Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean
The Classic Taíno lived in eastern Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. They spoke a dialect called Classic Taíno. Compared to their neighbors, the Classic Taíno had substantially developed agricultural societies. Puerto Rico was divided into twenty chiefdoms which were organized into one united kingdom or confederation, Borinquen. Hispaniola was divided into roughly 45 chiefdoms, which were organized into five kingdoms under the leadership of the chief of each area's premier chiefdom. Beginning around 1450, Classic Taíno from Hispaniola began migrating to eastern Cuba; they are conventionally known as the Cuban Taíno. The Cuban Taíno gained power over some of Cuba's earlier Western Taíno inhabitants, the Ciboney, but no regional or island-wide political structure had developed on the island at the time of Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Alonso Vélez de Mendoza
On February 15, 1502, Alonso Vélez de Mendoza earned a capitulation which allowed him to settle in Hispaniola with fifty settlers and their families, in order to create a new population. There was a fleet of thirty other ships carrying 2,500 colonists that arrived in Hispaniola the same year. This included the arrival of Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, the new Spanish Governor of Hispaniola, along with the conquistador Francisco Pizzaro. It is believed that Alonso died at the end of 1511.