Anacaona's Martyrdom

Frédéric Marcelin's nephew wrote a rather unremarkable novella on Anacaona, one of the most celebrated figures of Haiti's indigenous past. In Emile Marcelin's imagination, Anacaona was a beautiful cacique who ruled in accordance with the zemis, justice, poetry, and the cultivation of art. Columbus and, even more effectively, Ovando ruined this "young" Indo-Haitian civilization of Xaragua and Maguana. In short, the Spanish obsession with gold, material goods and the exploitation of Taino labor spelled the end of the indigenous population. Due to its emphasis on the violent suffering of Anacaona through the capture of Caonabo, the reduction of her daughter to folie, and the massacre orchestrated by Ovando, Anacaona's function is largely as a tragic figure of a pristine Haiti unsoiled by colonialism and slavery.

Since the novella was first published in Havana and only one year after the Marchaterre Massacre, one cannot help but perceive this as a response to the US Occupation of Haiti. Like Anacaona, Haitians, despite their poetry and attention for the arts, were unable to defend their sovereignty from colonial invasion. With tragic figures like Charlemagne Péralte who could perhaps be compared to Caonabo, perhaps Emile Marcelin sought to highlight the indigenous legacy of resistance and defeat to Haitian nationalist and indigenist literary purposes. After all, the indigenous past of the island had already possessed an appeal to Haitian literary and nationalist purposes since the foundation of the state. And perhaps writing in Cuba, where the Taino legacy was also relevant, and where the yoke of US imperialism was inescapable, maybe Marcelin was situating the tale of Haiti's conquest within a larger Caribbean history. 

Sadly, this short novel reads like a slightly exciting fragment of a larger history. Anacaona, reduced mainly to a tragic figure, is not as much of an inspiring character as other caciques in Caribbean literature. She was left only as a shadow cacica before her brutal capture and death, and the nuances of cacicazgo politics and its possible role in aiding the Spanish conquest is minimized. Edwidge Danticat's novel for children, far from perfect and full of occasional historical errors, is perhaps a more empowering Anacaona, centering resistance. However, from what we have read as of now, Betances still reigns supreme for the most radical novelistic depiction of Taino caciques in literature.