Audry’s Reviews > Caciques and Cemi Idols: The Web Spun by Taino Rulers Between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico > Status Update

Before the Spanish invaded Puerto Rico, locals played a ball game in which you could bet a person's life; if you won, you had the right to kill them. And you thought modern ball games were brutal.

The author is taking apart assumptions about Tainos that are based on one researcher's biased interpretation of "more" and "less" developed native Caribbean cultures from Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, more. The researcher even used to call some native cultures "Sub-Taino" -- he thought of them as inferior, culturally, to other groups he was classifying with the same term, a term that NO local culture called itself.