fbpx

Cayucos

Genaro “Cayuco” Reyes
Dominican Republic

Sculptor, native of Miches, El Seibo province, specializes in recycling. He is also known by the nickname Cayuco.
His work is a metaphor for the history of migrations and displacements around the world.

The laureate Dominican visual artist Genaro Reyes, is known with the nickname “Cayuco” because a good part of his fame as a sculptor acquired it by making “yolas” in different artistic forms. Starting from this concept, Fabián García, from El Seibo, wants to know the real meaning of the word cayuco and how it is known internationally.
A cayuco is a flat-bottomed canoe built by emptying a tree trunk, sometimes a palm tree trunk, usually a leafy soft wood like Ceiba.

Its name derives from the word cayo. The emptying can be by metallic tools or stones in the form of an ax, machete, hoe, whip … or by means of fires that carbonize the inside of the trunk and teas for the sides and outer bottom, and equalizing it with tools. By extension, other flat-bottomed and narrow vessels are called cayucos compared to their length. The cayucos and the pateras are famous in Spain due to their diffusion by the media, the various vessels receive such a name (one of these vessels is occupied or overloaded by between 20 and 45 people) employed by illegal African immigrants to try to arrive to Europe through the Canary Islands and Cape Verde from Morocco, Sahara, Mauritania and Senegal. Being too fragile or small for the open sea, its occupants frequently perish.

Call Now

0

Your Cart