The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Borikén (Puerto Rico)

The Myth of Indigenous 

Caribbean Extinction

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The Myth of Indigenous 

Caribbean Extinction 

Continuity and Reclamation in 

Borikén (Puerto Rico) 

Tony Castanha

THE MYTH OF INDIGENOUS CARIBBEAN EXTINCTION 

Copyright © Tony Castanha, 2011. 

All rights reserved. 

First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the 

United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth 

Avenue, New York, NY 10010 

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of 

the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan 

Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, 

of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. 

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above 

companies and has companies and representatives throughout the 

world. 

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United 

States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. 

ISBN: 978-0-230-62025-4 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Castanha, Tony. 

The myth of indigenous Caribbean extinction : continuity and 

reclamation in Boriken (Puerto Rico) / Tony Castanha. 

p. cm. 

ISBN 978-0-230-62025-4 (hardback) 

1. Taino Indians—Puerto Rico—History. 2. Taino Indians—First 

contact with Europeans—Puerto Rico. 3. Indians, Treatment of— 

Puerto Rico. 4. Jíbaro (Puerto Rican identity) 5. Puerto Rico— 

Population. 6. America—Discovery and exploration—Spanish. 7. 

Columbus, Christopher—Influence. I. Title. 

F1619.2.T3C37 2011 

305.868'7295—dc22 2010025263 

Design by Scribe Inc. 

First edition: January 2011 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 

Printed in the United States of America.

For my parents, and 

the late Ronald Arroyo


Contents 

Acknowledgments 

ix 

Preface: Still There, Always Have Been 

xi 

1 A New Version of History 1 

2 Mythmaking in the Caribbean 21 

3 Early Resistance and Survival in Borikén 51 

4 Jíbaro Resistance and Continuity 67 

5 The Modern Jíbaro 89 

6 Cultural Survival and the Indigenous Movement 109 

7 Conclusion 133 

Notes 139 

Glossary 169 

Bibliography 171 

Index 179


Acknowledgments 

This book would never have been realized if it had not been for my 

interviewees and the Jíbaro I have spent countless hours with. I am 

grateful, for they often took me in and shared their food, homes, 

stories, knowledge, and lives with me. I wish to especially thank Margarita 

Nogueras-Vidal for her time, patience, and knowledge of the 

deep spiritual roots of our ancestors and people, and to the late Oki 

Lamourt-Valentín, whose push for the dialectic is unmatched. I am 

very appreciative of those who helped me in other ways such as lending 

moral, academic, or technical support. Muchas gracias to Ibrahim 

Aoude, Christina Arce, Kekuni Blaisdell, Guy and John Castanha, Jeff 

Corntassel, Lynette Hi‘ilani Cruz, Monisha Das Gupta, Masahide 

Kato, Vincent Kelly Pollard, Joanna Soto-Aviles, Dominga Trusdell, 

Leeta Wolfblack, Warren Nishimoto, Susan Schilling, and Ty Kawika 

Tengan. Special thanks to Lorena García-Alejandro for all her translations, 

and to Nelsonrafael Collazo for the use of the replicas of the 

petroglyphs from his book, Imágenes del Indio Puertorriqueño. I have 

had my eyes on these for a long time. I would finally like to thank the 

members of my dissertation committee at the University of Hawai‘i at 

Mānoa—Kathryn Takara, Lou Ann Ha‘aheo Guanson, Michael Shapiro, 

Nevzat Soguk, Leslie Sponsel, and especially Glenn Paige—for all 

their help and assistance along the way.


Preface 

Still There, Always Have Been 

They are still there. The indigenous peoples of Borikén (or Puerto 

Rico) are still there and have been since time immemorial. Such a 

statement will elicit surprise and wonder from many and skepticism 

and scorn from others. But it is true, and it is what will be shown 

in the pages that follow. I sat down a couple of years ago with a 94 

year-old elder who told me both her mother and father were “indio” 

and that she had struggled her whole life. She used to be a cuandera 

(medicinal healer) and was from a northern coastal town. This woman 

had lived a fairly traditional lifestyle with modern amenities. I met 

another native elder, 106 years old by his account. He said his mother 

used to tell him about the atrocities the Spaniards had committed in 

the nineteenth century and that a lot of Indian people had been fighting 

them at that time. Not formally religious, he considered himself a 

very spiritual man who believed in reincarnation. Now these sorts of 

testimonials are not supposed to occur if we are talking about a people 

who have been “extinct” for over four and a half centuries. But I have 

found these types of stories to be abundant on the island. It is as if 

only the people themselves would refrain from amazement regarding 

our statement, as if only they knew of their true history. And there 

are many of them. They populate the many barrios of particularly the 

rural and mountain regions of Puerto Rico, and coastal areas too. 

Whole communities of Jíbaro Indian people have survived the Spanish 

and American colonization process and continue to practice their 

cultural traditions today. 

Indeed, I was a little surprised myself to uncover the rich body of 

oral history and tradition from my latest trip to Borikén. I was already 

aware of and had revealed in my doctoral work a few years earlier the 

resistance and continued survival of the indigenous inhabitants. 1 Much 

of this study focused on the fifteenth and sixteenth-century Indo- 

European contact era leading to the late-eighteenth-century native

xii 

preface 

presence. The sixteenth-century extinction theory had been unraveled. 

A contemporary presence was also ethnologically provided, but 

more so in the form of a movement or revitalization process. However, 

my travels and findings in 2008 would uncover a very recent 

history. The oral tradition and memory exposed a vivid nineteenthand 

twentieth-century story. This filled in the blanks of the past two 

hundred years. The sixteenth-century colonial period was suddenly 

transported forward three centuries as this immortalized era became 

a nineteenth-century one, since the Spanish had not colonized many 

areas of the island until this time. For many Jíbaro, the intruders were 

previously nowhere to be found on account of their will, innovation, 

and love of freedom. So when I was told numerous times how the 

Spaniards would “throw the babies up” and let them “fall on their 

swords,” this was a gruesome tale of indeed a recent history told by 

the children and grandchildren of those who had lived during the 

time of “el componte.” This documented period of torture during 

the second half of the nineteenth century, when the colonizer went 

“door to door” raping and pillaging, came alive through the indigenous 

voice. Here, representation is important in accounting for one’s 

knowledge and experiences. 2 Indigenous peoples 3 share the common 

bond of having experienced and endured Western imperialism, so it is 

vital to develop voices within communities needing representation in 

order to address past and present grievances and issues. As the oldest 

colony in the hemisphere, Puerto Rico fits this description and model 

quite well. Therefore, this is a very serious matter. It is not a depiction 

of a “romanticized” past but of a people struggling right now under 

Puerto Rican criollo and American “gringo” domination and control. 

My own personal journey of struggle had led me to this point in 

time, and the telling of an alternative story of our people is the impetus 

for this writing. My family on my mother’s side, who emigrated from 

Borikén to work on the sugar plantations of Hawai‘i at the turn of 

the twentieth century, were Jíbaro or Boricua people. In 1996, as my 

brother and I were strolling through a store in the sleepy rural town 

of Yauco where our family is from, we came upon a children’s pamphlet 

of colored drawings portraying the Indian people of the island. 

We were quite surprised and excited to see such noble depictions of 

the indigenous peoples, since the objective of our trip was to find out 

more about our family roots and native ancestry. The pamphlet provided 

in pictures and simple captions brief lessons in village life and 

some cultural customs of the inhabitants such as the types of houses 

they lived in, the musical instruments they played, and their means of 

subsistent farming and fishing. It all looked very appealing—that is,

preface 

xiii 

until the arrival of the Spaniards. The people were enslaved and forced 

to work and pan for gold. They then reorganized and rebelled against 

the colonizer. This seemed accurate enough until the very last drawing. 

Here a conquistador triumphantly stands over a dead Indian. The 

caption read, “Exterminio De Nuestros Indios.” Behind the Spaniard 

stands a somber and attractive native woman, still very much alive, 

presumably to be assimilated into the Spanish patriarchic realm. 

Most Puerto Rican third graders browsing through this book 

would get the vivid impression that the indigenous peoples of the 

island were long gone, exterminated right after the Spanish coming. 

That final drawing would create an indelible mark not easily erased. 

And this is just about the way the history of indigenous Caribbean 

peoples has been meant to be portrayed for the past five centuries 

or so. The profound paradox is that this “extinction” has been so 

internalized that many descendants have been completely disconnected 

from their native ancestry and cultural heritage. This form 

of cultural genocide has been a trend for many indigenous groups, 

not unlike the ramifications of the boarding schools experience and 

enrollment policies for Native Americans in North America. These 

intended to transform the individual and in turn created a false image 

of the native. The Cherokee writer Thomas King explains that the 

idea of “the Indian” 4 was “fixed in time and space,” and has been 

largely romanticized as an authentic view of the past. 5 In his summary 

of that distortion, “In the end, there is no reason for the Indian to be 

real. The Indian simply has to exist in our imaginations.” 6 The dominant 

public view of contemporary indigenous peoples automatically 

reverts back to this manufactured “Hollywood” type of authenticity. 

The fact that all peoples and cultures are vibrant and adapt and change 

over time has been particularly lost on many indigenous cultures. As a 

result, this has contributed to the false notion of a people’s extinction. 

But there have been dissenting voices. For instance, both my mother 

and grandmother had often reminded us children and grandchildren 

of our “Spanish-Indian” identity for as long as I can remember. This 

was always a curious thing to me, since there was really nothing more 

to the story than that. My grandmother had been separated from her 

Indian mother at an early age, so the cultural link to the family past 

had been severed. Yet, I was innately connected in some way, and 

growing up in a rural island environment helped. There was always a 

part of me that knew that things were not right, that something was 

missing, and this something tremendously influenced my outlook, 

thinking, behavior, and attitude toward life. I was shy but incredibly 

rebellious for some strange reason. This “missing link,” other

xiv 

preface 

than “testing positive” for the “shovel-shaped” tooth, would come to 

explain who I was as a person, where I came from, my becoming and 

essence as a human being. Likewise, many Boriqueños have similar 

stories of being told of their Indian identity at an early age, and many 

have maintained an unbroken cultural connection to their ancestral 

past. In terms of identity and the diaspora, I think poet Juan Antonio 

Corretjer’s famous words, “I would be a Boricua, even if I were born 

on the moon,” sum up the connection and nostalgia many have for 

their native homeland. In Hawai‘i, the foods still eaten, Jíbaro music 

still played, and the characteristics of the people are testament to this. 

