1464-00-00: (Anacaona, the Taíno Cacique of Jaragua Known as “Golden Flower,” a Poet and Political Leader Who Was Hanged by the Spanish in 1504 After Resisti…

1464-00-00: (Anacaona, the Taíno Cacique of Jaragua Known as “Golden Flower,” a Poet and Political Leader Who Was Hanged by the Spanish in 1504 After Resisting Colonial Exploitation, Whose Death Prompted the Governor to Import African Slaves as Replacement Labor): Anacaona was born in 1464 in Yaguana, present-day Léogâne, and her name in the Taíno language means “Golden Flower.” She was a cacique, a political leader, and a poet known for composing areítos, the ballads and narrative poems of Taíno oral tradition. At the time of Columbus’s arrival in 1492, she was the sister of Bohechió, cacique of Jaragua in southwestern Hispaniola, and the wife of Caonabo, cacique of Maguana. When the Spanish killed her husband in 1496, Anacaona returned to Jaragua and eventually succeeded her brother as cacique. The Spanish demanded tribute in gold and cotton from the indigenous population, a system of extraction that generated resistance. In 1502, the Spanish governor Nicolás de Ovando, suspecting Anacaona of organizing an uprising, ordered her arrest. She was taken to Santo Domingo and publicly hanged in early 1504. Her execution was not the end of the story but a turning point: the governor, recognizing that the indigenous population was dying too quickly to sustain colonial labor demands, began importing enslaved Africans as replacements. Anacaona’s death thus sits at the hinge between the destruction of the Taíno and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade to Hispaniola. Her nephew Guarocuyá continued resistance after her death. In 2005, the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat published Anacaona: Golden Flower, a young adult novel that tells the story of the conquest from the Taíno perspective.