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

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important visitors were honored with areito dances and gifts. Hence, attributing a very
significant ritualistic value to this attire.
b) _ Other sources that illustrate the quick idiomatic adaptation of this word across the
early colonial colloquial Spanish of the Americas.
This word can be found in a 1554 copy of México en 1554. Tres diálogos latinos
de Francisco de Salazar which was the first texts ever published about the University of
Mexico by the first book-printer of New Spain, Juan Pablos. The text reads as follows:
Enaguas y huípiles, ropas de las indias, y mantas que los hombres usan por capas. La
mayor parte son de algodón, porque las más ordinarias se hacen de nequén, ó hilo de
maguey 110 .
In this text we are presented with an early colonial Spanish full of Taino lexicon
with words becoming part of literature and art. One Nahuatl word (huípiles)
accompanied by three Taino ones (naguas, henequén and maguey). The
importance of this source is imperative, because (unlike historical sources) literature
carries elements of culture and language often not present in the official records.
Finally, one last example of the transcendence of the word naguas in the
colloquial Spanish of the Americas is its presence in the 1608 publication of Espejo de la
paciencia considered the first epic poem written in Cuba by Silvestre de Balboa.
Bajaron de los árboles en naguas
Las bellas hamadriades hermosas
110
(Cevantes Salazar, 1554, p. 151)