Myths, memories, and stories have been also kept alive. The Puerto 

Rican community in Hawai‘i has always maintained a traditional loyalty 

to Puerto Rico. This is typical of many diasporic communities. So 

while Hawai‘i is their adopted home where they came to be accepted 

by the host Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) culture, Borikén will 

always be the indigenous ancestral homeland of the Boricua, wherever 

they may be. I would also add that I believe there is an important 

inherent solidarity and sense of justice between my “native self” and 

my activism and support for Kanaka Maoli rights and movement for 

sovereignty and self-determination. My “rebelliousness” and thirst for 

freedom has been somewhat transported to Hawai‘i and has naturally 

driven me to help support this important cause. 

The full realization of my Boricua roots would not come about 

until my midthirties, when I was reading the introduction to my late 

cousin’s, Ronald Arroyo, doctoral thesis of 1977. Here I found out he 

was writing about the over five thousand Puerto Ricans who went to 

Hawai‘i between 1900 and 1901. This took place after the hurricane 

San Ciriaco had devastated the southwestern region of Puerto Rico 

in 1899, killing over three thousand people. Regarding the derogatory 

ways these people were portrayed after their arrival, he posed 

the question, “Who were these Puerto Ricans that they should incur 

the wrath of historians and writers?” 7 Learning from the storytellers 

in his family and through interviews and information ascertained 

from the first generation of immigrants, at a time when it was still not 

quite “popular” to be “indigenous,” he wrote that they referred to 

themselves as “Boricuas” or “Boriqueños,” that they were people who 

were “Boricua indians,” and that they were “proud of their indian 

culture as inhabitants of the island of Boriquen.” 8 They also identified 

as “Jíbaro,” whose origin is indigenous (“es de origen indio”). 9 

Arroyo wrote the Spaniards also called them “jibaros.” 10 The Jíbaro 

are the people of the land, the campesino farmers who have tilled 

the soil forever. As the late Carib-Jíbaro linguist and scholar Oki

preface 

xv 

Lamourt-Valentín explained, “We are the people who call ourselves 

the ‘Jíbaro’ and refer to ourselves as, within the context of a nationality: 

‘Boricuas’, while our country is called ‘Borinquen’ . . . from which 

can be seen that these are native language terms.” 11 I, too, have found 

that the indigenous peoples of Puerto Rico primarily referred to 

themselves as Jíbaro. This is the principal word, or form of the word 

as explained below, the people called themselves before the European 

arrival and the name they still call themselves today. They also identify 

as Boricua, as derived from the Indian name of the island. 12 The names 

Boricua, Boriqueño and Boricano draw on a national sentiment, used 

with “a tone of intimacy and endearment” in speech, poetry, popular 

songs, and in “all that refers to the character, customs, and sentiments 

of the inhabitants.” 13 Therefore, Jíbaro or Boricua are the main names 

I use in this book to refer to the Indian people of Borikén. 

I will also use the words “indigenous Caribbean” or “Carib” as 

general names for the indigenous peoples of the “Caribbean” or “Antillean” 

region. There has been considerable controversy about naming 

and the division of Caribbean peoples that should be touched on here, 

and of which I expanded on in my dissertation. The Spaniards, like 

other European imperial powers, were keen to divide the people they 

encountered out of their own moral, political, and economic interests. 

I believe this was also the case in the Antilles as eternalized in the 

largely imagined ethnical and cultural rift created between the “peaceful 

Arawaks” and “man-eating Caribs.” In contrast, many scholars 

have argued that indigenous Caribbean groups are “closely related.” 14 

As they “shared a common material culture,” 15 the social and cultural 

customs and practices between the two main groups were very similar. 

This suggests that other than slightly varying socioeconomic conditions 

depending largely on island topography, those present in the 

region were essentially of the same family of people. 

What regional name did they call themselves, if any at all? Most 

scholars realize that the name “Taíno,” like the word “Arawak,” was 

not used by indigenous Caribbean peoples as a term of self-ascription. 

The word was used as an adjectival, taken from the word “nitayno,” 

which related to one’s rank within society, and is basically nonexistent 

in family histories. The name was first affixed to the people and language 

of Haití by Cornelius Rafinesque and others in the nineteenth 

century. It became popularized in the twentieth century through the 

anthropological works of Jesse Walter Fewkes, M. R. Harrington, 

Sven Lovén, Irving Rouse, and Ricardo Alegría. However, the name 

“Caribes” or “Caribs” was originally attributed to a people by the 

Indian people Columbus came upon on his first voyage as noted in

xvi 

preface 

his journal. 16 It is said they were referring to their “enemies,” but, as 

an apparent form of resistance, they were really playing jokes on the 

admiral and trying to get rid of him. Many scholars have attributed 

a Carib presence to the northern Antilles. Fewkes repeatedly does in 

his 1907 report. 17 Eugenio Fernández-Méndez pointed out that it is 

evident to many writers that the Carib resided in the northern Antilles 

in ancient times. 18 The Carib lived there, and the “men of Caniba,” 

who Columbus eventually equates to the “canibales,” or “man-eaters,” 

turn out to be the people on the unvisited island of Borikén. 19 

As noted by Lamourt-Valentín, and others, Caniba was indeed the 

northwestern territory of Puerto Rico. 20 Expanding on the etymology 

of the word Jíbaro, the equivalent of the Indian name Guajiro in 

Cuba, Lamourt-Valentín explains that Jíbaro is “a native eponymous 

term for Carib (Caribbean: can/(j)íbaro - canibaro - Caribe).” 21 There 

is also a discussion of the origin of the word Jíbaro (with a reference 

to the word “kanjibaro”) in the introduction to the 1992 edition 

of Manuel Alonso’s El Jibaro, but without consideration of the place 

name Caniba. 22 So as can be seen above, the name Carib or Caribe 

emerged from Jíbaro (Canibaro), which, in turn, is derived from the 

place name, Caniba. When asked years later in the mountain town of 

Lares what name the indigenous peoples called themselves, Lamourt- 

Valentín replied, “Jíbaro.” “We are Jíbaro.” “We are Indians.” “We 

are the Caribs.” 23 The regional term, “Caribbean,” was further taken 

from the people who were living there. All in all, I therefore use the 

name Carib to denote the Indian people of the region. 

In terms of the identities of my oral sources, while I reveal the full 

names of most of my interviewees, I use only the native names of 

others. Indian names have continued to be used over time, often as 

a sign of resistance to the imposition of Spanish names. Many people 

in Borikén have formal Indian names and apodos (nicknames). These 

carry real life meaning and stories and are most appropriately utilized 

in this text. Three of my interviewees wished to remain anonymous, 

so I use the names the “Jíbaro man,” “Pepe,” and “Cuko” to identify 

them. They all have their own Indian apodos. 

Finally, I would like to explain the significance of the snake on the 

cover. In indigenous Caribbean tradition, the energy of the serpent 

represents the Earth Mother and the waters of life. It is a symbol of 

continuity, a main theme of this book, and unity of the female and 

male energies. The snake is also a symbol of awakening and the coming 

of a new era. 24

Chapter 1 

A New Version of History 

A radical history presenting a new version of the past will usually 

draw on new sources, even though those sources might well be “new” 

only in the sense that the dominant version had repressed them by 

never even considering them as sources. Within this model of radical 

history there are then two interdependent but separable moments: 

first, a critique of existing versions, partly dependent upon, second, 

the presentation of alternative and contradictory evidence. This 

model has its anti-colonial equivalent in the rediscovery of native 

sources that offer a different and revealing light on colonial events 

and issues. 1 

The “new version” of history presented in this book is indeed not 

new, but one that has been repressed and, for the most part, has only 

recently been publicly revealed. The history of the “West Indian” is 

neither brief, nor is colonialism “the very base and structure of the West 

Indian cultural awareness,” as has been said. 2 The story of the indigenous 

Caribbean is incomplete for it has been primarily told from the 

point and perspective of European contact and colonial and neocolonial 

bias. Consequently, the most significant body of sources that have 

been repressed has been the indigenous peoples themselves. While I am 

partly dependent on mainstream sources, this work is an attempt to 

draw on alternative sources of written and oral information to allow, 

most importantly, the indigenous Caribbean voice to speak and to 

become better recognized, for this voice has remained silent for far too 

long. A Jíbaro campesino from Lares remarked to me awhile ago, “The 

history was not written by the Indians.” He said government officials 

have come to their communities and asked questions, but they don’t 

write down what the people say. If these officials gave the Jíbaro the

2 

The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction 

notebook and pen, the history would be very different according to 

him. 3 Another Jíbaro campesino affirmed, “The history that is written 

is not the real one. We know the real history.” He commented that he 

wanted to write down or get out what he knows because many people 

want to “take out” what they know. He seemed pleased to be able to 

share some of his insight and knowledge with me. 4 

One of the greatest myths ever told in Caribbean history is that the 

indigenous inhabitants of mainly the northern Antilles 5 were extinguished 

by the Spaniards around the mid-sixteenth century. Many 

scholars have fallen prey to this manufactured ideology. This belief has 

been passed down through the centuries a priori and has dominated 

the mainstream outside perception of indigenous Caribbean peoples. 

I say “outside” referring to the dominant thought held by the outside 

world and by most who are non-native to the region. This is because 

many Indian descendents have in fact known who they are and have 

maintained and continued to practice their culture. Many others have 

had some knowledge of their background, and some are in the process 

of recovering their heritage. One might thus wonder how it was 

possible for the people who Christopher Columbus stumbled upon 

and subsequently committed ethnocide and genocide against to have 

survived the encounter. 6 This book seeks to unravel this dilemma. 

With a focus on the island of Borikén, I primarily provide a political 

history and ethnological account of five centuries of Carib or 

Jíbaro Indian resistance and cultural survival and continuity within 

native communities or barrios today. To be clear, this work debunks 

the deeply held belief of indigenous Caribbean extinction. Cultural 

survival and affiliation are the bases of the contemporary indigenous 

presence in Puerto Rico. Some key questions addressed are the following: 

How were sixteenth-century theories advancing the “discovery,” 

dehumanization, and “extinction” of indigenous Caribbean peoples 

mythologically produced? What were the early forms of resistance 

and survival tactics used that contributed to the maintenance of one’s 

human dignity and sense of equilibrium? How did passive resistance 

transform the indigenous population from the seventeenth to late 

eighteenth century? How did the Jíbaro influence and shape nineteenth 

and parts of twentieth-century Puerto Rican society, and what 

does the contemporary native voice have to say about this? And what 

is the meaning of cultural survival, continuity, and the movement for 

independence among the Jíbaro-Boricua today?

