We almost owe to the Spanish Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar one of the first historical mentions to the place-name of the Aruaco ethnolinguistic branch Camagüey, and without before in any of his letters, when he barely set foot on the Cuban island-archipelago, referred to said term to the king don Fernando; to whom it was transmitted indirectly, in the first fortnight of December, 1513; Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas while he was part of the fighting forces that would have moved through our historic region, when Captains Pánfilo de Narváez and Diego de Ovando acted as advisor to the chiefs of the troop.

The letter in which Velázquez tells to the monarch what had happened since his departure from Bayamo until then, while he was in the center of the Greater Antilles, was dated by his clerk, on April 1st, 1514; incidentally, a letter in which he mention on three occasions the “province” of Camagüey. However, it is also possible that the place name was heard from the aborigines by the Hispanic soldiers who entered our region in pursuit of “Indians” from Bayamo, in 1512, following orders from Narváez who was hunting them and was attacked by these until achieving their withdrawal to that eastern town, according to Ovando.

One or another version that arose at such an adverse historical juncture, this possibility of modification of the original term could be due to the presence of the lexical and grammatical morphemes that make up the Aruaco place name. If we accept that the pre-Columbian people spoke the Aruaca language, we could agree that the loanword that intervened in the formation of the term Camagüey, indeed, must have come from the speech of the communities of that own ethnolinguistic branch present in certain contexts or geographical spaces in our region historical.

In fact, it is suggestive that Las Casas described that that term was heard in the “province called Camagüey, the penultimate [syllable] long.” That is to say, he knew about its lexical components, having as an assistant or interpreter of languages ​​the Indian Dieguillo brought from Hispaniola, and because said term was easy to Hispanicize and pronounce, similar to what happened with many other Spanish words such as: yauruma for “yagruma “, Xaraguá for” jaraguá “or” baraguá “, curianá for” curana “, haniguanica for” Guaniguanico “, majimo for” máximo “…

Note that from our historical region the relative suffix aruaco with totemic meaning ca, or the lexeme or attributive prefix ka = “con” or “present in”, as well as the privative or negative prefix ma, is interesting. And it is known that Las Casas was very familiar with the Indo-Americanisms and that this made him modify aruaco terms such as, hobo-jobo, Yahubabo-Yaguabo (the first means bird-punished by the sun and the moon); hutía-jutía, cazabi-casabe, ka sigua-cacique, ia ia-Yaba, cogioba-cohoba, caouabo-Caonabó … Velázquez was able to practice so much, surely helped by Las Casas and his assistants, since, indistinctly, he changed Yucayo with Lucayo and Hatuey with Yacaguey, Yacahuey and Yahatuey.

Did the region or “Indian province” mean so much to the head of the conquest-occupation of the Island-archipelago? Velázquez said that the western “provinces” were “subject” to the “main” of Camagüey. Certainly, the sifted green savannah could feed thousands of heads of cattle, and for that advantage feeding was provided to settlers and merchants, who would profit from these productions. The latter may have worried Velázquez, as well as the sustained state of rebellion of the aborigines of the neighboring regions, who are known to have moved to Camagüey to face the Spanish military.

However, after this information was sent to the Crown, it seemed that the Camagüey place-name was no longer mention.

In short, because of the pride that characterized the military who carried out the “pacification” of the aborigines, and because of assuming those who lived in backwardness and in a “state of savagery”, the “victory of civilization” should fall on them. “European” and the defeat of “indigenous barbarism”, so that the place name heard from the barbarians had to be made invisible or supplanted by a “real” appointment that to the former would seem alien to their cultural model, precisely when listening to the “Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe” assigned to the almost “ghost” town founded on the north coast and when it was extended to the regional center, the New Town, which would emerge in 1528.

Furthermore, it is known that the Hispanic military nucleus that moved from that first enclave on the coast to the Caunao village, in 1616, did not even respect the place name given by its inhabitants to their ancestral habitat; Well, again, without consulting any council or council of elders of the village, the brand new lithonym “Puerto del Principe” was attached to it, resulting paradoxical, because the colonial town was found “inland”.

Thus, the historian of the city of Camagüey Jorge Juárez Cano asserted that this native voice derived from the aruaco “camagua”, when in reality the original root seemed closer to magüey or mauei (yamaguey, magueyes or yamagueyes?). Meanwhile, the sage Esteban Pichardo Tapia affirmed that it was “the old Indian province of Camagüey”, that is, a pre-Columbian name that was lost in historical time, and therefore nothing to do with the alleged ” Camagüebax ”accepted for many years later. In his opinion, that Indo-Americanism seemed incorporated or mixed between the insular aruaco and the Hispanic lexicon.

Anyway, Camagüey is a term that deserves to be pronounced strong in its last syllable “long” as Las Casas said, because it came from the first island arucos that presented resistance to the Hispanic settlers that moved through our region with the strategic objective to “pacify” and effectively occupy the silent savannah. In fact, Camagüey makes us evoke the struggles, and the men and women who did so much in all fields and in all historical times to overtake it and make it worthy and an integral part of the Island and the continent.

Every April 1st in Camagüey it is valid to review the language of our aborigines, to know that it was they who lent their terms to Las Casas, Velázquez and the European military who arrived here to wage the colonialist war of pillage, and not precisely to implement a Castilian literacy campaign among the first settlers of our mestizo and creole Cuba.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García