Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the Americas From 1492 to the Present

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and resort to an absolute stage of anarchy, then this word would probably disappear
from our vocabulary, the same way that, agonarch, amarulence, bonifate, exipotic, and
so many other words have vanish from our current language and cultural reality.
This observation was made, because of the prevalence of the Taino word nagua
across the Americas. As explained in the paragraph above, word survival is relative to
speaker, existence of described element, need and usage. Therefore, it is understandable
that words like, macana, canoa, tabaco, cacique, ceiba, bejuco, piragua, sabana, etc.
would be employed given their relevance to the population of BDC’s chronicle, which
was mostly men on a conquering mission of exploration and war. However, the fact that
the Taino name of an essential female garment was among the surviving words, leads
me to believe that women played a very important, I could even say uniquely essential,
indispensable role in the transmission of Taino words into the underrepresented, nonmentioned
in the official narrative population of the conquest of New Spain.
This is argued, because given the conservative and religious nature of the Spanish
culture of the time, a word like nagua would not be included in any written official
record, nor would it be taught from a man to a woman. And even if so, there must be
enough repetitions of the same idiom for it to become normalized or become part of a
vocabulary. Moreover, the number of polygamist marriages of Spanish with Indians
noblewomen and naborias was a common occurrence throughout the text, sustaining
the possibility that Taino speaking women were among the women included in the text.
In conclusion, there is not enough evidence in the chronicles or their pictorial
depictions to conclusively prove or disprove that there were enough Taino people among