A New Version of History 3 

Indigenous Presence in Borikén 

To begin, it is necessary to understand three areas regarding some 

principal ideas surrounding the modern-day indigenous presence in 

Borikén. I will call them the “authentic past,” the “revitalization process 

and resurgence,” and “native continuity,” periodically discussing 

these themes throughout the book. These areas could also be and have 

been applied to other indigenous groups and peoples in general. The 

notion of the “authentic past” romanticizes and situates the “Indian” 

as a fixture of a long ago past. Time stands still, which disallows for 

change and fuels images and beliefs like of the “red man,” “cannibal,” 

“noble savage,” and of an inevitable extinction. These ideas began to 

develop in the sixteenth century and came to dominate the perception 

of the indigenous Caribbean world. The early Spanish colonizers and 

chroniclers were most responsible for perpetuating such stereotypes 

and erasing the people out of the history books. Since the epistemological 

and ontological boundaries of the early history and literature 

had been written through colonial eyes, key fallacies have been passed 

down and unequivocally accepted by many scholars and society in 

general. This is symptomatic of the colonial histories written about 

many indigenous groups, the myth of extinction being one of the 

most damaging aspects of this narrative. 

Ironically, the Spanish in Borikén had continued to measure certain 

segments of the indigenous population through census records, but 

the “racial triad” portrait of the “Puerto Rican” as a mixture of the 

Indian, African, and Spaniard effectively eliminated the indigenous 

presence by the end of the eighteenth century. Spanish censuses after 

1799 removed the category “Indians” when the governor was “faced 

with the difficulty of fixing ethnic origins.” 7 The birth of a Puerto 

Rican nationalist identity conveniently formed at the beginning of 

the nineteenth century. Those who set the political boundaries of the 

national consciousness were the colonial Spanish and Puerto Rican 

criollo elite (or “locally born whites,” according to Adalberto López), 

who were socially and politically conservative and displayed a “fear 

of and contempt for the masses.” 8 The “masses” here were primarily 

the tens of thousands of Jíbaro who remained a free people at this 

time, and the increasing number of African slaves being brought to 

the island. Not surprisingly, the push for national integration based 

on a capitalist-driven market economy often came at the expense 

of the economic, social, cultural, and spiritual values of indigenous 

societies worldwide. The Puerto Rican elite then came to expropriate 

the Indian as a national symbol and assertion against the Spanish

4 


authorities. This development would “consolidate the transmutation” 

of the native “from a recognized group and a living population into a 

symbol to be revived, romanticized and manipulated.” 9 This cultural 

nationalist ideology promoted the image of the indigenous peoples 

as frozen in time, the link with the ancestral past now severed. This 

idea goes hand in hand with the anthropological concept of time in 

relation to the “Other.” According to Johannes Fabian, “The posited 

authenticity of a past (savage, tribal, peasant) serves to denounce an 

inauthentic present (the uprooted, évolués, acculturated).” 10 

For many Puerto Rican scholars today, this break in time means 

that while there may be “traces” of biological (or physical) and cultural 

characteristics, the indigenous peoples “themselves” are long 

gone, with no possibility or hope for continuity or recovery. It seems 

incredible to some how an Indian identity could be asserted within 

a multiethnic societal context. Archeologists are fond of displaying 

native skeletal remains in museums or from recently excavated sites, 

with big smiles on their faces as their photos are snapped. Yet when 

someone dares to make an ancestral claim to these remains, they are 

immediately dismissed and scorned in the process. “Our Indians” are 

“extinct,” the authorities say, but they certainly were here before! 

Richard Grounds points out how the adjective “extinct” in modern 

dictionaries commonly refers to animals, volcanoes, and species, 

but obviously not to the human species. The exception to the rule is 

how the meaning is applied to a certain group of humans, specifically 

“Native Americans.” 11 The Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 

which Grounds cites, seems to be keen to his next point, perhaps 

because of the possible consequences of acknowledging a contemporary 

native presence, in redefining the word. “Moving beyond the 

original meaning of dying out altogether, the dictionary has distilled 

the essence of one special use of the adjective. The new meaning registered 

in the dictionary refers to something ‘that no longer exists in its 

original form.’” 12 Logically, this redefinition could be applied to just 

about everyone today, including the Greeks, Spaniards, and Americans. 

The idea is most relevant to our study. It is true that Indian people 

today no longer exist in their “original form.” As a consequence, they 

are often seen as nonexistent and, therefore, have no business making 

bogus claims and assertions. Perhaps this is one reason why the Puerto 

Rican elite have absolutely no respect for a people who continue to 

struggle and identify with their ancestors and native cultural heritage. 

The second category, the “revitalization process and resurgence,” 

pertains to the indigenous Caribbean and Borikén, but also to the 

many indigenous peoples around the world who through periods of


intense colonization lost, or nearly lost, their identity and connection 

to their cultural backgrounds. The global indigenous peoples’ 

movement propelled in the late 1960s signaled a reawakening or revitalization 

of native pride and right to reconnect with one’s traditional 

past. The contemporary indigenous Caribbean revitalization and 

“native continuity” (as discussed below) are interrelated in familial and 

ancestral terms and linked to this larger movement representing nearly 

four hundred million indigenous peoples worldwide. The movement 

can be seen as a challenge to the violent beginnings of the state system, 

perhaps analogous to what Pierre Bourdieu has identified as a 

“tool for rupture” in the “reconstruction of genesis.” By reexamining 

the confrontations of the past and, thus, discarded possibilities of the 

future, things could be otherwise. 13 In challenging the norms of international 

state theory, the indigenous plight has also been described 

as a kind of “social revolutionary movement taking place on a global 

scale.” 14 The Caribbean resurgence, spurred on by the quincentennial 

in 1992, follows a clear pattern of regional revitalization and activism 

beginning with the American Indian Movement in the United 

States. This helped spawn political and cultural revitalization efforts 

in the 1970s and 1980s in Scandinavia, Central America, parts of Asia, 

the Pacific region, and elsewhere. In 2007, the United Nations General 

Assembly finally came to recognize that indigenous peoples have 

“the right to the full enjoyment, as a collective or as individuals, of all 

human rights and fundamental freedoms as recognized in the Charter 

of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

and international human rights law,” including “the right to determine 

their own identity.” 15 In Borikén and the diaspora, the many 

indigenous organizations that have formed in recent years and cultural 

events that have taken place attest to this revitalization process 

and resurgence. As described in the following passage, the Caribbean 

movement is taking place on different levels: 

The notion of resurgence will involve different meanings in different 

local contexts across the region. In some cases resurgence only exists as 

an expression of renewed interest by scholars in the indigenous peoples 

of the Caribbean, as they challenge their blinkered inattention to peoples 

who have never consented to the view that they either disappeared 

or were unimportant. Theses of extinction have been a hallmark of 

island Caribbean historiography more than is the case with the mainland. 

On the other hand, challenges to notions of disappearance, efforts 

to resist political and economic marginalization, the formation of new 

regional organizations, and the recent growth in a committed body of

6 


scholarship focused on these issues, collectively produce resurgence. 

In all cases, contemporary indigenous peoples of the Caribbean refuse 

to be measured by the relics of their past or to be treated condescendingly 

as mute testimonials to a disappearing history, or a history of 

disappearance. 16 

“Native continuity” is the most important area explored in this 

book. It posits that Jíbaro Indian people have uninterruptedly maintained 

many of their cultural traditions and ways of doing things. 

I am talking about a people who were able to culturally adapt and 

change over time in order to survive until today. However, many have 

severed the cultural link between the then and now. For example, 

Ricardo Alegría has stated that the Indian population of Puerto Rico 

“disappeared as a cultural group in the first century of the Spanish 

conquest.” 17 To him, a viable indigenous presence ceased to exist at 

this time. I dispute this. Although native continuity does refer to the 

physical and genetic survival of the indigenous population, it most 

importantly concerns cultural survival and continuity, or how all peoples 

over time have had to adjust in various ways to their particular 

circumstances and environments, or face possible extinction. Thus, 

while I have met many people over the years in Borikén who have 

strong Indian features, and some who were about as “full blooded” 

as you can get, this study does not rely on divisive Darwinian biological 

notions of “racial purity” and “blood quantum” measurements. 

The dominant scholarly interpretation of determining indigenous 

extinction has been based on the social Darwinian concept of “natural 

selection.” According to Grounds, “Rather than being a statement of 

fact or representing a scholarly analysis, the language of extinction is 

an expression of a social idea. This is the language of social Darwinism.” 

18 This helped allow for the justification of racist and genocidal 

enrollment policies in the United States, where American Indian 

groups and peoples would diminish in blood quantum to the point 

of no longer being viewed as a “real” people, and sooner or later be 

perceived as a remnant of the past. These thoughts have shaped and 

influenced general public perceptions of who indigenous peoples are, 

historically and within contemporary society. Therefore, when I refer 

to “blood” in this work, it is as a unifying principle. “Mestizo” Indian 

people, or “mixed blooded” Indian as is commonly known in the 

Spanish Americas, are to be considered no less indigenous than their 

“full blooded” brothers and sisters. 

Accordingly, this book is not meant to disparage the African element 

of our heritage, which has been influential and strong, but the story I


am telling here is of a people whose distinct history and being extend 

back thousands of years, long before the European arrival. African and 

Spanish people and traditions were essentially assimilated or synthesized 

into the indigenous lifestyle as survival strategies. As the Carib were 

exogamous, intermarriage did not “dilute” the culture and people 

but rather enhanced them and increased their chances of survival. 19 

This paradox is awfully difficult to grasp and accept. Western norms 

would generally have us believe that interracial “mixing” necessitates 

the diminishment of one’s identity and culture through assimilation. 

This concept was not a part of indigenous peoples’ worldview, 

where cultures were augmented by routinely accepting foreigners into 

their groups. Instead, the idea of blood quantum has been used as a 

colonial and neocolonial divide and conquer strategy against them. 

