| Taino-Kongo Legacy The Kongo descendents in and of the Americas today have a lengthy and rich history of cultural development that is emerging and recognized by political and social institutions that acknowledge the significance of our importance and impact within American culture. Taino / Yamboaki, Amerindian; all have and continue to contribute to not only American culture, but to individual spirit. The Kongo culture has been overshadowed by European colonization to the extent of the Diaspora; the abduction of the Kongo natives from their homes in Central Africa, which has culminated in the audacious and mythological idea that they are extinct. This myth of extinction is proving itself to be just that, a myth and the Indigenous bloodlines, traditions and communities, which have persisted for hundreds of years, are sailing into today just as they did yesterday. Though the degree of Kongo heritage and the strength of Kongo identification vary from island to island and community to community, numerous individuals and families continue to reclaim their unforgotten pasts. As their rightful claim to heritage continues the larger societies in which they live are awakening to the Taino-Kongo contributions. Critical re-assessment of historic chronicles and studies of Indigenous survival in the Americas are providing a more factual and complete record that directly contradicts the extinction of the Taino and termination of the Kongo way of life into other traditions. Native and Kongo lineage and custom are found continuously within census records and historical reports where they were thought to have never existed. Numerous practices indicative of the survival of Taino-Kongo culture include language, food and ritual, architecture, agriculture, medicinal knowledge, folklore, family life, spiritual practice and popular identity. Anthropometrical studies also support commonly held understandings of the persistence of certain biological characteristics identified with Natives in numerous parts of the Americas. Assimilation does not always incorporate extinction, and though the Taino people have assimilated within African and Spaniard culture and bloodlines their lineage has crossed with them as they developed and continue to develop into new bloodlines and cultures. The survival of these traditions and communities brings to the forefront the simultaneous acknowledgement of their religion, rites, and practices. The questions of “Who is a Palero or Palera and who has the authority to define or repute such must be answered by not only those involved personally, but respected by those who are onlookers and the interested scholars and laypersons who inquire. The direction of the Kongo identity into the 21st Century depends on the strength of these communities along with the continued awareness and acceptance of the Western Capitalist culture. Ultimately; the factual, historical and emotional defines the culmination of a Culture which has been and is here today with a society at large which is just beginning to learn to appreciate the Taino-Kongo ways. In Taino-Kongo, the “identification from the heart” arises from the active vision of the elders, the true teaching of parents to their children, the selfless commitment of individuals to their community and the heartfelt love and devotion for the spirit of the land and home. El Pueblo is all of us, the white the black the red and yellow; we are all active and responsible members of the human race. We strive to bring together and co-exist in PEACE with all and duly intend to keep our ways alive in the tradition of PaloKongo. The eastern cuban mix of boodlines and the continuing of traditions and spirit systems started by cimmarron Kongo and Tainos who refused to give an inch to the spanish slavers and invadors lives in the essence of those that live today and have established its right to be heard in the vovodas and inthe plantes of many people that belive in being free and take the risk with this act of seeking to exist as freepeople. Today they flee from the great plantation known as cuba and from the son of a spaniard who has become the slave owner known as Fidel. Different points in spacetime but the call to liberty remains ,"AJI AYA BOMBA",better dead then a slave. IN HONOR OF THE LIVING AND OF THE DEAD TAINO-KONGO WHO ARE ALIVE IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF MANY. TAINO TI INA-INA-INA LUZ Y PROGRESSO MAY YOUR SOULS FIND REST....................................... |
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