Remember Enrique.

1492…

Few of us know the names of the people who greeted Christopher Columbus or anything about the lives they lived.
The Caribbean…

In December of 1492, three ships under the command of Columbus approached the second largest island in the Caribbean. The island was then populated by a people known as the Taino. One region was controlled by the paramount chief known as Guacanagaríx.

On December 24th, while coasting along the shore, the Santa Maria ran aground. When Guacanagaríx heard the news, he sent all his people from the town with many large canoes to unload everything from the ship. He exercised great care and diligence and he himself was as diligent in helping unload the ship as he was at guarding what was taken to land to ensure all was well cared for. Grateful for the island leaders help, Columbus accepted the invitation to come ashore.

A journal kept by Columbus reads: The king observes a very wonderful estate, in such a dignified manner that it is a pleasure to see. Neither better people nor a land can there be. The houses and the villages are so pretty. They love their neighbors as themselves. And they have the sweetest speech in the world. They are gentle and they are always laughing.

As a token of his gratitude for the rescue of his men and supplies, Columbus presented Guacanagaríx with a red cape. In return, Guacanagaríx gave Columbus the golden tiara he wore on his head. To Guacanagaríx it was a fair exchange. A gesture of mutual respect and recognition. The opening of trade between equals.

To Columbus, it was a crown. A symbol of authority. To Columbus, Guacanagaríx was surrendering his lands and his people to Spain. But Columbus was not simply looking to rule people, he saw something much more valuable to his future. He saw gold. The prize he could take back to his sponsors in Europe. There was wealth to be had and at that time, wealth belong to those who were strong enough to take it.

Leaving behind a fort and men, Columbus set sail for Europe. With him he would carry the news of gold and docile island natives.

Guacanagaríx and the taino people had no way of knowing what was about to happen to their ancient way of life.

By the time of contact, there were well over a million people living in the Caribbean. Local community leaders were subject to powerful regional leaders like Guacanagaríx who controlled trade with large personal fleets and warehouses of commodities.

Columbus returned in Nov of 1493 with a military flotilla of 17 ships. Under his command were armor clad soldiers, mounted cavalry, attack dogs, and guns. The Spanish conquest of the Caribbean began.

Gold mines were opened and the taino were enslaved. Forced to mine the ore.

A Spanish priest, Bartolomé de las Casas, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, spoke out against the cruel treatment of the taino people.

Epidemics and famines swept the island yet the Spanish continued to demand that the beleaguered taino supply them with both food and labor. When resistance sprang up, Columbus sent out military units to terrorize towns into submission.

Bartolomé de las Casas wrote: They were so relentlessly persecuted and pursued with their wives and children up into the hills, so tired, hungry, and harassed. And there went with them disease, death, and misery just as if they had been killed in the wars. They died of hunger and of sickness that surrounded them and the fatigue and oppression that followed. After 1496, no more than a third of the multitude remained that had been on the island.

Taino suffering was so severe that thousands took their own lives rather than submit.

Some escaped into the mountains, including Guacanagaríx. He soon died a homeless wanderer.

By 1503 only a few pockets of resistance remained. In a mountainous region taino people ruled by a woman named Anacaona successfully evaded Spanish demands for labor. Determined to break the resistance, the Spanish governor requested a diplomatic meeting. Anacaona agreed and summoned 80 regional sub chiefs to her state house for the meeting. When the 80 leaders were gathered inside, the governor gave a signal and the state house was set on fire. Soldiers lined up outside with swords. Taino leaders who did not burn were killed as they fled the blaze. Anacaona was spared, only to be executed later by hanging.

In the aftermath of the bloody carnage, a little boy stood among the ashes and smoke beside the charred remains of his father. A boy whose name the Spanish would come to remember well: Enrique.

The child who witnessed the murder of his father and the other taino leaders was taken away from the killing field by a Spanish priest. He was placed in the care of missionaries and baptized Enrique. Although raised by Spaniards, he never forgot his own identity. Heir to chiefdom…

Bartolomé de las Casas: Enrique was a tall and graceful man with a well proportioned body. His face was neither handsome nor ugly, but that of a serious and stern man. He married a native, a woman of excellent and noble lineage named Doña Lucia.

The Spanish government created a labor grant system under which individual Spanish land owners were given village populations to use as forced labor. Enrique, his wife, and his people were turned over to a young Spaniard named Valenzuela. They were at his mercy. The priest, las Casas, protested. He wrote: in a more just world, Enrique would have been the master but Valenzuela viewed Enrique as a slave and valued him less than manure in the street.

Enrique complied with Valenzuela’s tyrannical demands for which he was rewarded with regular beatings and robbed of his last remaining possessions. His many appeals to Spanish authorities fell on deaf ears. When Valenzuela raped his wife, Enrique reached his breaking point.

He and his followers escaped to their homelands.

Bartolomé de las Casas: The Spanish came to call him ” The rebel Enrique” and those who followed him were termed rebels and insurgents. In truth they weren’t rebelling but only fleeing from their cruel enemies who were misusing and destroying them just as a cow or an ox tries to escape from a slaughter house.

