areíto

plural areítos · alternative areyto

1. A type of performance and ceremony of the Taíno people of the Caribbean.

   In early encounters, the Spanish were welcomed and entertained by the Taíno, who arranged areítos in their honor as a type of elite hospitality.

   2005, Nicholas J. Saunders, The Peoples of the Caribbean: An Encyclopedia of Archaeology and Traditional Culture

   1 more example

   What did an areíto actually entail? The sixteenth-century chroniclers tell us that areítos recited histories, which were transmitted through the generations.

   2005, Peter E. Siegel, Ancient Borinquen: Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Native Puerto Rico