The aboriginal gua in Cuban Spanish
One of the most visible manifestations of the aboriginal legacy in the culture is found in the language. In Cuban Spanish there are hundreds of words with this origin that…
Yaya and the Ancestral Mother’s Inheritance
The miscegenation with aboriginal women gave rise to the primary nucleus of Creoles who, together with other human factors, later constituted the Cuban nationality. Spanish men were the other major…
Mirror of Insult: History of the Antillean Word Sato
In the Spanish of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, the word sato is used with meanings not found in other Spanish-speaking countries, a geographical peculiarity that is a…
The Place, the People and the Wife: the Common Key to Three Arawak Names
In this paper we will examine the etymology of three Arawak words that have the same sequence of morphemes in a segment of their structure, which shows some correlation between…
Guanabacoa, The New Site
Guanabacoa is the name of an “Indian village” founded in 1554 in the vicinity of the then village of San Cristobal de La Habana and which is currently a municipality…
Guanajay, The Upland
The locality of Guanajay in the current province of Artemisa, west of Havana, was a well-known place since the early colonial times in Cuba. In the Chapter Acts of the…
Guanabo, The Lowland
Guanabo is a town east of Havana, famous for its white, fine-grained sandy beach, visited by thousands of tourists and bathers every year. There are also other places in Cuba…
Arawak Mysteries in the Spanish Spoken in Cuba: Guana
Introduction Guana is a segment present in the structure of several words from the Spanish language spoken in Cuba that come from the language of the aborigines (Taino, also known…
Cauto: The River and the Name
Landscapes are an essential part of Cuba’s image and by identifying with them we generate a sense of belonging that is at the very basis of Cuban identity. Sometimes we…