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 of the capital of Cuba. It has a very rich history closely linked to events and personalities of national significance.

Possibly no other aboriginal toponym in Cuba has given rise to so many different proposals for etymology. In this paper we analyse each of them and make our own¹.

Don Jacobo de la Pezuela, in his Geographical, Statistical and Historical Dictionary of the Island of Cuba, published in 1863, says that the meaning of Guanabacoa is “place of waters”, in possible relation to the existence of medicinal waters and baths in the area². Similar proposals were made by the Guanabacoa historian Cayetano Núñez de Villavicencio and the priest Félix Vidal y Cirera. The former, in his 1876 work, Historical News from the Village of Asunción de Guanabacoa, refers to it as meaning “place abundant with waters”³; the latter, in his 1887 work, History of the Village of Guanabacoa, refers to it as “place of waters”⁴.

However, the Island Arawak word meaning ‘water’ is guani and is also expressed by the abbreviated form ni, present in many toponyms naming rivers or coastal places: Cabo-ni-co (river in Holguín province), Camajua-ní (river in Villa Clara province), Guani-mar (beach in Artemisa province), Hatibo-ni-co (river in Camagüey province), Hati-guani-co (river in Matanzas province), Ja-guaní (river in Guantánamo province), Ji-guaní (river in Granma province), among others. This word is a non-identical cognate of lokono wuni, oni (see table 1).

The morpheme ni seems to also be present in the Island Arawak word (n)itabo, related to freshwater springs. The Cuban researcher and linguist, Sergio Valdés Bernal, refers that the word itabo passed into Spanish with the meaning of ‘small lagoon of clear water’⁵. The lexicographers Cayetano Col y Toste and Rafael García Bidó, Puerto Rican and Dominican, respectively, include the word as nitabo, with the same meaning of ‘freshwater lagoon’, although the latter adds those of ‘flooded land, wetland’^6,7.

In the structure of Guanabacoa, neither the segment guani, nor the abbreviated form ni is distinguishable, and it is unlikely that this is due to the elision of the phoneme /i/ or to the phonetic evolution experienced by the word when it passed into Spanish, as evidenced by several examples of other words with the same origin where the phoneme /i/ is preserved after /n/ and before /a/, such as: Boniato (plant and its edible tuber, ipomoema batatas); Maniabon (heights in the north of eastern Cuba); Güinía (a village in the municipality Manicaragua in the province of Villa Clara), and Güiniao (locality in the municipality of Baracoa, province of Guantánamo).

Table 1

Lokono words meaning water, rain, river.

Cayetano Coll y Toste, in his Prehistory of Puerto Rico of 1897, disagrees with the etymology proposed by Nuñez de Villavicencio and thinks that Guanabacoa means, ‘Site of tall palms’, and adds: “Guana, ‘palm tree’, ba for bana, ‘big, tall’; coa, ‘site, place”¹¹.

Assigning the meaning of ‘palm tree’ to guana seems to be based on the similarity with the word guano, which, as Valdés Bernal explains, passed into Spanish as a generic name for palms with fan-shaped leaves¹².  However, there is no evidence to support this assumption. The segment guana appears in numerous words of the Spanish spoken in Cuba; among them, toponyms of the geography of Cuba¹³, the name of several birds¹⁴ and, in particular, the name of trees that do not belong to the palm family: guana-raiba (black mangrove, Avicennia germinans), guana-bana (fruit and tree of the species Annona muricata), guana-ni (wild tree with hard and compact wood), guaná (Lagetta Valenzuelana and Hildegardia cubensis). In addition, as explained in detail in a previous article, the Island Arawak word guana means ‘land’, ‘place’¹⁵.

Likewise, ba never substitutes for bana in Lokono and there is no reason to believe that it does in Island Arawak. Furthermore, the meanings of bana in lokono are ‘leaf’, ‘liver’ and ‘surface’¹⁶. Add to this that the original flora of Guanabacoa corresponds to a natural plant formation called “Xeromorphic scrub on serpentinites with low forest areas”, also known in Cuba as Cuabal, as can be seen in the map of the vegetation of Havana at the beginning of the 16th century included in the New National Atlas of Cuba of 1989¹⁷. The cuabal is characterised by the presence of low palms of the genera Coccothrinax and Copernicia¹⁸, which contradicts the supposed “tall” quality of the palms in the area. One of the Guanabacoa neighbourhoods is called La Jata, the common name of one of these types of low palms (Copernicia macroglossa) abundant in the area.

Regarding coa, we will limit ourselves to pointing out that it does not mean ‘place’ or ‘site’, meanings that are denoted by the word guana. We will devote a separate article to the word coa in the near future.

For his part, Alfredo Zayas, in his Antillean Lexicography of 1914, suggests that the meaning is ‘high place where guano abounds’¹⁹. Pedro Antonio Herrera López, a Guanabacoa researcher, in his 2005 article, When Guanabacoa was the capital of Cuba, holds a similar opinion and considers the meaning to be ‘high palm grove’²⁰.

