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

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CHAPTER I | AN INTRODUCTION
I.
Title
“Language of the Voiceless: Traces of Taino Language, Food, and Culture in the
Americas from 1492 to the Present”
II.
Research Problem
My thesis will demonstrate a broad impact of Taino language and culture on the
languages of the Americas following the European invasion based on linguistic evidence
from first-hand accounts of explorers, invaders, priests and indigenous scribes in the
first fifty years after European contact. The extent of the contribution of the Taino to the
general culture of the Americas will also be shown to extend from early in the
subjugation of the Aztec empire in 1521 all the way to the present. For more than four
hundred years it was believed that the Taino (the inhabitants of the Caribbean at the
time of European arrival to the continent) had gone extinct. Chronicles such as the
writings of Dominican missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas seem to place their
disappearance within the first fifty years of the conquest 1 . However, the abundant
evidence of the incorporation of Taino words in the language used by the Spanish who
invaded Mexico overturns much of the traditional narrative and has compelled me to
1
Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies: Original Title
La Brevísima relación (N.P.: Createspace Independent Publishers, 2013), 167.