- ton, concerned for me, suggested perhaps he should drive. The intense look of pain on my face must have been quite evident. I reminded him that the car was rented in my name; therefore, I just had to bear it. By that point, I had become fed up with pain pills, patches and the like. Nothing seemed to help. As we approached the town of Bani, Mil-


ton recommended we visit a healer named Doña Yoya who was skilled in soba or sobar, a type of massage. This particular ritual is also common among the Lokono Arawak and other Indians of northern South America where the ancestors of the Taíno originated. They too call it soba. The rain and clouds made the morning seem as if we were driv- ing in the twilight. Finally, the sky cleared for


24 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2018


a moment as we arrived at her home, a small shack by the side of the road surrounded by mountains and hills. It felt quite eerie to me. We knocked on the door a few times.


Suddenly the door opened slowly and a small, frail woman – standing around three feet, eleven inches tall – looked up at us from her doorway, with sparkling eyes and a huge smile. She greeted us by saying, “Welcome to my humble home. All that I have is yours.” Her tone was disarming, so remarkably friendly! I instantly felt like I was home. This graciousness was amazing, but not unique. Nearly all rural people of Kiskeya are simi- larly friendly and generous. I immediately explained my ailment to her and remarked that the rain seemed to aggravate my pain. She listened intently, smiled warmly and with a simple nod agreed to help me. Milton had cautioned me, however, “You can give her money, but do not ask her how much she charges. That is very disrespectful.” She asked me to take off my shirt. I imag-


ined she was about to introduce me to some unknown native plants or herbs. However, I am quickly disillusioned when instead she pulled out a jar of Vicks VapoRub! My dis- appointment did not last long though. She scooped up a heaping amount, joked about the size of my back and began to massage me. Suddenly she began drawing intricate, indiscernible, geometric patterns with her


thumbnails on my back while singing in a low murmur. She began on my neck, going down to the small of my back, praying under her breath, swaying her body back and forth rhythmically. When the design was complete, she lit a cigar and blew the smoke over my entire back. Making a loose fist, she placed it over the affected area and sucked in air as if to dislodge whatever was stuck there. She then spit it out forcefully. “In a few days your pain will go,” she


said. “It may return to another area, but it will never hurt you there again.” I was grate- ful and extremely curious. I asked her, how, when and where did she learn to heal in this way? “When I was a young girl,” she began, “I met an Indian man on that mountain you see there [pointing with her lips across the street]. Every day, I’d walk up the mountain to meet him, and he’d teach all he knew of plant medicine. But one day he did not return…I never saw him again. I have been a healer ever since.” Stories like this persist all over Kiskeya, de-


spite the extinction paradigm that is prevalent here and the major islands of the Caribbean. Indigenous healing customs and traditions form part of a highly complex and mostly – since the Conquest Era beginning in 1492 – hidden legacy. Its roots, however, existed for thousands of years before Spanish arrival. Ex- isting both on its own and in syncretic form,


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