Community Hero: Reina Mercado-Antunez
Reina Mercado-Antunez speaks about Taino history and culture to her daughter's class in this provided photo.
The Community Hero of the Month is a 12-month series that honors individuals and organizations that have significantly impacted their community. This year's sponsor is Window World of Western Massachusetts. Nominate a hero here.
Mercado-Antunez is the family engagement manager at Berkshire County Head Start and an active member of the Taino tribe.
Upon finding out about Mercado-Antunez's selection for community hero, dozens of her peers expressed their desire to speak about her guiding and supportive spirit.
In her role at Head Start, she supports more than 200 families and oversees family advocates as they work with families to improve access to essential resources within the program and in the community through local partnerships.
The support Mercado-Antunez received when she was a teen mom as part of a teen parent program is what sent her down this career path.
She dropped out of high school in ninth grade and joined a teen parent program, which provided her access to vital support and resources.
She earned her General Educational Development (GED) diploma and obtained an associate degree in human services from Berkshire Community College. She then pursued a bachelor's degree in social work from College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee and, last May, graduated with a master's degree in social work from Westfield State University.
The teen parent program demonstrated that having a caring individual within the system who connects with you and is willing to provide guidance can help one move forward, Mercado-Antunez said.
"I strongly feel that one's life experiences make a huge difference in how they're able to do work, wherever they might go. For me, I feel like in the ways that I grew up, I definitely grew up in poverty," she said.
"So having all of those services, having those supports, really showed me that people can make it given the right opportunities and supports and resources."
Mercado-Antunez emphasized the importance of providing families with the same support she received during her own journey and acknowledges that each family has unique needs and that empathy and individualized support are crucial.
She is dedicated to empowering and advocating for families every day. She consistently goes above and beyond to ensure families have what they need to become self-sufficient, said Brett Random, Head Start executive director
"A community hero is really someone who has our community's best interest at heart. So building resilience with children and families really is a great way to do that, which is why we're all in this work," she said.
Mercado-Antunez's multicultural background helps her to connect deeply with the diverse families they serve and enhances her ability to educate others on effectively engaging with families and meeting their needs within the program, Random said.
Her work extends far beyond Head Start, especially in her efforts within the Taino community.
"What does a hero do? They show up," and that is exactly what Mercado-Antunez does, said Gypsie Running Cloud, regional kasike, or chief, for the Higuayagua Taino in New York State.
She supports everyone from individuals in the Taino community through her social work and beyond, Kasike Running Cloud said.
"On our cultural practices and spiritual practices. Many people are familiar with the four directions: north, south, east, and west. Our tribal community focuses on seven," the kasike said.
Those directions are the four cardinal directions if north, south, east and west and the heavens, the earth, and Atinakan or the Inner-World.
"Atinakan is the most important direction because that's your inner world focus. That inner world also connects us to the macro — as above so below. It connects us to Karieburuku, the universe, and then through Karieburuku, we have our pathway back home. And that pathway back home brings us through a hummingbird path, through the Milky Way," Kasike Running Cloud said.
"All of that is about finding one's heart, finding one's breath, and putting into action through your breath, your Ahubo. Making sure that every step forward is focused on the well-being of the people. That is Reina's focus. She's focusing on communities, plural. With these kind of values and practices she is living the embodiment of her spirituality, and that's to be commended, and that's to be honored."
Mercado-Antunez is the co-founder of the Higuayagua Book Club, runs the Ohketeau Women's Circle, and volunteers for events and presentations to educate others about Taino history, culture, and traditions. In addition to the book club, there is a conversation series.
At the surface level, the book club may not seem like much to some, but for the Taino community, it is a vital part of decolonization, reindigenization, and preserving Taino identity, Kasike Running Cloud said.
"There's a greater nuance at work, and there's something that's incredibly important because that's also our university. We are gathering to teach our people, and we are doing so because we are indigenous people. We are sovereign people," he said
"And the manner in which Reina carries herself as a Matunhero, as an adviser to her kasike, as a Ehibu'no, which are guides. A Ehibu'no are the people who care, take responsibilities in our community to help guide all of our people. And that's something that she does."
Mercado-Antunez is helping facilitate unlearning, which is "a nuanced layer of decolonization, along with reindigenization, and it is incredibly, incredibly important to the future of our people to be able to examine because there are only seven first-person accounts pertaining to our people during the course of the invasion," said Kasike Running Cloud.
"We are the first people to deal with invasion in our hemisphere, when the Spanish invaded with Columbus in 1492 and what we're doing now, the work that we're doing, it's exemplified by people like Reina. Reina reaches out to community, but she reaches out across the spectrum from the littlest one to the eldest, and she cares about everyone. She cares about everyone's well-being."
For hundreds of years, the Taino community was forced to hide their ancestral culture that colonizers attempted to wash away. However, it persisted through its integration into other cultures' practices, languages, and traditions, Mercado-Antunez explained.
For generations, people were taught that the Taino people were extinct, but that is not realistic. There are reported accounts of Taino people surviving, whether it was by escaping to the mountains, intermarriage, or conversion, she explained.
"It's silly," Mercado-Antunez said and quoted something that her head chief says: "I think Taino is the only culture where people go to where they are and suddenly they become extinct."
Mercado-Antunez didn't know she was Taino until her late 20s when she met her current partner who is part of the Nipmuc tribe.
She recollected attending a powwow with him, where he pointed out some Taino people. This surprised her because she had been taught they were extinct.
She connected with some of the Taino women and discovered similarities between their traditions and those of her own family. After conducting some research into her genealogy, she was able to trace her Taino roots. This is an ongoing effort for her due to the limited number of available records.
Mercado-Antunez explained that academics were the ones who were emphasizing that Tainos were extinct until the discovery of a 1,000-year-old tooth that had genetic matches between living people and pre-Columbian indigenous populations.
"They did DNA on the tooth, and they found that 60 percent of Puerto Ricans have Taino ancestry, Cubans as well, Dominicans, so it's different percentages for each of the different islands, but 60 percent of people who are Puerto Rican have Taino blood and ancestry, some as much as 50 percent so that's not extinct," she said.
There is a lot of healing of trauma that happens during this programming, including the women's circle.
They are relearning history and working to dismantle misconceptions and inaccuracies, which will have a lasting impact beyond the Taino community, which can then be passed down to her children and future generations.
Tags: community hero of the month,