Cacique

A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (Latin American Spanish: [kaˈsike]; Portuguese: [kɐˈsikɨ, kaˈsiki]; feminine form: cacica), was a tribal chieftain of certain Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America, including the Kalinago and Taíno peoples, who were Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean at the time of European contact with those places. The term is a Spanish derivation from the Kalinago word kassiquan. Cacique was initially translated as "king" or "prince" for the Spanish. In the colonial era, the conquistadors and the administrators who followed them used the word generically to refer to any leader of practically any Indigenous group they encountered in the Western Hemisphere. In Hispanic and Lusophone countries, the term has also come to mean a political boss, similar to a caudillo, exercising power in a system of caciquism.