Master Taíno [Edit]

Master Taíno (born in 1950) is a Puerto Rican Leatherman and a Washington, DC area based educator and leader in the Master/slave community.

Leather Community

Master Taíno has been kinky all his life, but his embrace of the leather community officially did not happen until he moved from his native Puerto Rico to the Washington, DC area in late 1983.

After several years as a patron of the DC Eagle, he was invited to join the Defenders Leather Levi Club in late 1992. This marked his official beginning in the Leather Community. He served as Road Captain and Vice-President of the Defenders before becoming its President for three years (2002-2004).

He also was a member of SigMa, the local DC area gay men’s BDSM club, in the mid-nineties for about ten years. During that period he was the founder of the first SigMa dungeon in 1997, editor of the Submissions newsletter, and a Board member.

Since 2013, he has been an associate of ONYX Mid Atlantic.

During his journey, Master Taíno has been a strong advocate for building bridges within the diversity of our community, in particular, on his quest to have both the gay and heterosexual kinksters working together.

Master/slave Community

In March 1999, Master Taíno’s journey took him to the Seventh Annual Master/slave Weekend and Contest, better known as MAsT ’99, where he embraced his Mastery. At that event, Master Taíno met the two people who most influenced his journey: author Guy Baldwin and Master Steve from Butchmanns.

Returning home, he founded MAsT Washington in April 1999. The chapter is one of the oldest chapters and has been active without interruption under his leadership.

In 2001, acknowledging the need for education in Master/slave relationships, Master Taíno started a series of slave training weekends and Master training weekends, under the name of Master Taíno’s Training Academy. Eventually the program became what it is known today as the MTTA Academy.

He was a contestant with his then slave neil at the International Master/slave Contest in 2003. He has served as judge three times at the International Master/slave Contest as well as in other regional M/s contests.

He has been teaching on Master/slave relationships since 2001 at events across the country. He has taught from coast to coast as well as in his native Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Argentina. He also has been the keynote speaker at Black Beat 2011 in Baltimore, Maryland (Latinos and Blacks: a similar journey); Leather History Conference 2012 in North Carolina (Leather History: Past, Present and Future) and Behind Closed Doors 2013 in Tucson, Arizona (Building Bridges: Diversity in our Community)

Master Taíno is also a contributor of “Our Lives, Our History: Consensual Master/slave relationships from ancient times to the 21^st Century”, a non-fiction anthology sponsored by MTTA and published in 2016. The anthology was honored with the 2017 Geoff Mains Non-Fiction Book Award from the National Leather Association- International.

He also was part of “The Details of Flogging”, an educational DVD 2- disk set produced in 2010 by Details Toys. He also wrote the forward for the book “50 Shades of Curious: BDSM for Beginners” authored by Bo Blaze.

MTTA

In 2004, Master Taíno founded MTTA, Inc. a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization on Master/slave relationships. In July of that year, MTTA held its first Master/slave Conference (MsC) in a hotel in Washington, DC. Through the years, MsC became the premier educational event on Master/slave relationships and the largest gathering (approximately 500 attendees every year) of Masters and slaves.

Under his leadership, MTTA has become a well-known educational organization on Master/slave relationships and its programs include MsC, the MTTA Academy, the Master/slave History Project, the Master/slave Legacy Project, and the Master/slave Development Center. Since 2015, MTTA holds an annual MTTA CommunityFest. Since its inception, MTTA has been a strong supporter of MAsT International.

Master Taíno’s Leather Family

Master Taíno has been an advocate of Leather Families and has kept his own family throughout his journey.

Currently he has slave paul in service since 2010. He lost his slave tommy to AIDS in 2001 and his slave david in an accident in 2014 after nine years in his service.

His Leather Family currently 13 members from Virginia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Costa Rica. The Family lost two members, Sir Greg and his slave aaron from Indianapolis, who passed away in 2015 and another, Master Francis from Pennsylvania, in 2019.