This proposal also seems to be based on assigning the meaning of ‘palm tree’ to guana. As for the quality of ‘high’ or ‘elevated’, none of the morphemes that make up Guanabacoa express this meaning in Lokono, which, as discussed in our article on the etymology of Guanajay, is denoted by the morpheme jay in Island Arawak toponymy²¹.

Finally, the historian of Guanabacoa, Elpidio de la Guardia, in his 1946 History of Guanabacoa, quotes the philologist Juan Luis Marín, who maintains that Guanabacoa means ‘city or town situated between hills and where a spring gushes forth’. He also states that this is an imported word²².

The fact that the word Guanabacoa shows full structural and phonic coincidence with the obscure toponyms²³ in the rest of the country is evidence of its Island Arawak linguistic origin and refutes this proposed etymology. Its structure clearly shows the segments guana and abacoa, where a phoneme /a/ is eliminated by elision. As for the second, it is common in Cuban aboriginal toponymy: Guas-abacoa (inlet in the Bay of Havana), Ban-abacoa (river and settlement in the province of Santiago de Cuba), Can-abacoa (village in the province of Granma), Tay-abacoa (beach and river in the province of Sancti Spíritus). This word is an identical cognate of Lokono abakoa. Its meanings are shown in Table 2.

Table 2

Meanings of abakoa in Lokono

Thus, guana, ‘place’, ‘site’ + abacoa, ‘again, once more’ = guanabacoa, ‘new place’, ‘new site’.

The motivation for this toponym can be found in the history of the foundation of the town of Guanabacoa. In a detailed historical study, the researchers Maximino Gómez Álvarez and Marcos Rodríguez Villamil demonstrated that the aforementioned foundation took place by agreement of the Town Council of Havana dated June 12,1554, and that there is no evidence of the previous existence of an Indian village in the place²⁶.

The minutes of the Town Council of that date state the objective of gathering the Indians of this province who “are scattered and wandering around” and express that the Governor “has addressed and communicated with the said Indians that they should gather in one site and make a town”²⁷ (emphasis added). It is also evident from what is recorded in these minutes that the site in question had not yet been selected, since three neighbours from Havana were appointed to “choose and select the one they consider to be most convenient for the good and increase of the Indians and the growth of this village”²⁸.

The circumstances of the founding of Guanabacoa are consistent with the linguistic analysis. The Aborigines were told to assemble at a “new site” and that is what they called the place, as the specific locality where they were to meet was not yet known. No doubt this was a recurring theme in conversations between Aborigines and Spaniards for some time. By the time the location of the new town was determined and the transfer of the Indians took place, the name Guanabacoa had already been fixed by custom.

It is known that in the vicinity of Bayamo, in eastern Cuba, there was also another Indian village named Guanabacoa, which was entrusted to Manuel de Rojas, who was governor of Cuba on two occasions. Gómez Álvarez and Rodríguez Villamil consider that:

It was a town whose existence predated the repartimientos [grants of forced labor imposed on indigenous inhabitants] carried out by Diego Velazquez and which had a certain degree of social organisation with a cacique at its head. From this it is clear that Guanabacoa is a word of aboriginal origin²⁹.

For his part, Alfredo Zayas reports that Rojas, in a letter to the King dated 9 March 1533, complained that they had taken from him “a village of Indians called Guanabacoa”, alleging that he had spent his own money to pacify the Maroon Indians and especially “with the Indians of the said village of Guanabacoa”³⁰.

The “pacification of the Maroon Indians” implied their relocation to a new site, so the motivation for the name of the settlement near Bayamo could have been the same as that of the one near Havana, even if the place had an earlier name that was replaced.

