Sociolinguistic analysis of Haitian Creole in a Spanishspeaking region of the Caribbean

The development of the sugar industry in the town Violeta (located in the central region of Cuba), at the end of the second decade of the 20th century, caused the external and internal migration of Haitians to this territory of Ciego de Ávila; whose presence has been notable not only in economic terms, but also culturally, especially in the contact between Creole and the Spanish language. However, today it is evident that the linguistic identity brought from Haiti has been weakened by a group of descendants who deny its Antillean roots; while others advocate its maintenance. In this sense, a sociolinguistic study was carried out to determine what level of conservation is manifested in Haitian creol and what are the causes or reasons that contribute to the existence of diverse linguistic realities. For this, we worked with a group of 28 informants —without distinction of sex— that correspond to Haitian emigrants and their descendants born in Cuba; those who kept the Creole language in a diglossic state, but gradually replaced it with other modes of speech. The present study focused on the phonetic and syntactic level, which shows how, from the contact between languages —and the need for the Haitian to try to learn Spanish as a second language—, a mixture of linguistic codes was produced without that a Creolization of Spanish was produced. In addition to understanding how three evolutionary trends have manifested in creol: maintenance, weakening and cancellation.