Outside heritages in Borikén, and others incorporated since ancient 

times, were included within the root culture. This process was akin to 

how many indigenous groups, like the Kanaka Maoli of Hawai‘i, took 

in or absorbed numerous foreign or immigrant groups and have thus 

been able to keep many of their cultural traditions alive. Samuel Wilson 

refers to the process of cultural survival in the Antilles. This is the 

way traditions have been passed down from generation to generation 

and how political thinking and environmental ways of doing things 

in the past still inform the present: “On many islands some people 

trace part or all of their ancestry back to those who lived here before 

Columbus’s voyages. On nearly every island, the modern inhabitants 

relate to the environment in ways they learned from the Indians: they 

grow some of the same plants for food and other uses, fish the same 

reefs in the same ways, and follow the same seasonal patterns. Also, on 

nearly every island—even those where none of the indigenous people 

have survived—the Indians are powerful symbols of Caribbean identity, 

national identity, and resistance to colonialism.” 20 

This description neatly applies to Borikén, except that many people 

there know of their Indian background, perform the same traditions 

as described earlier, and continue to resist colonialism. Cuko, the 

Jíbaro campesino from Lares, said the struggle for independence has 

existed for centuries. As in so many places, the fundamental issue for 

the Jíbaro in Puerto Rico is land acquisition. They are still fighting to 

get their land back. 21 He noted that his grandparents on his father’s 

side of the family were both indio, and were victims of the Spaniards 

as workers in the hacienda system. By this he meant the Spanish, 

not by force but by tricks, took the land and arranged things so that 

people would labor for them. Even though they were not called 

“slaves,” the relationship established was one of slavery because, for

8 


instance, they could “rape your daughters” and there was nothing 

you could do because the home where you lived was claimed by the 

Spaniards. 22 Cuko knew his grandfather very well and learned much 

from him. When I asked him who was living in Lares at the time of 

the 1868 Grito de Lares revolution, he stressed that at the time of his 

grandfather’s birth, about 1880, “mostly everyone was indio in Lares 

back then.” I then inquired about the population of other mountain 

regions at the time, such as Utuado, Ajuntas, Jayuya, Orocovis, and 

Morovis, of which he replied that the population makeup was “the 

same” in these places, as well as in many other areas of the island. 23 He 

said the community where he is from was an extended family who had 

had their own lands for hundreds and hundreds of years. The Spaniards 

seized them in the nineteenth century. When he was growing 

up, they had no electricity or running water and there were no roads. 

Of the little land they do have today, the people still plant and farm 

in the native way using conuco (multicropping) and erone (mound 

cultivation) techniques, the latter making it easier to pull out tubers 

like ñame, yuca, and big round batata. 24 Mostly all Jíbaro continue to 

plant by the cycles of the moon, just as their ancestors did, and they 

use many of the same plants for herbal and medicinal purposes. These 

types of narratives are commonly told among an increasing number of 

people I have come to know. 

Finally, in terms of Jíbaro transformation and growth, my thesis is 

similar to the renowned Peruvian writer José María Arguedas’s concept 

of “cultural mestizaje” in Peru. Arguedas, who grew up speaking 

the native Quechua language, did extensive ethnological work among 

indigenous Peruvians. In contrast to historical scholarly discourses of 

mestizaje as a European “civilizing mission,” and a nostalgic “Indianist” 

rendering that sees change “as degradation and contamination 

of supposedly pure identities,” Arguedas viewed the idea positively. 25 

In his book, Formación de una Cultura National Indoamericana, he 

discussed the Inca capacity to change and assimilate foreign elements. 

For centuries the European and indigenous cultures strongly reacted 

to and influenced each other. Yet, through the many important 

changes undergone since the time of the conquest, the indigenous 

culture still remained distinct from the occident. 26 This, too, speaks to 

how the Jíbaro reacted and were able to assimilate Spanish elements 

into their lives and communities but in the process remained culturally 

distinct from the imposed culture. Physically, this interaction came 

to produce the mestizo in both Borikén and Peru, but culturally the 

people retained many of their traditional ways, albeit often in synthesized 

forms, and connection to their ancestral roots.


A good example of this form of cultural adaptation and survival in 

Borikén is the use of the fogón. This way of cooking is based on the 

traditional Indian method of using a burén. A round plate made of 

clay, the burén was utilized low to the ground supported by stones 

or a clay support. Wood was then used to heat the burén in order to 

cook on top of it. 27 Many of my interviewees told me when they were 

growing up their families used a fogón, and some still do today. They 

all described the cooking method similarly. They make a table and fill 

it with sand or dirt. They then place “3 stones” on the surface and 

put wood between the stones to heat them. Pots and pans are placed 

on the stones to cook. The smoke generated would be used to cure 

meat they commonly hang from above. As depicted here, the use of 

the fogón is clearly a similar but more modern adaptation of an older 

indigenous technique. This is the way the modern Jíbaro prepared 

their food. A native elder named Shachira told me the fogón they used 

when she was growing up was a wooden box filled with sand, where 

they would place three stones to cook on. She confirmed that the 

people of the distant past used the ground with three stones as a base 

for cooking. 28 The Jíbaro man noted that when he was growing up 

they used a square table, filled it with earth, and put three stones on 

top. He knows of four or five families that still use a fogón in the area 

where he lives. 29 Indeed, it is not uncommon for Jíbaro families today 

to have one handily available in the garage. 

Thus for Arguedas, the process of mestizaje is not about the concept 

of race but of cultural continuity. For example there are indigenous 

Peruvians, both dark and white skinned, who behave like “occidentales,” 

30 or those who have been firmly assimilated into the dominant 

culture. This assimilation process has, of course, also occurred in Borikén, 

and furthermore, according to Liko, “Many native people here 

don’t know that they’re native. They don’t know their real history 

because modernization overtook them.” 31 As genes have an interesting 

way of playing games on us, there are also many light-skinned 

and “red haired” indigenous peoples in Borikén who know very well 

of their Jíbaro background and identity and are unceasingly culturally 

connected in their heart and soul. Some are descendants of the 

Irish that were originally brought to the Caribbean by the English in 

the seventeenth century as basically indentured slaves. Once more the 

dilemma here is that we have been so thoroughly conditioned to view 

the stereotypical “Hollywood type” image of the Indian that the multiethnic 

mestizo has been discounted and ignored both physically and 

culturally. Therefore this book takes it upon itself, in part, as I have 

attempted in the past, to do what Arguedas had argued for culturally

10 


in terms of the mestizo. Amaryll Chanady summarizes his sentiment: 

“. . . the study of the mestizo should be one of the major tasks of 

contemporary anthropologists, who had always been more interested 

in native traditions. These traditions, he argues, are in no way ‘pure’. 

They frequently involve the creative appropriation of European elements, 

as in the case of the native ‘danza de las tijeras’ (scissors dance) 

which is ‘exclusively an Indian dance for an Indian public’. His argument 

that native cultures are not destroyed by change but retain their 

specificity in spite of important transformations will be echoed by 

major ethnographers many years later in other contexts.” 32 

Survival and the Indigenous Voice 

I do importantly acknowledge that the destruction ushered in by 

the Spanish Crown and Roman Catholic Church was prevalent in 

the Caribbean region. The Spanish encomienda system, or institutionalized 

system of forced labor, akin to slavery, where native 

lands and people were apportioned to encomenderos (landlords or 

slaveholders), was based on both the “discovery” and “just war” 

theories. These concepts had established Christian dominion and 

called for the subjugation of non-Christian peoples and confiscation 

of their lands. This resulted in the massacres, burnings, torture, 

forced labor and, most prominently, diseases that killed off several 

million Indian people within the first 30 years. However, the Caribbean 

encounter was not as one sided as previously thought, and the 

depth of colonial contact and reaction to it differed from island to 

island. There was a tremendous amount of violent and nonviolent 

resistance to Spanish imperialism throughout the sixteenth century 

that is not well documented and often overlooked. The atrocities 

that occurred did not happen “overnight,” and many indigenous 

peoples survived and lived on. This survival was most prominent 

in Borikén. Many inhabitants had been living in the mountainous 

interior regions of the island, and in many other places, for thousands 

of years before the arrival of the Europeans. After the Indian 

war of 1511, many more fled to the mountains to escape the Spaniards. 

I have been able to interpret from late eighteenth-century 

Spanish censuses, and the European contact era leading up to this 

period, that thousands of Indian people remained throughout the 

mountains at that time, and in many rural and coastal areas too. 

Since Spain did not fully colonize the interior of Puerto Rico until 

the mid-nineteenth century, the Jíbaro had been present there virtually 

unknown to the outside world.


Since Western scholarship has greatly aided in the historical silence 

of the people concerned, I lend an important space for the indigenous 

Caribbean voice to be heard. The lack of indigenous perspectives in 

the telling of native histories is remarkably similar. In the Pacific, for 

instance, Hawaiian scholar Lilikalā Kame‘eleihiwa notes, “In examining 

the literature of Land tenure in Hawai‘i and the Pacific, and that 

of Pacific and Hawaiian history in general, the lack of the Native point 

of view is singularly striking.” 33 The large majority of scholars and 

writers who have historically written about or mentioned the indigenous 

peoples of Borikén had either not been to the island or if they 

were there, did not consult with or bring out the views of those they 

were writing about. How could they with their preconceived notions 

that the people were “extinct”? Accordingly, non-Western thought 

and traditions have been typically discredited by mainstream science 

as “superstitious” or “myth,” in other words as fictions “created and 

sustained by undeveloped minds.” 34 Thus, the indigenous voice and 

ancestral memory have been illegitimated as alternative sources of 

information. One rare instance when a writer did reveal a living indigenous 

presence by directly speaking to the Puerto Rican people about 

their Indian identity, culture, and traditions was as late as 1974, when 

Stan Steiner published The Islands: The Worlds of the Puerto Ricans. 

Through interviews with Jíbaros, he skillfully revealed the memory 

and modern-day indigenous presence. The man he called “the storyteller” 

had a lot to say about the information passed down to him 

through oral tradition: 

His remembrance of history was a tribal memory. The details he knew— 

“Guarionex was a man close to six feet,” he said—had come from the 

dim, unrecorded past, that was 460 years ago, almost to the day he told 

the old stories. 

