B04 Colombia, Las Tunas CUBA c1909

The people we now call Taíno discovered Christopher Columbus and the Spaniards. He did not discover us, as we were home and they were lost at sea when they landed on our shores. . . . 

We survived because many of our ancestors ran off into the mountains. . . . after 1533, when Indian slaves were “granted” their freedom by the Spanish monarchy, any Spaniard who was reluctant to let their Taíno slaves go would simply re-classify them as African. . . . 

Paper genocide means that a people can be made to disappear on paper. . . . No matter how you may look physically or assert your identity, you are extinct. This is paper genocide: a narrative created by the conquerors and perpetuated by every subsequent researcher. . . . 

Our identities have always been hidden in plain sight.

— Jorge Baracutei Estevez, “Meet the Survivors of a ‘Paper Genocide’,” 2019

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