Notes

1. The sources used include chroniclers of the Indies and scribes; lexicographers from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico; and dictionaries, grammars and studies on Lokono, the Arawak language of Guiana. The methods applied were: the comparative study of the Island Arawak and Lokono, and deductive reasoning based on the information provided by the descriptive character of the naming pattern common to both languages.
2. Pezuela, Jacobo de la. 1863. Diccionario geográfico, estadístico e histórico de la isla de Cuba [Geographical, Statistical and Historical Dictionary of the Island of Cuba]. Madrid. T.II, Page 449.
3. Núñez de Villavicencio, Cayetano. 1876. “Noticias históricas de la Villa de la Asunción de Guanabacoa”. En Los tres primeros historiadores de la Isla de Cuba [“Historical News from the Villa of the Assumption of Guanabacoa” in The First Three Historians of the Island of Cuba]. Editores Cowley y Pego. La Habana. Page 593.
4. Vidal y Cirera, Félix. 1887. Historia de la Villa de Guanabacoa desde la colonización de Cuba por los españoles hasta nuestros días [History of the Town of Guanabacoa from the Colonisation of Cuba by the Spanish to the Present Day]. La Habana. Página 10.
5. Valdés Bernal, Sergio. 1991. Las lenguas indígenas de América y el español de Cuba [The Indigenous languages of the Americas and the Spanish of Cuba]. Editorial Academia, La Habana. Page 65.
6. Coll y Toste, Cayetano. 1967. Prehistoria de Puerto Rico [Prehistory of Puerto Rico]. Editorial Vasco Americana S.A. Bilbao, España. Page 247.
7. García Bidó, Rafael. 2010. Voces de Bohío. Vocabulario de la cultura taína [Voices of Bohío. Vocabulary of the Taino Culture]. Archivo General de la Nación Colección Cuadernos Populares 3. Santo Domingo. Page 106.
8. Hermanos Moravos. 1882. Arawakisch-Deutches Wörterbuch, Abschrift eines im Besitze der Herrnhuter Bruder-Unität bei Zittau sich befindlichen-Manuscriptes. En Grammaires et Vocabulaires Roucouyene, Arrouague, Piapoco et D’autre Langues de la Région des Guyanes, par MM. J. Crevaux, P. Sagot, L. Adam. Paris, Maisonneuve et Cie, Libraries-Editeurs. http://books.google.com. Pages 164, 165.
9. Goeje, C. H. de.1928. The Arawak Languaje of Guiana. Cambridge University Press. cambridge.org. Page 167.
10. Patte, Marie France. 2011. La langue arawak de Guyane, Présentation historique et dictionnaires arawak-français et français-arawak. IRD Éditions. Marseille. https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr. Pages 176-177.
11. Coll y Toste, Cayetano. 1967. Op. Cit. Page 220.
12. Valdés Bernal, Sergio. 1991. Op. Cit. Page 64.
13. Guana-hacabibes (peninsula on the western tip of the island of Cuba), Guana–jay (locality in the province of Artemisa), Guana-roca (lagoon in the province of Cienfuegos), Guana-yara (river of the province of Sancti Spíritus).
14. Guana-ro (Zenaida aurita), Guana-na (Anser albifrons gambeli and Anser caerulescens), Guana-bá (Botaurus lentiginosus; Nycticorax nycticorax hoactli; Nyctanassa violacea violacea).
15. Celeiro Chaple, Mauricio. 2023. Arawak Mysteries in the Spanish Spoken in Cuba: Guana. laotraraiz.cu.
16. Goeje, C. H. de.1928. Op. Cit. Page 107.
17. Instituto de Geografía de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba e Instituto Cubano de Geodesia y Cartografía. 1989. Nuevo Atlas Nacional de Cuba [New National Atlas of Cuba]. La Habana.
18. Capote, R. P. y Berazaín, R. 1984. “Clasificación de las formaciones vegetales de Cuba”. En Revista del Jardín Botánico Nacional [“Classification of the plant formations of Cuba”. In Journal of the National Botanical Garden], Vol. V, No. 2. Pages. 27-75.
19. Zayas, Alfredo. 1914. Lexicografía Antillana: diccionario de voces usadas por los aborígenes de las Antillas mayores y de algunas menores y consideraciones acerca de su significado y de su formación [Antillean Lexicography: a Dictionary of the Voices Used by the Aborigines of the Greater Antilles and Some Lesser Antilles and Considerations About their Meaning and Formation.]. La Habana. Pages 251-254.
20. Herrera López, Pedro Antonio, 2005. “Cuando Guanabacoa fue la capital de Cuba”. En Palabra Nueva [“When Guanabacoa was the capital of Cuba”. In Palabra Nueva]. Páginas 26-27.
21. Celeiro Chaple, Mauricio. 2023. Guanajay, The Upland. laotraraiz.cu.
22. Guardia, Elpidio de la. 1946. Historia de Guanabacoa [History of Guanabacoa]. La Habana. Pages 7-8.
23. Formed by lexical and grammatical morphemes that we do not know and whose motivation is not evident, as Valdés Bernal points out in his 2013 article, “The Arawak Linguistic Conquest of Cuba”. Journal of the National Library of Cuba José Martí. Page 176.
24. Patte, Marie France. 2011. Op. Cit. Pages 38, 220, 268.
25. Patte, Marie France. 2011. Op. Cit. Page 45.
26. Gómez Álvarez, Maximinio y Rodríguez Villamil, Marcos. 1991. La fundación de Guanabacoa. Noticias Históricas [The foundation of Guanabacoa. Historical News]. Museo Municipal de Guanabacoa. Page 16.
27. Roig de Leuchsenring, Emilio. 1937. Actas capitulares del ayuntamiento de La Habana [Chapter Acts of the City Council of Havana]. La Habana. T.I. Vol. II. Pages 95-96.
28. Roig de Leuchsenring, Emilio. 1937. Cit. T.I. Vol II. Page 96.
29. Gómez Álvarez, Maximinio y Rodríguez Villamil, Marcos. 1991. Op. Cit. page 26.
30. Zayas, Alfredo. 1914. Op. Cit Pages 253-254.

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