“All these stories I heard from old people. Who are already dead. 

Who have died,” he cautiously said. “My grandfathers. I recall them. As 

a little boy I heard some of them. As a grown man I heard some. The 

old people used to tell legends and stories, I recall. From these things 

the old people tell me I gathered these stories about our history. 

“Our Indians did not die away the way some people think,” the 

storyteller said. “If you look in the faces of the jíbaros, you know somewhere 

the Indian history is living.” 35 

In indigenous societies, oral tradition has been a vital way of transferring 

information and stories from one generation to another. In 

Caribbean tradition, history was, for one, “transmitted orally, from

12 


generation to generation, in the ceremonies called areytos,” 36 or 

traditional ceremonial dances, recitations, or songs. These cultural 

ceremonies were performed for various occasions such as to celebrate 

a good harvest, observe the first moon cycle for young women, or to 

honor the Earth Mother, Atabei. The areíto is being revitalized and 

celebrated today in Borikén as I have witnessed and participated in at 

the ceremonial grounds in Jayuya and Utuado. Jan Vansina defines 

oral traditions as “verbal messages which are reported statements 

from the past beyond the present generation. The definition specifies 

that the message must be oral statements spoken, sung, or called out 

on musical instruments only. . . . There must be transmission by word 

of mouth over at least a generation.” 37 This has been the case with a 

good number of my interviews as much of the data relayed to me has 

been passed down orally from at least one generation ago. The stories 

told have also been quite similar, and many of them relate back to 

ancient times and to the early Spanish colonial era of the late fifteenth 

and early sixteenth centuries. 38 Oral tradition as a source of history has 

been academically substantiated and for indigenous peoples is paramount 

in terms of cultural communication. Vansina explains, “No 

one in oral societies doubts that memories can be faithful repositories 

which contain the sum total of past human experience and explain 

the how and why of present day conditions. Tete are ne nne: ‘Ancient 

things are today’ or ‘History repeats itself.’ Whether memory changes 

or not, culture is reproduced by remembrance put into words and 

deeds. The mind through memory carries culture from generation to 

generation.” 39 

Since the 1970s, oral history research gathered directly from Indian 

descendants by Lamourt-Valentín, Delgado, Steiner, Arroyo, and 

Martínez-Torres, among others, further reveals an alternative version 

of history that contests the “official” established Puerto Rican 

account. Through documental research and interviews conducted 

primarily with Jíbaros, for example, Puerto Rican historian Juan Manuel 

Delgado and Lamourt-Valentín have documented many Indian 

names (many officially registered in sixteenth and nineteenth-century 

Spanish documents) that have survived orally in family histories, from 

generation to generation, and are still used and known of today. 40 

Hundreds of Indian names and surnames were hidden or disguised 

as nicknames that survived almost exclusively among campesinos. A 

number of Indian apodos are used by my interviewees. This information 

has gone unnoticed in Spanish studies in Puerto Rico, 41 which 

reveals a strong connection to native identity. I also found out that 

many stories had been kept within family histories, often having gone


“underground” as the result of an abusive past. Some growing up on 

the island in the first half of the twentieth century were made to feel 

ashamed of being Indian. This loss of self-esteem was an all too familiar 

phenomenon experienced by many indigenous groups around the 

world at this time. Activist and indigenous cultural practitioner, Baracutey, 

recalled that when he was growing up in Utuado in the 1960s, 

he had repeatedly been told, “Don’t be a Jíbaro.” 42 Pepe, an activist 

and Jíbaro campesino from the island, told me that when he was in 

school, around the same time as Baracutey, he “didn’t want to look 

Jíbaro” because he felt embarrassed. 43 As five hundred years is not 

a long time ago, collective memory, which is “activated when people 

perceive that the patterns of the past are being repeated in the present,” 

44 has been apparent throughout my travels as the colonial past is 

often reinterpreted through the colonial and neocolonial conditions 

existing in Puerto Rico today. 

Since 1998, I have conducted many interviews with primarily Jíbaro 

people in Borikén. My interviewees have been academics, activists, 

artisans, cultural practitioners, campesino farmers, elders, espiritistas, 

cuanderos, and others, all knowledgeable about the indigenous history 

and cultural development. In mainly rural and mountain regions, 

I have been fortunate to have spoken with them about the indigenous 

past and present and have established close relationships with some 

who strongly identify with their Indian heritage. Their voices are 

heard in this work, particularly in the latter chapters. Despite prominent 

Caribbean archeologist Irving Rouse’s claim that ethnology 

cannot be used as a basis of determining indigenous cultural ancestry 

in the northern Antilles, 45 I have collected an abundance of ethnographical 

information from the time I have spent on the island. The 

familial stories of our ancestors have filled my recorder, and what I 

reveal here is merely a sampling of the rich body of knowledge still 

carried most importantly among elders. In addition, my interviews are 

often corroborated by written sources, and vice versa, and by native 

and non-native scholars alike. As exemplified in Steiner and Arroyo’s 

work on the Boricua exodus to Hawai‘i, some of my written sources 

already contained ethnological data. Parts of American anthropologist 

Jesse Walter Fewkes’s 1907 work elaborated on the “existing natives” 

and indigenous customs he encountered in his research: “The ethnological 

method considers the survivals in the bodily form and mental 

characters of the existing natives; their peculiar customs, characteristic 

words, music, and legends, all that is included in the comprehensive 

term folklore, the old-fashioned ways of life peculiar to the island.” 46

14 


Paradoxically, the very act of my writing contradicting extinction 

seems to be a part of what has been prophesied over time. The indigenous 

Caribbean movement today was prophesied at the height of 

the Spanish atrocities taking place in Borikén. The prophecy of Aura 

Surey (Morning Star), the daughter of the cacike (regional leader or 

chieftain) Jayuya, decreed that come the twenty-fourth generation 

the people would rise again. 47 The prophecy is a sign of this time 

of reawakening and resurgence for Carib people. The innate ability 

to perceive is further directly related to an understanding of truth 

as recognized within all indigenous traditions. 48 Our ancestors communicated 

through perception, observation, memory, gesture, oral 

tradition, and hieroglyphic and iconic (ideogramic) forms of writing. 

As artisan and indigenous cultural practitioner Margarita Nogueras- 

Vidal points out, “Our symbolism is conceptual and encompasses a 

series of expressions that tell a story. As stone people our ancestors 

inscribed messages on stone for a time when we would be ready to 

receive them. The time of awakening is in process and we are all being 

summoned to join in and be part of the circle of re-membering.” 49 

The Academy and Extinction 

While the post-European contact historical and ethnical convergence 

of Caribbean groups is acknowledged, I reject the claim that then 

rationalizes and asserts that a continued Indian identity and cultural 

presence is no longer viable. Most recognized and unrecognized 

indigenous groups today are multiethnic and do claim a right to a distinct 

indigenous identity, or to just continue to live their lives in their 

own way. In 2006, elder Naniki Reyes-Ocasio contemplated how it 

was that of nearly all Native American groups, indigenous Caribbean 

peoples were still not taken seriously and routinely ridiculed and dismissed 

as a people. 50 When they do act or speak out, their credibility 

is often immediately diminished because their extinction has been so 

historically rationalized. For example, in an informative but rather disparaging 

article titled, “Making Indians Out of Blacks: The Revitalization 

of Taíno Identity in Contemporary Puerto Rico,” Jorge Duany 

discounts the Indian presence by explaining how the cultural nationalist 

intellectuals, led by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, have often 

ignored African contributions to Puerto Rico while exaggerating and 

romanticizing the indigenous element of society. He notes, “the indigenista 

discourse has contributed to the erasure of the ethnic and cultural 

presence of blacks in Puerto Rico.” 51 Hence, the irony of the title of 

his article and notion of “hybridity” in terms of the island’s “largely


mulatto population.” 52 In contradicting this assertion, it should be 

pointed out that recent DNA results have shown that a majority of the 

population in Borikén today are of Amerindian descent, or mestizo. 53 

Duany, who as of 2006 was the Chairperson of the Department 

of Anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, 

is correct to point out that the African presence has been debased 

and ignored by the cultural nationalist ideology and discourse. This 

has not come about on account of the Jíbaro people or resurgence 

on the island, which acknowledges African contributions and influence. 

Arlene Dávila has noted that indigenous activists’ challenge to 

the mainstream establishment’s constructs of identity, with a stress 

on identity that is more cultural than biological, has indeed made 

indigenous Caribbean identification “more inclusive than exclusive,” 

and thus more tolerant than alternative interpretations of indigenousness. 

54 To state that “Indians” have been “made out of blacks” 

is intellectually irresponsible and offensive. In addition, as Duany 

himself subscribes to the “virtual extinction” of the indigenous population, 

55 his piece invokes an internalized neocolonial image of the 

“West Indian” and “West Indian novel” as predominately African, 

with the original inhabitants nowhere to be found. It is in the midtwentieth 

century when the West Indian writer emerged and “for the 

first time in writing related to the West Indies, the Black characters are 

not restricted to being peripheral or background figures.” 56 As we will 

see, due to mainly topographical factors, the number of African people 

brought to Borikén was small compared to other parts of the northern 

Antilles. Duany also fails to see that the nature of “hybridity” is the 

production of colonial power to begin with. It is “the production of 

discriminatory identities that secure the ‘pure’ and original identity 

of authority,” and is thus a “revaluation” of a discriminatory colonial 

identity. 57 This phenomenon is replicated through academic institutions 

and theories so that questions of identity are made contentious 

within groups and communities seeking meaning and respect. 

Another instance of how academia has minimized or dismissed the 

indigenous presence in Borikén took place in 2005. A group of native 

people decided to occupy the Caguana ceremonial grounds in the 

high mountains of Utuado. Caguana was one of the most important 

and sacred gathering sites for Caribbean peoples. It is said to 

have been a major gathering place for Amerindians from South, 

Central, and North America. The group was protesting the government’s 

desecration of sacred sites and ancestral remains, and the lack 

of recognition of their identity and rights as indigenous peoples. The 

Puerto Rican Institute of Culture and its director flatly denied the

16 


legitimacy of the group and even portrayed their actions akin to “cannibalism.” 

