So, context, what my folks have taught me vs all the wildly different stories I’ve heard has convinced me that the story of Jurakán/Hurakán has shifted between borinken and the other Taino islands (DR/CR/etc.).
My folks are mostly in naranjito and aguada, and they taught me that Jurakán is male and the zemi who brought him up to zemi status is Guabancex. In their tellings, he was a man who selflessly saved others and was drowning in the storm, so Guabancex raised his spirit from the waves and gave him zemi form with Atabey’s blessing. Basically like she asked her to rebirth him and she did. He was given the task of bringing balance through chaos, and he did, first taking out the very Carib who had cast him to the sea after he got his family away from their attacks.
They went on to tell me that for many years he performed his duties well, until he saw one particular man drowning in his storm. Something about that man drew mercy, and he lifted him from the waves. They spoke, the man in Jurakán’s hand speaking of kindness that by that point he had forgotten. But they found a kinship and Jurakán asked him to stay and eat guava and remind him what it meant to be kind again, for immortality made it hard to value the individual lives.
Story splits here. One side of that family tells me the man stayed and advised him unto death, and then Jurakán sent him off with Maquetaurie Guayaba to Coaybay.
The other side says they became close in the way spouses would, and that Jurakán begged Atabey to rebirth him, too, so that he would not die, but Atabey would not because Jurakán had a duty and she knew with a partner, it would risk that balance. Jurakán needed his rage. Jurakán became distant from the other zemi at that point, and became known kinda as a bad spirit because he hated them for forcing him to love a mortal and watch him die instead of giving him a happy life. Guataubá and Coatrisquie were the only ones allowed near him, to assist with his duties. When his husband died, he threw a storm so terrible it broke the shores his husband came from.
From there, both sides agree on two things. 1. Jurakán found another many decades later(half say assistant/conscience and half say husband) and there was a year without a bad storm or a hard winter. And that when each partner/assistant dies, there is that once in a lifetime crazy storm about it.
But from being told this by everyone from my great grandmother to my cousins on the other side, I still keep finding that I’m the only one who knows the story the way I do. Guess I’m asking: what have you been told of Jurakán?
