When Europeans landed on the beaches of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, now divided between the states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, they found mostly peaceful pre-colonial peoples. Among the people present in the Caribbean and then in the current Dominican island there were the Tainos, an ethnic group in their indigenous language means "good people". Christopher Columbus described them as the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile: "Your highness may believe that worldwide there may be a better person ... love their neighbor as themselves, and have the most speech the world's fresh, and are gentle and always laughing. " The island's dance dynamic, fast, happy was an inaccessible place, from the lush vegetation, crystal clear sea. Coveted mid-century maritime traffic, the island was the subject of expeditions of English adventurers, fertile ground for legendary pirates ready for any sort of looting, the events that arose over the centuries the fantasies of Western novelists. These people lived in small villages with geometric squares that served as a gathering socio-cultural. Within these areas were alternated various social activities such as festivals, religious ceremonies, public ceremonies and games, the Tainos, for example, the invention of the game ball. In the eyes of the Indians the Spaniards were men seem to have come from another world, white-skinned people, strangely dressed, unshaven. The Indians, moreover, did not demonstrate a degree of clothing class. They wore short skirts, gold jewelry around his neck, nose and shells of all kinds. The friar Bartolome de Las Casas, called the Apostle of the Indies (from childhood involved in the affairs of the Indies) historical source is credited, even if you do not forget the numerous archaeological excavations in circumcaribica. For the Church the people settled in the island territory is "people created by God without malice and without duplicity." He describes the many aspects their physical, moral and their infinite kindness, wish to defend against those who regarded them as irrational and bestial; against exploitation in the infamous "encomiendas. The terrible genocide perpetrated by the Iberian monarchies did not come to the necessary manpower to meet the needs of the conquerors. It was thought right then to introduce, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, African slaves from the west coast of Africa for use in sugar cane fields. Began the meeting of three cultures intercontinental. The life of the natives was based on a whole made up of ceremonial rituals, crafts, tribal dances. There were so many occasions reserved for men to dance, they did so wearing straw masks, painting the entire body, staging real sacred dances, some of which primarily calls areytos accompanied by drums. The origins of all the dances never find a single reliable source. For the merengue are different argument assumed by scholars. Mingle stories of poor African slavery which, chained at the ankles, they were inevitably forced to crawl around his feet to the beat of drums. Through songs and sounds of primitive instruments of centuries anticipated movements timeless. It is said for example the story of a slave who rose against the Spaniards, wounded in the leg, managed to vanish into thin air. During a party in his honor would have danced all night and, despite the clumsy movements, the strange gestures were imitated by the people. And again that comes from the French word "meringue, meringue. But what is striking is how even today the current state Caribeño this dance is very widespread. You may be incredulous at seeing places, squares, streets and all the local island living this frenetic pace. The meeting with the merengue is a vital embrace that expresses itself through its traditions, its people, its roots. That 's what the intellectual Bulgarian Todorov, about the conquest of America, wrote, "is the most extraordinary meeting of our history. "
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