Anacaona
Cheo Feliciano · 1971 · written by Tite Curet Alonso, from the album Cheo
A Taíno chief captured by the Spanish conquerors of the Caribbean, sung as a salsa hymn: the song that made Cheo Feliciano's comeback.
The story
1.Her name
The song calls out to Anacaona again and again: a woman of a captive people, from a world that was there before the conquerors came.
2.Her cry
The singer says he heard her voice, and heard her cry: the voice of a heart in anguish. The freedom she longed for never came.
3.Proud to the end
The coro remembers her as noble and brave, with the soul of a white dove. She dies crying, but she doesn't forgive.
4.The tribe remembers
In the last part the singer tells what history says: she was taken by force. Her whole people cries for her because she was good, and remembering what happened makes their anger rise again.
Key phrases
- “Anacaona, india de raza cautiva”Anacaona, Indian woman of a captive peopleThe line the song opens and keeps coming back to. India is how Spanish has always named the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and raza cautiva, “captive race”, is the Taíno people under Spanish rule.
- “areíto de Anacaona”Anacaona's areítoAn areíto was a Taíno ceremony of song and dance, where a community sang its history. Anacaona was famous for composing them, so the song is, in a way, an areíto for her.
- “muere pero no perdona”She dies, but she doesn't forgiveThe song's defiant center. She doesn't get a happy ending, but she doesn't bow either.
- “dicen que fue a la cañona”They say she was taken by forceA la cañona is Caribbean slang for “by force”, against your will.
- “la tribu ya se enfogona”The tribe gets fired upEnfogonarse, from fogón, a cooking fire, is Puerto Rican slang for getting angry, boiling over.
Context
Cheo Feliciano, from Ponce in Puerto Rico, had sung with the Joe Cuba Sextet and Eddie Palmieri in the 1960s. Cheo (Vaya, 1971), his first solo album, was his comeback after drug rehabilitation, and Tite Curet Alonso co-produced it and wrote most of its songs.
Anacaona was a real woman: a Taíno cacica, a chief, who ruled Jaragua on the island of Hispaniola (today's Haiti and Dominican Republic) around 1500. She was known as a poet and composer of areítos, the Taíno ceremonial songs and dances. After the Spanish arrived she was captured, and she was hanged in Santo Domingo in the early 1500s.
Anacaona became Cheo's signature song and one of the first big hits of the 1970s salsa boom.
On the dance floor
Steady and strong, with a haunting melody: the coro sings her name and Cheo answers it with his deep, warm voice.
The song is short and gets to the chorus fast, and the coro keeps coming back. Dance it with some weight and pride, not with fluff.
This is our own retelling of the song, not its lyrics or a translation of them: the few short phrases quoted are there to explain what they mean. The song belongs to its writer, Tite Curet Alonso.