58 While such a belief is normally not so publicly paraded 

today, invoking the anthropophagic myth stirred an outcry from some 

supporters of the demonstrators. Coming from an authority figure 

like the director, these words would certainly invoke a negative image 

of the cultural past within the general public. As a result, three community 

leaders representing three indigenous organizations, Caney 

Quinto Mundo (Fifth World Learning Center), Consejo General de 

Taínos Borincanos, and United Confederation of Taíno People, were 

arrested after a 17-day hunger strike. The charges against them were 

eventually dropped. 

As we can see, the rationalization of indigenous Caribbean extinction 

has been so heavily permeated that academic institutions today 

are theoretically and practically obligated to uphold the thought. But 

why is this belief so strongly upheld if it is not true? In addition to the 

idea of a biological extinction that only sees supposed “pure” identities 

as credible, it was apparently done for several reasons as explored in 

detail later. Briefly, the early Spaniards often exaggerated the effects of 

colonization and impacts of the spread of disease to secure favors from 

the Crown. Population counts were routinely downplayed in order to 

booster the importation of African labor. Spanish chroniclers like Fray 

Bartolomé de Las Casas, for all the important work he did do, also 

deflated the post-contact numbers to promote the argument for the 

“peaceful conversion” of native persons. In the aftermath of the invasion, 

and perhaps most importantly, European guilt, as in the Spanish 

denial of the “Black Legend,” minimized the extent of the terror and 

atrocities committed against indigenous populations, which would 

preclude issues for native land claims and reparation. The Roman concept 

and rationalization of “vacant lands,” or “terra nullius,” allowed 

for the justification of the seizure of territory through the granting of 

certain fifteenth-century papal edicts that viewed non-Christians as 

subhuman and therefore expendable. This ideology was passed down 

to other European powers and became solidified in the 1648 Treaty 

of Westphalia. The later American Republic would come to basically 

duplicate the Spanish model in interpreting a nonexistent native presence. 

As Grounds writes, “Even so, the notion of extinction, like a 

signed death certificate, was intended to release American society from 

a multitude of obligations, including political and economic commitments, 

but above all from the guilt and moral concerns associated 

with dispossessing the recognized owners of the land. The best way 

to ensure an extinct title for a Native land claim is to have an extinct 

Native tribe—even if the people themselves are still persisting.” 59


Lamourt-Valentín had echoed this view in regard to Borikén. At 

the time of his death in 2007, he was the preeminent linguist of the 

native language on the island. He was an assistant to Richard Weisskoff 

while studying at Iowa State University in the late 1970s and 

corresponded with the former curator of the Smithsonian Institution, 

Clifford Evans. Commonly known among those who knew him well, 

Lamourt-Valentín believed the dominant institutions in Puerto Rico 

have continually rationalize the extinction of the indigenous population 

in order to maintain control and avoid having to deal with land 

rights issues and claims. Because his work and views did not conform 

to the mainstream academic line, he was basically ostracized by the 

academy. I know of other scholars who have also been marginalized 

because their views have challenged entrenched theories. As a result, 

they have lost opportunities for teaching positions and their works 

have sometimes gone unpublished. 

One of Lamourt-Valentín’s writings, called Cannibal Recipes, 

which provides an important indigenous interpretation of the work 

of Fray Ramón Pané, the Jeronymite missionary who accompanied 

Columbus on his second voyage, falls into the aforementioned category. 

Cannibal Recipes is a sociolinguistic account of indigenous 

Caribbean culture and rebuttal of Pané’s Antiquities of the Indians, 

but has not been published. Lamourt-Valentín challenges the myth 

of Jíbaro extinction and the widely held scholarly view that the first 

alphabetical text written in the Americas was that of Pané’s. As he 

explains, the Carib people and cacike Guarionex, who provided Pané 

with all of the information needed in this transliteration, turn out to 

be the true authors of the book. 60 Nevertheless, these types of sources 

are routinely dismissed by scholars as “revisionist,” and sometimes 

discredited as “illegitimate storytelling” manufactured by “wannabe 

people,” as I have been told. But these are the same old excuses indigenous 

peoples have been dealing with for a long time. In addition to 

attempting to debunk mainstream theories, these sources have sometimes 

never been heard of before. When asked years after authoring 

Cannibal Recipes why much of the information he has revealed is 

largely unknown, Lamourt-Valentín simply replied, “Because nobody 

has bothered to ask the Jíbaro . . . Everybody says the Jíbaro is 

extinct.” 61 As to the accusation of “revisionism,” I would agree with 

the following statement: “When the dominant society tells its side 

of the story, it is called history. When we Indians tell our side of the 

story, it is called REVISIONISM.” 62 

For myself, while I have completed nearly all of my ethnological 

research in Puerto Rico, I was fortunate to have done my earlier

18 


committee work and writing from afar since my study would never 

have been academically approved on the island. I would have had to 

take out “this,” “this,” “this,” and “this,” as I have learned about 

some who have experienced a type of unwarranted scrutiny in having 

their studies approved. The controversial nature of my work has 

already evoked a bit of resentment among the dominant academy. 

I have found that no matter what I write will be vilified by some, 

including what I have to say in this book. This is would be no surprise. 

However, the general sentiment among most scholars and particularly 

the Jíbaro people I have shared my writings with and given presentations 

to has been very positive. Mostly all have agreed with my 

historiography and main thesis dispelling extinction, which is merely 

an affirmation of what many native descendants already know. Perhaps 

the highest compliment came from Lamourt-Valentín himself. 

He once told me that an ethnology of this kind has never been written 

about Borikén and encouraged me in his own unique way to keep 

moving forward. It has truly been a long process of contemplative 

study and revelation. 

What’s to Come 

This book explores deeper and hopes to make more sense of the previously 

mentioned themes and issues. In the next chapter, I will discuss 

the meaning of mythmaking and how certain European myth 

models provided precedence for the creation of tales and fictions projected 

onto indigenous populations, with an emphasis on the Caribbean. 

The evidence supporting the foundational basis of these myths 

is essentially missing. Yet, through Western representations of power, 

these myths have been sustained as “truth” and continue to marginalize 

native peoples. In examining the early colonial era, Chapter 3 

takes a look at various forms of resistance to the Spanish encroachment 

in Borikén. Resistance in the sixteenth century was both passive 

and active and helps us to better understand the long-term process of 

indigenous survival. An analysis is given of how important laws and 

doctrines were manufactured to justify the violence and enslavement 

of the Carib. This is juxtaposed to the intense resistance to Spanish 

colonization, which has been largely ignored as a factor contributing 

to changes in Spanish policy. Francisco Manuel de Lando’s 1530– 

1531 census is also analyzed as it became a tool to rationalize the 

Indian population out of history. However, most indigenous peoples 

in Borikén were not a part of the census count to begin with, since


they were living in the many isolated areas of the island or had fled the 

encomienda system. 

Chapters 4 and 5 examine the Indian transformation from the seventeenth 

until well into the twentieth century. The Jíbaro presence in 

many regions of the island from the early 1700s to late 1800s could be 

described as a type of silence from the outside world. The African and 

Spanish people they came into contact with, who had themselves fled 

or relocated to the interior and elsewhere, had been largely assimilated 

and in the process the Jíbaro were able to keep many of their cultural 

traditions alive. Spanish population censuses taken in the second 

half of the eighteenth century reveal that hundreds of Indian people 

remained on the island at that time. This was a huge underestimation 

of the thousands and thousands of people who were actually there. As 

Spanish censuses throughout the Americas typically underestimated 

or minimized indigenous population numbers, the Jíbaro were present 

in much larger numbers than these censuses showed. Indigenous 

survival permeated throughout the nineteenth century as the Spanish 

did not fully colonize the island, particularly the mountain regions, 

until after the 1868 revolution. It was the Jíbaro or Boricua who 

kept up the resistance in the 1800s and was the main impetus for the 

revolts, revolution, and for helping to finally drive the Spaniards out 

of Puerto Rico at the end of the century. While a principal contributor 

to a Puerto Rican nationality, they had maintained an indigenous consciousness 

because that’s who they were. The final chapter examines 

contemporary cultural survival and continuity within Jíbaro families, 

communities, or barrios. The indigenous voice has a lot to say about 

customary, spiritual, and linguistic practices that continue today. The 

dynamics of the indigenous movement in Borikén is also looked at. 

Here we reveal the Jíbaro-Boricua meaning of the movement for 

independence and its potential future.


Chapter 2 

Mythmaking in the Caribbean 

Mythology has been traditionally concerned with accounts of origins, 

creation stories, the emergence of deities, the supernatural world, 

all of which provide meaning to a people and can justify the bases of 

societies. A myth is said to be “the sum of the development of historical 

tradition.” 1 For indigenous peoples, the world is viewed holistically, 

where everything is connected: “We are instructed to deal with 

the plants, animals, minerals, human beings and all life as if they were a 

part of ourselves.” 2 Indigenous beliefs and myths often center around 

a connectedness, stewardship, and reverence for the earth, a responsibility 

to preserve for future generations. Male and female entities are 

also seen as dual, complementing each other and in balance. Indigenous 

Caribbean peoples believed in the Earth Mother–Sky Father 

duality between these energies. The Earth Mother, Atabei, Atabey, 

Atabex, or Attabeira, gave birth to Yúcahu Bagua Maórocoti, the Sky 

or Celestial Father. Yúcahu has no beginning, signifying the belief in 

a form of reincarnation and immorality. The male being is further not 

singular in Antillean tradition. This thought contradicts the European 

interpretation of the early chroniclers, who believed that Yúcahu was 

equivalent to a monotheistic paternal god in the Christian tradition. 

