The Dominican Republic and the Cult to its Origins

The Caribbean nation gets a name for itself on the fast-paced road to modernity, yet it cherishes its Amerindian traditions dearly.

When Spanish authorities that had settled down on the island of La Hispaniola noticed the extinction of Indians, they were taking historic responsibility for the depredation of the Taino culture that, in spite of all that, has lived out in the Dominican Republic, a country where it’s encouraged and revered.

By 1560, historic documents mentioned a dwindling number of Amerindian populations that Spaniards found in that particular territory. Diseases, forced labor, famine and rebellions were some of the causes declared at the time. However, it’s widely accepted that the juicy slave trade was behind the massacre of the native aboriginals.

The vanishing of these human groups in this part of the Caribbean was also taking away a social system marked by a language, a mythological system, and way of feeding and living that have been subjected to studies by a number of researchers from different parts of the world.

Dominican Frank Moya Pons and Cuba’s Jose Rivero de la Calle and Antonio Nuñez Jiménez, among others, conducted a steady array of anthropological, geographical and paleontological studies that have helped ferret out what happened before and after the Spanish conquest.

Recent research studies label these Caribbean human populations as migrants from the Orinoco Valley and trace back their roots to some 1,500 years before Christopher Columbus’s arrival. These first dwellers left written testimonies that lay bare what their characteristics and lifestyles were actually like.

Other historic data in favor of Taino heritage were dug out in the province of Azua –a location that celebrated the 500th anniversary of its foundation last year- where the reports of Spanish researchers invited to take part in the theoretical meetings provided highly valuable documents that shed light on the communities that interacted with Europeans who had settled down there.

Most scholars who have delved into the Caribbean roots assert that the impact of the European colonization during the 15th century was devastating for Tainos. Eventually, the process brought on dramatic shakeups in their way of life.

Nonetheless, from north to south and from east to west, the Arawacks also left their prints and influence in each and every corner of the Dominican Republic.

Pictography and Petroglyphs Numerous studies bear out the artistic sensitivity of these inhabitants, and so is reflected in the cave paintings that have been found in some 54 caverns across the nation. These primitive drawings on the cave walls, stripped of all philosophical interpretations, mirrored reality as harsh as it could get.

The Cave of the Wonders is riddled with 472 pictographic works and 19 petroglyphs. These paintings are dominated by primitive bas-relief made of red clay and featuring black hues.

Many of these paintings were closely linked to funerary ceremonies. The paintings of owls and bats, two animals that had a special place in Taino mythology, prove this assertion right.

Some of these paintings also reveal contacts with Spaniards. However, the high value of the Taino pictography lies, scholars say, in the creation of highly achieved sculptural pieces.

Granite, diorite, basalt and other rocks were used on a regular basis by these aboriginals who found them easier to carve than the much harder marble and flint. In many cases, the color of these stones, the streaks they had and a little bit of glazing used to do the trick from an artistic standpoint.

They also used wood from the tropical forest, like guaiacum, mahogany and other pieces made of manatee bones –the largest mammal of the Caribbean wildlife currently sheltered as a protected species.

Amber was equally used on a daily basis and it was mostly reserved for funerary ceremonies for caciques or tribe chiefs.

Human bones –especially thighbones and skulls- also served as pictorial backdrops for anthropomorphic representations in which a magic and religious nature was the name of the game.

But despite that historic legacy, there’s one contribution to the Dominican society that can’t be ruled out: the codes they shared and used in their paintings, things that can now be found in a multitude of names for places, rivers and prairies, monikers like Bonao, Cotui, Cutupu, Dajabon, Damajagua, Guajaca, Guayubin, Inoa, Jacagua, Licey, Magua, Maguana, Mao, Nagua y Samana.

Other Taino names were Haina, Maimon, Ozama, Sosua, Tireo and Yaque. A similar assortment pops out of wildlife names, with bibijagua (pismire), comejen (termite), carey (sea turtle), hicotea (tortoise), guaraguao (eagle) and haiba (crab). People’s names were no strangers to this trend either. Caonabo, Hatuey, Banahi and Guarionex, only to name but a few, are outstanding monikers of today.

As part of cuisine traditions, people in this country hang on to the habit of eating casaba, the main course of the Dominican contemporary diet. One of the highest gods was Yucahuguama Mariocati. Its name reveals the importance of yucca for these people.

Taino Mythology and Religion The Tainos brought their knowledge, their gods and their mythology that eventually evolved on the Caribbean islands. As a result of that evolution, the Cohiba Ritual took shape as the core the entire economic, religious, political and social life of these primitive dwellers revolved around.

Tobacco was nothing but a wild plant from Yucatan, yet it was the Cuban Tainos the ones that first grew it and turned it into what it is known today. According to Taino mythology, the cohoba plant, Cohiba or tobacco, was sent to the Earth by Bayamanaco, the God of Fire, bearer of the casabe –the Tainos’ bread- and of a secret ritual: saliva-cohiba-semen. These three substances were the foundations of the entire human life, of all its features, and they brought benefits for men: fire, bread or casabe, tobacco and the saliva-cohiba-semen rite.

Nonetheless, it was impossible to stage the Cohiba Ritual without the presence of goddess Atabey, the deity that had put men at the mercy of mysteries, wisdom and the valuable legacy that Bayamanaco, the furious God of Fire, had brought to the face of the earth.

Atabey taught them to till the land, to fish and hunt, to use Areitos as a vehicle of oral communication and as a way of passing valuable information from one generation to the next. She also taught them how to make casabe or cassava bread, and to observe the Cohiba Ritual to hook up with the gods.

Tobacco was not known in Africa before Columbus’s arrival in America. In the 17th century, the Portuguese took tobacco to the Black Continent when they traveled there to ship slaves back to their colonies. But the encounter of Africans and Cuba’s Indians gave tobacco a sacred position that’s widely used today by such religions as Santeria, Mayombe or Palo Monte, Abakua and the so-called Crossed Spirits.

The Cohoba Ritual In the chronicles of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage –recorded in history as the “discovery of America”- the Great Admiral refers that upon arriving in Cuba, his ship was welcomed by canoes steered by men and women who held small bunches of quasi-golden leaves that, given their shape, resembled “muskets lit up on one end” that natives pressed between their lips, delightfully inhaling the aromatic smoke off that exotic plant, totally unknown for the crew at that time.

Those peaceful and innocent people were offering Cohoba to the colonizers as a token of friendship. That’s how the solanaceous plant known today as tobacco used to be called. Tainos gave that name to the two-pronged hollow cannula carved in wood through which, and unlike the leaves rolled in the shape of a musket, they used to inhale Cohoba up into their nostrils, just like people sniff ground tobacco or snuff nowadays.

The Cohoba Ritual was one of the most important ceremonies among Cuban aboriginals. During that magnificent event, the chief of the tribe –also acting as higher priest- used to inhale the smoke of the Cohoba to communicate with the gods in a bid to work out conflicts, make decisions and heal the ill.