Bohío

A bohío is a house of wooden posts with walls and roof of palm materials, originating with the Taíno, the Indigenous people of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas at the time of European contact. The word, Taíno in origin, remained in use in Spanish for rural thatched houses in Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.

Taíno houses

Taíno villages (yucayeques) were largest in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola and smallest in the Bahamas. Their houses stood around a central plaza used for ceremonies and games. Ordinary dwellings are described as large circular buildings, each home to roughly 10-15 families, built of wooden poles, woven straw and palm leaves. The chief (cacique) and his family lived in a rectangular house of similar construction with a wooden porch, usually called the caney. Inside hung cotton hammocks (hamaca).

Cuban accounts describe the frame as strong log posts and beams to resist Caribbean winds, walls of reeds and palm leaves tied with vines, and a roof of woven royal palm fronds. Early bohíos had a rounded plan and conical roof; later ones were rectangular under a gabled roof. Sources differ on which shape the names bohío and caney refer to.

Colonial and later use

The rectangular bohío shaped rural colonial building and persisted in parts of Cuba into the late 19th century. The Cuban Ministry of Construction records about 200,000 bohíos and huts before 1959, and 115,000 fewer since. Bohíos remain most common in eastern Cuba, particularly around Baracoa, where they have been revived as cheap to build and suited to a humid, cyclone-prone island.

In the Dominican Republic, the 2022 census still recorded 1,970 dwellings roofed with cana and 1,656 with yagua, two traditional palm materials, out of 3.69 million.

Roof performance

A thick palm roof sheds tropical rain, stays cool and ventilates well, which is why bohíos had no windows yet remained airy. Its drawbacks are flammability, vulnerability to hurricane winds and the need for periodic re-thatching.

Related forms

The palm-thatched palapa of Mexico and Central America and the Seminole chickee of Florida are related palm-roofed structures (see palapa).