Caribbean cultural society and spiritual belief were matriarchal and 

polytheistic. Compared to Mesoamerican forces of nature, “the Antillean 

gods present resemblances which cannot be explained as mere 

casual coincidences . . . Such are the beliefs in the Fire-God, the gods 

of the wind and the hurricane, the mother serpent, etc.” 3 

Myths and their production can also be fictitious when they are 

out of touch with the facts or truth, such as the belief in the Orbis 

Terrarum (Island of the Earth) or that the sun somehow revolved

22 


around the earth. While thought to be fact, fiction was used here to 

explain the unexplainable of the time and has since been disproved. In 

contrast to indigenous thought, Western society’s ways of viewing the 

earth have been divisive and dominant and have exploited her for its 

own use and profit. In the fifteenth and sixteenth-century European 

expansion into the Americas, this meant using people as pawns in the 

colonial process and thus the need to invent certain myths in order to 

justify imperialism and one’s presence. Some of these myths are alive 

and well today. This chapter is primarily concerned with this strand of 

myth, which I view in the fictitious sense of the word as in tales passed 

down about indigenous peoples and societies in Western tradition, or 

mythmaking, with little or no historical basis of support. I’m talking 

about indigenous discourses produced from Western perspectives that 

came to count as “facts” and “truths.” As the first point of contact 

in the “New World,” the Caribbean came to be a launching pad for 

many of the myths, tales, and stories told about indigenous peoples 

as perceived through the European consciousness and canon. For 

example, the Carib funerary custom of hanging the bones of the dead 

from their houses was a sure indicator of anthropophagy. Of course 

one who eats human flesh has always been seen to be on the occidental 

edge of humanity. This initial moment in time came to symbolize 

an irreparable image of indigenous populations as reflected back to 

Europe and unfortunately still informs our thinking. 

I write aware of the game of debunking, or “the denunciation of 

myth as falsehood from the vantage-point of a rival myth.” 4 However, 

if we keep in mind that the criterion in determining a fiction is measured 

in terms of its deviation from or approximation to fact, 5 and 

what might count for “fact” or “fiction” can be subjective or misperceived, 

we may very well begin to resuscitate a “dead society.” In this 

case the core of the “rival myth” takes on a most personal nature. 

It begs the questions: Am I a myth? Are the Jíbaro and other indigenous 

Caribbean peoples myths, too? And are all “mixed-blooded” 

native peoples mythical beings? This was the dominant belief as late 

as 1968 when the first United Nations Conference on Human Rights 

was held. Indigenous peoples were generally considered “a remnant 

of the past,” inevitably assimilated into mainstream societies. 6 They 

were gone and nowhere to be found. This was a fallacy. Indigenous 

groups and peoples had simply gone “underground,” and since then 

many have been reaffirmed and routinely recognized by governmental 

and nongovernmental bodies with a good number of international 

rights documents written in their favor. Just as importantly, it is the 

indigenous voice that has attempted to lend perspective in speaking

Mythmaking in the Caribbean 23 

truth to myth. “Starting in the 1960s and 1970s, with the powerful 

and heartfelt Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee and films such as Soldier 

Blue and Little Big Man, a whole generation of books, films and 

TV series has tried, often very honourably, to set the record straight 

by giving a native perspective on the conquest of the West.” 7 

With a focus on the Caribbean, I will primarily explore how European 

mythmaking has been crafted since the late fifteenth-century clash 

of civilizations. There is also an important link to be made between 

the mythmaking process and notions of marginalization, irrationality, 

heathenism, savagery, and the erasure and ultimate “extinction” of 

indigenous populations. When we look at the myths to be described, 

indigenous peoples are almost always marginalized and reduced to a 

subhuman level. Those who “dared” to resist the colonizer were often 

demonized, too. Yet, the bases or underlying premises of these types of 

myths have often been created through fantasy and scholarly assumptions. 

For example, as seen with the dominant Bering Strait theory of 

American Indian origins, the renowned Standing Rock Sioux scholar 

Vine Deloria, Jr., in Red Earth, White Lies, meticulously and convincingly 

points out how theory with no foundational basis of support 

can be unquestionably passed down for unending periods of time and 

unwittingly accepted as scholarly fact. The basic assumption regarding 

the Bering Strait theory is that since Native Americans were thought 

to be incapable of traveling by water, 8 they must have had to traverse 

the Bering Strait during the last ice age to have arrived in North 

America. This notion originally fulfilled the biblical belief of human 

origins and then mainstream scientific thought, but now falls flat on its 

face in terms of the increasing amount of archeological data of a hemispheric 

human presence dating back much further than the 12,000 

or so years of the ice age period. 9 Moreover, North American Indian 

people, in general, strongly oppose the idea as indigenous traditions 

and memory passed down over many generations do not corroborate 

such a migration and origin. 10 However, as native stories and traditions 

are routinely dismissed by Western science as “superstitious” and 

“fictions” in themselves, the dominant theory is continually recited 

and upheld as Deloria found out firsthand: “Arriving at the University 

of Colorado, I was stunned to hear from my students that some of my 

history colleagues were beginning their courses on American history 

with a mindless recitation of the Bering Strait theory of the peopling 

of the Western Hemisphere. Basically, they were simply repeating 

scholarly folklore, since there is, to my knowledge, no good source 

which articulates the theory in any reasonable format. Indeed, this

24 


‘theory’ has been around so long that people no longer feel they have 

to explain or defend it—they can merely refer to it.” 11 

As brought out in this chapter, this type of reference is also exemplified 

in the inventions of European apotheoses, the idea of discovery, 

and the practice of native cannibalism. These myths, most importantly, 

add credibility to how the myth of the extinction of indigenous Caribbean 

peoples came to be manufactured and produced. These types of 

legends have always come at the expense of the self-created “Other.” 

It has been to the political advantage of Western societies and governments 

to keep these myths believable in order to shield their own 

vulnerability and brutal past. 

Myth Models and the Savage Mind 

Gananath Obeyesekere’s The Apotheosis of Captain Cook provides 

some insight into the European mythmaking process and underlying 

ideas that have made its production possible. Obeyesekere, a Sri 

Lankan native, poses a question he had asked himself in 1983 upon 

learning of Marshall Sahlins’s thesis expounding the Kanaka Maoli 

belief that the British Captain James Cook was their god, Lono: 

“Could it be that the myth of Lono was a European construction, 

attributing to the native the belief that the European was a god?” 12 He 

was extremely curious because he could not think of any Sri Lankan or 

South Asian examples of when a European had been deified by their 

native hosts, and much less a premortem one. Obeyesekere attempts 

to disprove the long-held theory of Cook’s apotheosis by unraveling 

the dominant scholarly evidence and points out that European mythmaking 

was prolific in European thought, particularly in regard to 

ancestral heroes of which Cook might easily fit. 13 

By “myth model,” he notes that an important myth could serve as 

a model for the construction of other myths. He inquires if the Cook 

case could have been influenced by prior European models, such 

as Hernán Cortés’s supposed apotheosis and possibly Columbus’s, 

which themselves may have been based on other myth models in 

Europe’s past history. 14 He points out how European explorers in the 

Pacific had a prior conception of the deification process before they 

even landed on shore. 15 This was apparently a preconceived notion of 

Columbus, too, when he immediately assumed and later penned in 

his famed letter of 1493 that the Caribbean peoples he first contacted 

actually believed the newcomers were “divine.” His belief was undisputed 

as they ran around announcing his arrival wherever he went 

with loud cries of “Come! Come! See the people from the sky!” 16


Interestingly, it is recorded that Columbus had previously written in 

his journal that he communicated by “signs” with the Indian people, 

“because I do not understand them through speech.” 17 He would 

not have done even this upon his arrival in Borikén as it is said he 

thought the island was uninhabited, since the inhabitants had ignored 

him. 18 Furthermore, there is a well-documented native prophecy that 

“bearded men” who were “wholly clothed” would come to wreak 

havoc on the people of the region. 19 This would hardly be a cause for 

celebration, much less to see the Europeans as “gods.” Columbus 

apparently knew of this prophecy, yet his letter, which obviously “puts 

the best possible gloss” on the events of the first voyage, 20 has been 

seen as a means of securing funds from the Spanish Crown for future 

voyages, in part, by giving the impression that the “peaceable” inhabitants 

were ripe for Christianity. 

These ideas were not only shipboard tradition but also ran deep 

within the European culture and psyche. According to Obeyesekere, 

“the very beginnings of the voyages of discovery carried with them 

the tradition of the apotheosis of redoubtable European navigators 

who were also the harbingers of civilization. This cultural structure 

occurs against a larger background of ancient Indo-European values 

pertaining to euhemerism, to gods in human shape appearing 

among mortals, to men becoming gods and gods becoming men and 

so forth.” 21 In regard to the Hawaiian acceptance of the apotheosis 

of Cook, as noted in the following passage, Obeyesekere is primarily 

referring to those who had thereafter converted to Christianity. The 

contemporary Kanaka Maoli scholars and people I have discussed this 

topic with basically agree with Obeyesekere’s conclusion, and most 

view Cook’s legacy as one of death and destruction for their people. 

The author writes, 

I have suggested that the myth of Cook as the god Lono is fundamentally 

based on the Western idea of the redoubtable European who is 

a god to savage peoples. This was further transformed in European 

thought in the Evangelical idea of idolatry. The later Hawaiian acceptance 

of this idea is not proof that it was the Hawaiians’ idea in the first 

place. To put it differently, the divinization of Cook is a structure of 

the long run in European thought, inasmuch as his chiefly deification 

is a Hawaiian example of the same phenomenon. I am now suggesting 

that Sahlins’s anthropological narrative of the life and death of Cook is 

not only a theoretical vindication of structural continuity and conjuncture, 

as he claims, but it is also a continuation, albeit unwitting, of the 

European myth of the apotheosis of James Cook. Theoretical thought 

is often enshrined in nontheoretical traditions. 22

26 


Obeyesekere remarks that myth models more importantly refer 

to an established set of ideas utilized in various narratives that “get 

attached to larger narrative forms such as fiction, history, or biography.” 

23 For example, the production of mythical apotheoses and 

subsequent stories passed down can be seen to parallel European preconceptions 

and marginalizations of indigenous peoples as irrational, 

childlike, or savage beings. Obeyesekere uses the characters of Prospero 

and Kurtz to show how the “savage mind” as drawn from these 

personalities and legends is implicitly assumed to be illogical and irrational 

compared to modern ways of thinking. If native peoples think 

“mystically,” “prelogically,” or like children, they must assumedly lack 

developed ratiocinative abilities. 24 He critiques Tzvetan Todorov’s The 

Conquest of America by showing how prejudicial myth models continue 

to be passed down today through the social scientists’ portrayal 

of the Other. In his work, Todorov proposes and then affirms that the 

Spaniards defeated the Aztec (Mexica) by “signs,” or “interhuman 

communication” as he says, where “we cannot be surprised that the 

specialists in human communication should triumph in it.” 25 What he 

means, according to Obeyesekere, is how Cortés skillfully manipulated 

signs “in a pragmatic, rational manner so as to overwhelm the 

traditional, cosmologically bound Aztecs.” 26 They are constricted by 

“ritual” and “collectivity” and thus not individuals as such capable of 

improvisation, 27 or in other words incapable of derationalizing their 

own demise. 

