Jose Barreiro: Indigenous leaders hold historic meeting in Cuba

A new consciousness of Cuban reality emerged as the cacique and his daughter stepped out from a 20-year trail and into indigenous and global history.

In Havana, Cuba, early August, Native delegations from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Trinidad, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, gathered at the Cuban intellectual center, Casa de las Americas, for a colloquium to examine the issues of indigenous peoples to be posed to the United Nations.

Formally and openly – officially – don Francisco Ramirez Rojas, el Cacique Panchito, and his daughter, Idalis, also a community leader, represented their people from La Rancheria, one of several dozen Indian communities and family “caserios” (multi-family homesteads) scattered throughout the eastern mountains.

For Cuban history, it was a momentous occasion, as it marked the first time since the Spanish conquest, that an Indian cacique of the Cuban mountains stood before an international gathering, representing an actual Cuban indigenous community, the guajiro-taino gens, of the noted Indios de Yateras.

The visiting indigenous delegates were immediately elated to meet the cacique. An Aymara diplomat from Bolivia, Erwin Mamani, declared, “We were told Cuba had no Indians. So, we are very happy to meet you. Now we know it is not true.”