Left: Cypriana Gainsa, a Taino woman from Yara, makes a pot as a child looks on. Photo by Mark Harrington, NMAI/O4484
Below: Petroglyphs found in the same cave as the idol, La Patana, Cuba. Photo by Mark Harrington, “Cuba Before Columbus.” NMAI/0130
THE CEMI’S PLACE IN THE TAÍNO PANTHEON
What appeared to Harrington to be a face and body carved upon the large and heavy stalagmite was impressive enough for him to admire and, ultimately, collect. Yet in the wide range of exquisite Taíno artistry, the Idol of Patana is not an aesthetic master- work. Circular eyes distinguish the image on the stalagmite. Lines run down from the edges of both eyes, fading into the face. Nose and mouth are visible and thin, fading arms descend along both sides to come together in the front, where, according to Harrington, male sexual organs are detectable between the lower extremities. Rather, the crude though dignified carv-
ing is significant because it is identifiable within the Taíno cosmology and has ideo- logical and spiritual meaning for the people from whom it was taken. In the long century since it became part of Heye’s collection, as cave complexes along the eastern coast of Cuba were studied further and scholars such as José Juan Arrom have deciphered Taíno cosmology, researchers began to know not just its physical features but, more inti- mately, who the figure represents. Scholars generally agree that the image
is identifiable as Boinayel, a particularly rel- evant deity of the complex and not widely understood Taíno pantheon of major Ca- ribbean ancestors and natural world spirits. Taíno
“behiques” (medicine people) no
doubt guided the carving of the lines trailing down the face, which identify him as one of the “llora-lluvias,” or rain-criers, a common Taíno motif found in various parts of the Ca- ribbean. Boinayel, the “bringer of rains,” lives with his twin brother, Márohu, the “bringer of cloudless skies and the Sun,” in the cave of their mother, Iguanaboina, the mottled gray snake that gathers the rain of the tropi- cal skies, coiling it into clouds of darkening density that she squeezes into rain over the landscape below. For all practical purposes, the Cave of the Water, where the stalagmite statue was found, is the easternmost exten- sion of this pantheon; facing east, it is the Cuban reflection of the Cave of Iguanaboina.
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 19
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