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

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[…] nos habíamos de obligar que habíamos de ir con aquellos tres navíos a unas
isletas que estaban entre la isla de Cuba y Honduras, que agora se llaman las
islas de los Guanaxes; y que habíamos de ir de guerra y cargar los navíos de
indios de aquellas islas para pagar con indios el barco, para servirse de ellos
por esclavos 61
These two above quotes from Diaz del Castillo seem to hint to a forced Taino
presence among the Spanish. In the text, it is stated that they will go to war to capture
Indians to use them as payment to cover the cost of the ships and to be used as slaves
which seems to indicate a prevalent and large scale enslaving cultural practice by the
Spanish. As a matter of fact, these servants or slaves traveling among the Spanish will
later be mentioned in Diaz del Castillo’s text by their Taino designation as naboria or
servant (this word is going to be analyzed later in the sequence of BDC’s text). Yet, the
quote in the sequence of the text above not only illustrates the Taino presence as slave
labor in the Spanish ships, but it also gives us another opening into Taino phonetics and
syntaxis with the mention of the word “isla de los Guanaxex”. This sentence is of
extreme importance because it uses a pleonastic expression of the Spanish “de los” (of
the) along the Taino synonym ex (which means, it looks like or it belongs to or as if or
the adverb like). The í, íx, íz, ís or ex can be found as a modifying suffix in surviving
words such as Guacanagaríx (gua > ‘warrior’ + cana >‘royal palm tree” + gameaning
unknown-could mean tall + r > ‘place’ and íx > ‘adverb like’ = ‘the warrior that
looks as tall as a royal palm tree’); in the name Guabancex > ‘spirit of the supreme
storm’ e.g. guaba’n > ‘spider or tarantula’ + xex > ‘looks like’ or (‘Spirit that looks like
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(Diaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana| Aparato de Variantes, 1632)