Huareo: Story of a Jamaican Cacique

When Huareo inherits the role of cacique, he leads the Taino into a prosperous life until he receives word one day from neighbouring Haiti of strangers sailing and laying waste to their villages. Determined not to let the same fate befall his people, Huareo did not welcome or trust the Spanish strangers when they first arrived in Yamaye (Jamaica) in 1494. In 1509, the Spaniards return to the island with the sole purpose of gaining control and the result is something Huareo and his people could never have imagined. Meticulously researched from original sources such the journals of Diego Mendez and Hernando Colon who were marooned in Jamaica on Columbus’s fourth voyage, along with other primary and secondary sources and consultation with historians and archaeologists, Fred Kennedy unearths the history of Jamaica’s first ancestral heroes.