Enrique organized his people. Women, children, and elderly were sent into caves high in the mountains where they raised chickens and cultivated gardens to feed the resistance army. Scouts were posted on every pass. Heavy boulders rolled into place above the foot paths. Enrique instructed his men to fight only in self defense, to kill Spaniards only in the course of battle and otherwise to simply deprive them of their weapons.

At first the Spanish army was confident they would quickly crush the taino resistance. But Enrique’s army armed only with spears, iron spikes, fish bones, and bows and arrows fought with fierce determination against the Spanish and their sophisticated arms. Time after time they forced the enemy to retreat.

During one fierce battle, Valenzuela himself was captured. But even this mortal enemy’s life would be spared. Enrique ordered him released.

As word of Enrique’s victories spread across the island, many taino fled to his refuge and joined the fight for freedom. His legend grew. It was said that Enrique never slept at night, that he himself patrolled the village until dawn.

For over a decade he fought Spain to a stand still. Finally, unable to defeat the gorillas on their own territory, an exhausted and humiliated Spanish government made overtures of peace.

Enrique would not speak to any but one Spaniard, the priest las Casas. After many years spent demanding that the king act to stop Spanish atrocities in the new world, las Casas had been officially designated protector of the Indians. He now sought out Enrique in his mountain stronghold. Two months later las Casas and Enrique appeared before Spanish authorities and negotiated a truce.

14 years after it began, the rebellion came to an end but only after the Spanish agreed to guarantee freedom for Enrique’s people.

At the base of the mountains, Enrique settled with his 4,000 followers, the last members of a culture that had flourished for a millennium. By the end of the century, the taino population on the island that las Casas had estimated at 2 million was officially reported extinct.

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I share this story for many reasons… For those of us descended from the Taino people, it is good to remember true history so as to not let it repeat.  But it has a lot more to do with humanity as a whole than just one race of people. What I have outlined here are details of how evil pressed to rule over men and how the spirit of man did overcome and see the true light. Can you imagine Enrique having in his grasp the ability to dispense his own wrath against Valenzuela after having raped his wife but letting him go free???

We see that the overall outcome was that the population was left near extinct. We know the taino are not extinct, that was reported of Hispaniola, or what we call today the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. But what we have is testimony. Testimony that not only does true love and joy dwell with us but that we can overcome with love.

Some years back Rosie Perez made a documentary: Yo soy Boricua, pa’que tu lo sepas. In the documentary she described even more horrific things that happened in more recent times but one of the things that stuck with me was a finding of just what kind of people we always were: happy! A quote from the film states “we would have parties and dance just to pass the time…” For me personally that hits home greatly.

To smile, enjoy life, to dance and to love… That’s what it is all about.

I kind of got away from where I was going with this. Much like I wrote in “The parable of the Indian” the story of Enrique and the taino people is one that I think many of us forgot or never even learned. While we can point fingers at Columbus in this particular event, the truth is that it is the host of evil manipulating weak men whose hearts are void of the appreciation of the true value of love and of the human being.

We are immersed in distraction after distraction to either forget or not even care about these truths and the result is going to be that they will come to pass again only it will not be a single race of people but all people who truly value freedom.

I say over and over again and never shall I cease, that love is the answer to all things. I know that many of us believe we live each other but then where is the evidence? Many times I have suggested the fact that if we truly love one another we would have no need of the systems operated by less than one percent of the worlds population. I’m not naive either, I know full well that in this world in its current state, that that will never come to pass wholly. But it can begin and I tell you now that only that alone is what will defeat the evil reigning before us this day.

We have no need to rely on the worldly systems in place to live but would flourish in greater harmony if we only allowed love to be our primary motivation…

Do you know why fast food is so unhealthy? It has nothing to do with fats and sodium and sugars… Its because the motivation in the heart has been poisoned.

Think about it. Does a fast food worker come to work with the motivation that they want to make peoples lives better? No. They come for a paycheck. Very few fast food workers have a high opinion of their job.

There is a truth that has drifted far from men… Whatever is in your heart, you will bring forth into this world through your hands. Fast food pays minimum wage. Minimum wage means one thing only to me: ” If I could pay you less, I would “… Those working minimum wage jobs are usually struggling to make ends meet, stressed and oppressed. That being their life is what comes forth from their hands… They transfer that energy to the food. How do I know? When your Momma cooks with love, even if its something you may not like greatly, it always tastes good, doesn’t it?

So fast food isn’t killing people because of fats and all that, its because of the dis-ease of the hands preparing it, and where there is dis-ease there will result disease. Now yes, fats and sodium’s and sugars can play a role. As my grandmother would say: too much of anything will make you sick, but the underlying cause of it all has to do with the motivation and contents of our hearts.

We do what we do to get that dollar first that we rely on to acquire our needs rather than purpose in our hearts to love each other and know the true power undoubtedly so much that we know our needs will never be overlooked because we are following our true purpose as human beings.

Remember Enrique.

– Paul.