Caridad de los Indios and "la Gran Familia": "too racially mixed" to count (Yateras and Guantánamo mountains, Cuba; reported 1989 and 2017)

SUMMARYCaridad de los Indios and "la Gran Familia": "too racially mixed" to count (Yateras and Guantánamo mountains, Cuba; reported 1989 and 2017) [Connections: Latin America & Caribbean, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDCultural Survival Quarterly (José Barreiro, from 1989 fieldwork) reports that Indian families displaced from Tiguabos, Palenque and the San Andrés valley resettled in the Yateras valley and formed "Caridad de los Indios"; anthropologist Manuel Rivero de la Calle's team studied about 300 people of Indian origin in Yateras; a 1936 official map showed Indian reservations at Tiguabos and Palenque. A 1989 Granma article by historian Marta Rev (spelling as given in the source) said the families were "too racially mixed" to be called Indians and that "There are no absolutely legitimate Indians left in our country." In 2017 Barreiro (NMAI's American Indian magazine) described the Rojas-Ramírez family, "la Gran Familia," at La Ranchería near Caridad de los Indios, "upwards of 4,000" people, led by cacique Panchito Ramírez Rojas; colonial authorities gave many Indigenous families the surnames Rojas and Ramírez at baptism; a royal land grant at El Caney was overturned in 1850. Historian Alejandro Hartmann: "This idea of a total Indian extinction was prescribed and cemented by cosmopolitan scholars."

PATTERNThe "too mixed" test, a purity standard applied only to Indigenous people, erases a living community from the national record

LENS (WW9)Mixed is not missing. The family is still there

OPENCuba's census has no Indigenous category; whether and how Yateras families were recorded (as mestizo, blanco or negro) in Cuban censuses needs deep research

SOURCECultural Survival Quarterly 13-3, "Indians in Cuba"; Barreiro, "Indigenous Cuba: Hidden in Plain Sight," American Indian 18:4 (2017).