The common name given to the rural inhabitants of Cuba is
Guajiros. This word is believed derived from the neo-Taino honorific title Guaoxoerí (your mercy) given to the nitaínos of lesser nobility; other higher ranking salutations were Baharí (your lordship) and Matumberí (your highness) (Zayas, p. 244-245 and 270). Although Guajiro is often translated as
peasant, this is a misnomer, unlike peasants which in Spanish are called
peónes by definition those who travel on foot, Guajiros often ride their small tough
Criollo horses, are usually armed with cutlasses (machetes), and lived predominantly in separate scattered housing or small towns. This dwelling spacing apparently derives from circumstances left over from the times of the
cimarrón (La Rosa Corzo, 2003), and the repressions of the count of Valmaceda in the
Ten Years' War and that of
Valeriano Weyler in the 1895–1898
Cuban War of Independence. The Guajiros usually form the bulk of the fighting force in Cuban wars; thus a better translation would be
yeoman. In modern Cuba, with growing urbanisation, Guajiros are still named rural inhabitants as well as habitants of small towns ("pueblo") in contrast to urban habitants. They preserve cultural attributes as the
Guajiro music, mostly from spanish and african roots, and typical food. In Puerto Rico, the rural inhabitants are called Jibaros.It should be noted that the term jíbaro, according to the Catholic online encyclopedia, is also the name of a tribal group in South America, it meant "mountain men." Jíbaro means "People of the Forest" in the Taíno language. So the term obviously came with them as they immigrated from South America. However "jíbaro" – as is used in Puerto Rico, is not used the same in Cuba or the Dominican Republic, which were populated with the very same Taíno people. In Cuba the word jibaro is used to denote something wild or untamed, such as "perros jibaros " or wild dogs.