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

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Research Limitations
Some Social Science topics such as culture, social variance, traditions, religion,
human general behavior, and political influence of one group over another are very
challenging (if not impossible) to quantify. Without strong primary source evidence,
most observation could be deemed purely “qualitative” at best, or speculation at worst,
thus defeating the purpose of attempting to establish the true level of Taino spread and
cultural/linguistic influence. Another challenge is the fact that although a great deal is
known about the Taino having been the first indigenous New World people to be
colonized and their land used as base for the invasion of the mainland, what is written
about them is often biased and misinformed, molded by ethnocentric attempts of people
describing things previously unknown to them, and influenced by the judging lens of
religion and race.
To complicate the picture further, the Taino were a hunter gatherer society in the
stone age. They had no cities like the Aztec and Incas or writing systems like the
Mayans, Mixtec or Aztecs. Their contributions can mainly be found in their language,
culinary behavior and general cultural elements of the conquistadors described in the
Chronicles of the transcontinental invasion, and as mentioned before, if viewed
uncritically these elements could be extremely challenging to quantify. So, the
methodology employed here is a careful, comparative one based upon judicious use of
the written sources from the early sixteenth century and beyond.