Sociedad y economía de los Taínos

Francisco Moscoso's Sociedad y economía de los Taínos contains two essays on Taino society and agriculture. As one might expect, it treads familiar territory in terms of Moscoso's past scholarship on the development of precolonial societies in the Antilles. Drawing from chronicles, archival documents, archaeological studies, and theoretical premises of changes in the mode of production and social relations, Moscoso argues quite persuasively for a "tribal-tributary" mode for the Taino cacicazgo by 1000 CE. This was a transitional stage to a class-based society that was interrupted by the Spanish conquest. Moscoso applies this understanding to the entire history of humans in the Caribbean, starting with bands, moving to tribes, and culminating with the chiefdoms known as cacicazgos with more division of labor, hereditary elites (caciques, nitainos, behiques), and regular surpluses through conuco agriculture. This was, at least in Azua, Jaragua, and Maguana, supplemented by irrigation projects and possibly hydraulic works that facilitated agriculture in parts of Haiti which suffered from less rainfall. Indeed, Moscoso even cites a 1495 document by Columbus on the existence of acequias in Maguana. Although it is uncertain, it is likely that similar irrigation practices existed in Puerto Rico, Cuba and possibly Jamaica, too. 

The second essay included in the volume focuses on agriculture, and regularly draws from Oviedo, Las Casas, and other ethnographic sources on societies at similar stages of development. The various uses, applications, and varieties of crops, plants, fruits, and wood utilized by the Taino cacicazgo societies exhibit a highly developed understanding of their local environments. Both essays similarly stress Moscoso's argument about the tribal-tributary stage reached by cacicazgos and the central importace of regular surpluses. Using Las Casas and other sources, one can reach possibly accurate estimates of yuca production (but not other crops cultivated by the Tainos) that suggest high population levels. Thus, Moscoso estimated that Xaragua could have had 30,000-40,000 inhabitants (assuming Behechio and the 32 caciques under his order each led aldeas with the minimum number of inhabitants suggested by Las Casas (1000 people). Similarly, Serrano, one of the old conquistadors interviewed in 1517 by the Hieronymites, reported that the grand caciques held under their control 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 naborias. And given the role of the cacique in ordering the type of labor to be done by naborias and their role in determining the redistribution of said surplus, the dominant 'class' developed a complex ideology that justified the control of caciques and nitainos.