Terms and terminology conflicts of social quandaries engendered by the taino native fixation: a cultural crisis analytical study in Caribbean contemporary history / Randle Sloan Toraño [artículo de revista]

Abstract: Generations born before the 1920th in the Greater Antilles never referred to themselves as taino or taino native descendants, that was a subject limited to a handful of Caribbean researchers but, nearly exclusively in the hands of foreign scholars. The controversies surrounding the origin of the illusory taino term christened by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque Schmaltz (Turkey 1783 - USA 1840) in 1836 predominates in our examined geography of, Bahamas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico yet, it is widespread worldwide. Nonetheless, Rafinesque and his 19th century advocates are fundamentally unknown by the people who write and live by the modern taino fixation. The first taino maturation phase extended from 1836 to 1900 entering in a second explosive stage between 1901 and 1955, when in just over fifty years by 1955 the intense academic movement of the taino fixation achieved a resounding success, so much, that generations born in the Caribbean after the 1950th do think that this taino incarnation was a race, was a language, a native tribe and is a biological ancestor. The third phase from 1956 to the present, has seen a massive taino fixation and standardization. The scholarly move to impose-legitimize is relentless. Prestigious international institutions have invested substantial financial and human resources sponsoring research, exploration and collection gathering of Caribbean native artifacts indirectly sanctioning the proliferation and standardization of a non-existing tainan culture: successfully.
Keywords: Cultural crisis, ethnonyms, exonyms, fixation, history-based, legitimacy, native-typical-uniformity