Yucahúké Busiri
| Yucahúké Busiri | |
 | |
 Who's Who of Nouvelle Alexandrie | |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Yucahúké Busiri |
| Titles & Offices |
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| Birth Date | 20.III.1678 AN |
| Birth Place | Yabucoa, Wakara lands |
| Death Date | 2.XI.1753 AN (aged 75) |
| Death Place | Yabucoa, Boriquén |
| Family | Dukes of Yabucoa |
| Occupation | Statesman |
| Known For | Co-signing the Plan de Hato Rey; serving as the first Regional Governor of Boriquén |
| Religion | Yukiyu Atabey |
| Languages | |
| Residence | Yabucoa, Boriquén |
| National Origin |
 Nouvelle Alexandrie |
| Citizenship(s) |
Nouvelle Alexandrie |
Yucahúké Busiri (20.III.1678 AN - 2.XI.1753 AN), 1st Duke of Yabucoa, was a Wakara statesman who served as the last First Minister of the Wakara under the cacical government and, after the Wakara homeland entered the Federation of Nouvelle Alexandrie, as the first Regional Governor of Boriquén. He was the senior minister of Cacique Guarionex II during the negotiation of the Plan de Hato Rey, which he signed on behalf of the Wakara people in 1717 AN, and he was afterward created Duke of Yabucoa, the first of a line of the federal nobility seated in the cacicazgo of Yabucoa.
Busiri belonged to the nitaino nobility of Yabucoa, in the interior of the Wakara lands, and rose to the head of the cacical government during the years of disorder that followed the fall of Boriquén in the early eighteenth century AN. As First Minister he was the cacique's chief negotiator with Nouvelle Alexandrie, and his name stands beside that of Guarionex II on the Plan de Hato Rey. When the Region of Boriquén was established, he was elected its first Governor, holding the office from 1718 AN to 1723 AN, and in his later years he sat as a hereditary peer in the Chamber of Peers.
Early life
Yucahúké Busiri was born in 1678 AN at Yabucoa, a town and cacicazgo of central Boriquén, into the nitaino nobility that formed the governing class of the Wakara. Little is recorded of his early life beyond his standing among the lesser nobility who served the cacical house at Guánica. He came of age in the last decades of the independent Wakara cacicazgo, before the collapse of order that would overtake the region on the death of Cacique Guarionex I in 1706 AN.
First Minister of the Wakara
Busiri rose to prominence during the years of anarchy from 1708 AN to 1712 AN that followed the fall of the Wakara heartland to marauding militias. As the machinery of Wakara government all but ceased to function, he became the leading minister of the young Cacique Guarionex II, who governed as a cacique without a settled territory while holding together the surviving nobility. Busiri held the office of First Minister of the Wakara, the civil head of the cacical administration under the Cacique, and was the cacique's principal counsellor through the years in which the Wakara awaited a resolution to their long displacement. The office belonged to the government of the independent cacicazgo and did not outlive it: when the Plan de Hato Rey established the regional government of Boriquén, the First Ministership was folded into the new order, and Busiri passed from the last First Minister of the Wakara to the first Regional Governor.
When Nouvelle Alexandrie moved into the Green during Operation Purple Splendor in 1717 AN, Busiri supported the cacique's judgment that the survival of the Wakara lay in alliance with the advancing federal power. He took part in the negotiations with the Secretary of State, Maximinus Kerularios, that produced the Plan de Hato Rey, and on 23.VI.1717 AN he set his name to the agreement at Hato Rey as the representative of the Wakara people, beside Cacique Guarionex II. The Plan recognized the Wakara, established the Region of Boriquén, and integrated the Wakara nobility into the federal nobility.
First Regional Governor of Boriquén
On the admission of Boriquén as the eleventh Region of the Federation in 1718 AN, Busiri was elected the first Regional Governor of Boriquén, the chief executive of the new regional government. He stood without party affiliation, in the years before the founding of the Wakara People's Party, and his governorship coincided with the early Wakara Renaissance, the cultural revival supported by federal and regional subsidy that followed admission.
As Governor, Busiri presided over the establishment of the region's institutions, the standing up of its government in 1719 AN, and the adoption of its constitution in 1720 AN. The office he held was distinct from that of the hereditary viceroy, Cacique Guarionex II, who as Prince of Boriquén presided over the Areyto Legislativo de Boriquén as its Taino; the Governor exercised the ordinary administration of the region. Busiri did not seek a further term, and stood down in 1723 AN. He was succeeded by Ana Yuisa Caguax of the Wakara People's Party, the regional party founded in 1722 AN by Mayani Guacanagari and Beatriz Daguao after a widely publicized dispute over land rights in Yabucoa, which swept the regional government in the elections of 1723 AN and would hold it for a generation.
Duke of Yabucoa
For his service to the Wakara and to the Federation, Busiri was created Duke of Yabucoa when the Wakara peerage was formally integrated into the federal nobility in 1719 AN. The dukedom took its name from his native cacicazgo, and, like all ducal titles in Nouvelle Alexandrie, carried a grandeeship. It was one of the Wakara ducal titles created outside the cacical House of Guarionex, among them the dukedom of Bayamón held by the House of Tavárez, and passed after his death to his heirs.
As a Grandee of the Federation, Busiri held a seat in the Chamber of Peers, where in his last years he was numbered among its senior figures. In the 11th Cortes Federales, which convened in 1745 AN, he served as one of the Deputy Lord Presidents of the Chamber alongside George Lahaye Kerularios, 3rd Marquess of Fontainebleau and grandson of the Maximinus Kerularios with whom Busiri had negotiated the Plan de Hato Rey a generation before. He died at Yabucoa in 1753 AN, at the age of seventy-five, and was succeeded in the dukedom by his son Hatuey Busiri, 2nd Duke of Yabucoa.
Legacy
Busiri is remembered in Boriquén as the statesman who carried the Wakara through their years of anarchy and secured their place within the Federation beside Cacique Guarionex II. His signature on the Plan de Hato Rey and his tenure as the first Regional Governor of Boriquén mark him as one of the founders of the modern region. In his later years he endowed the Boriquén Institute of Technology, founded at Yabucoa in 1742 AN, and the dukedom of Yabucoa he founded remains among the Wakara peerages of the federal nobility.
Styles, titles, and honors
- 20.III.1678 AN to 1719 AN: Yucahúké Busiri
- 1719 AN to 2.XI.1753 AN: The Most Excellent The Duke of Yabucoa
Busiri was styled The Most Excellent Lord from his creation as Duke of Yabucoa in 1719 AN, the grandeeship attached to the dukedom raising him to the rank of Grandee of the Federation. He had earlier held the office of First Minister of the Wakara and, from 1718 AN, that of Regional Governor.
See also
- Plan de Hato Rey
- Guarionex II
- Regional Governor of Boriquén
- Boriquén
- Wakara people
- Nobility of Nouvelle Alexandrie