One event Todorov describes showing Cortés’s ability to control 

information was his attempt to convince the Mexica of their apparent 

initial uncertainty that Spanish horses were immortal. He did 

this by burying their corpses the night after a battle, to make it seem 

like their disappearance was some sort of “magic art.” 28 This mode 

of improvisation was meant to demoralize and scare his adversaries, 

notes Obeyesekere, but he points out it could easily be argued that 

Cortés misinterprets indigenous thought based on European biases, 

and that his assumed mastery of signs led him to perform a foolish 

act. “But were the Indians naive enough to believe that Spanish 

horses did not belong to the broad mortal class of the quadrupeds 

in their own midst? And did not the Aztecs see Spanish horses 

wounded, bleeding, and falling down, if not dead? And how did 

the Spaniards manage to bury their dead horses and then cover up 

the evidence of burial without Indians detecting them?” 29 Todorov’s 

account does provide instances when the Mexica also appear to be 

masters of signs, but in their own cultural context. Their very different 

style of improvisation and rationality could have easily eluded


the early chroniclers. 30 Obeyesekere writes how anthropologists 

today generally affirm the rationality of “preliterate societies” from 

within their own value systems. What he takes exception to, however, 

is the logic in the very attribution of rationality to begin with, 

which in its rigidity is “not all that far removed from prior notions of 

prelogicality.” 31 Todorov’s well-intended “moralist’s” account 32 of 

Spanish atrocities perpetuated against indigenous populations does 

not exempt him from this representation in relation to the stereotypical 

Other. Obeyesekere explains how he is apparently unaware of 

the bind he is placed in: 

He quotes extensively from Spanish texts that describe the brutalization 

of the Indians, but these are the very texts that represent the Indians’ 

stereotypic Otherness. The modern scholar accepts the accuracy of 

these older accounts of the Indian because they fit his theory of signs 

which tells us that the Indians are bound by signs; consequently they 

can be easily subjugated by the Spanish who have mastery over signs. 

Todorov does not recognize that his representation of the Aztec is a byproduct 

of sixteenth-century Spanish representations, meditated, however, 

by his theory of signs. In effect, the difference between the two 

is one of ethical orientation and not one of divergent representation. 

Todorov’s vision of the Other is a continuation of a major Spanish (and 

European) myth model dealing with the savage mind. 33 

Cortés’s “Apotheosis” and Sahagún 

Cortés’s apotheosis appears to have been passed down in a similar 

mythical fashion as Cook’s masquerading as Lono. Todorov notes how 

Cortés exploited the myth of the return of the historical and legendary 

figure, Quetzalcoatl. According to “Indian accounts” collected 

by Spanish chroniclers, Montezuma supposedly identified Cortés as 

Quetzalcoatl, which was a main reason for his inability to resist the 

Spaniards. 34 But the original version of the story does not emphasize 

Quetzalcoatl’s return, whose role is secondary and not of a dominant 

personage. Here is where Cortés inserts himself in transforming the 

myth, which becomes codified by the chroniclers. Todorov remarks, 

“The accounts we find in Sahagún and Durán present the identification 

of Cortés with Quetzalcoatl as occurring to Montezuma himself. 

But this assertion merely proves that, for the Indians after the conquest, 

the thing was likely; Cortés’s calculation must have been based 

on this possibility when he sought to produce an ‘authentic’ Indian 

myth.” 35 So while the Mexica did see Quetzalcoatl as one divinity

28 


among others before the Spanish arrival, he became more of a dominant 

“supreme being” as portrayed and used by Cortés. 

We need to be critical of these Spanish texts like the Franciscan Bernardino 

de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex, even if they are embellished 

by native accounts. Instead, Todorov makes this sweeping and contradictory 

statement: “We cannot question the authenticity of accounts 

which report what the priests’ informants believed.” 36 We should, yet 

it is actually not so much questioning what the informants believed 

but how the information they gave was interpreted, organized, and 

used. As alphabetical writing was thought to be a superior genre of 

organizing knowledge compared to Amerindian forms, the effective 

spread of language became paramount in the Christian conversion of 

indigenous populations. Gordon Brotherston notes that indigenous 

societies were, in fact, well aware of the potential impoverishment of 

the phonetic alphabet on their script-saturated texts. 37 Thus the biblical 

version of history was philosophically challenged, which resulted 

in the burning of “whole libraries” of Mesoamerican texts by the first 

missionaries. The systematic erasure of texts occurred throughout 

the hemisphere, such as the confiscation of “pagan libraries” of Mide 

scrolls in northern Turtle Island. 38 Ironically, European knowledge 

of indigenous peoples’ languages and religions were instrumental in 

reproducing “the word” of the Christian God. In the Philippines, 

Latin and Castilian were used to reconstruct Tagalog grammar into 

an effective tool for translating scripture and in turn converting the 

Tagalogs. 39 Calvinist missionaries in Hawai‘i early on acquired and 

transformed the Kanaka Maoli language into an alphabetic script for 

the same purpose. The use of the alphabet was critical in México, too, 

as Sahagún’s sixteenth century work had begun as a project to convert 

Amerindians under the Franciscans. 40 A point Todorov stresses about 

Sahagún’s research, motivation, and “desire to know and to preserve 

Nahuatl culture” preceding his writing of his history (in terms of conversion), 

41 is part and parcel of the writing process. These time periods 

are not exclusive of each other, as Todorov would have us believe, in 

regard to the ultimate goal. According to Walter Mignolo, Sahagún 

was attempting to know native souls through the ancient Mexica religion 

“in order to be more successful in their conversion.” He writes, 

“Sahagún referred continually to his writing as ‘this work’ (esta obra), 

implying ‘written work,’ and in the opening paragraph of his prologue, 

he compared his own work with that of the medical doctor. 

In the same way that the doctor has to diagnose his or her patient 

in order to reestablish the order in the body, the missionaries had to 

diagnose theirs in order to restore order to their soul.” 42


Sahagún gathered an abundant amount of information in Nahuatl 

through oral contact with the Mexica. He began translating his work 

into Spanish upon the request of the governor and president of the 

Council of the Indies, Fray Juan de Ovando. His method of organizing 

knowledge was through an alphabetical encyclopedic genre based on a 

previous model accepted by medieval Christian scholars. 43 Mignolo 

notes the 12 books he wrote (Florentine Codex) are assumed to be 

part history and encyclopedia, though this is not clear. What is clear 

is that Sahagún did not ask the Mexica how they organized their own 

knowledge and assumed it should be in “book form”: “What should 

hold our attention for the next few pages is the taken-for-granted 

belief that it was perfectly natural to organize all the information he 

gathered over the years into twelve books, without asking how the 

Mexicas themselves organized and transmitted their knowledge.” 44 

While the Florentine Codex helped to resuscitate the known of indigenous 

culture, Sahagún’s classification and reconfiguration of Mexica 

knowledge actually ended up repressing their ways of knowing. 45 

Cultural preservation at that time was clearly for the benefit of the 

non-Mexica to the detriment of the native population. Just because 

we now have these texts to analyze, study, and amuse ourselves with 

does little good for those who were relatively well off before the 

Europeans showed up. The complicity between alphabetic writing as 

believed to be a superior form of organizing knowledge and how it 

was then transmitted into a tool of conversion worked out quite well 

for the Spaniards. Sahagún’s work ended in 1578 as an official report 

of the Council of the Indies, at the same time the Council began to 

systematically collect and organize information in the “Indies.” 46 

Finally, as related to our main thesis, the long parade of twentiethcentury 

scholars’ view of indigenous Caribbean “extinction” is indeed 

a by-product of early Spanish representation. Todorov’s remark that 

“the sixteenth century perpetrated the greatest genocide in human 

history” 47 speaks to this point. This statement basically totalizes the 

indigenous population out of existence, precluding any possibility 

for native representation. The contemporary scholar’s cultural 

worldview and objectives often disallow for tangible representation 

and perspective, just like in the past, and thus the continuation of 

a myth model. Deloria explains how secular science essentially came 

to view non-Western traditions as “folklore” and “myth.” He writes, 

“Many scholars will fudge this point, claiming that their definition 

of myth gives it great respect as the carrier of some super-secret and 

sacred truth, but in fact the popular meaning is a superstition or fiction 

which we, as smart modern thinkers, would never in a million

30 


years believe.” 48 The same thinking has been permeated on those who 

attempt to produce alternative narratives and expound on the intense 

resistances carried out against the Spanish colonizer countering this 

history of totalization. But this is a “revisionist” history, they say, that 

has no place within deductive scientific thought. 

“Just War” and the Myth of Discovery 

“He [Columbus] was to seize on the way anything that might belong 

to the ‘heathen,’ as a preliminary to their conversion, simply because 

the heathen were assumed to have no rights of possession, and not 

because the previous existence of the property was unknown. The socalled 

‘right of discovery,’ as superior to the right of possession, was a 

peculiar conception of fifteenth-century Christianity. It was really the 

right to take by force whatever did not already belong to Christian 

nations.” 49 

Old habits are hard to break in terms of how falsehoods have been 

sustained as truths through assertions of power. As the myth of European 

apotheoses was used as a tool of colonization, the concept of 

discovery was promulgated to claim European “sovereignty” in the 

Americas. This fiction sums up the imperial enterprise of the early 

modern era initiated by the Papacy and Spanish Crown and forms 

the foundation of just about every other myth to come in the Indo- 

European clash of cultures. As spelled out in the 1493 papal bull 

Inter Caetera, “discovery” authorized the overthrow of “barbarous 

nations” and the seizure of their lands, and it set the basis for the purported 

establishment of Christian dominion over parts of the earth. 50 

The discovery principle essentially relegated non-Christian peoples to 

a savage and subhuman level in order to justify European expansionism 

and domination of the world. 

Christian European nations’ assumption that discovery conferred 

legal rights of title to lands found together with the diminishing of 

one’s humanity were the ideological keys to maintaining possession 

of those lands. For example, Spanish jurists and theologians like Juan 

López de Palacios-Rubios and Fray Matías de Paz met in Burgos in 

1512 to further justify the legality of Spanish dominion in the Americas 

and form of “servitude” to be imposed on Indian inhabitants. 51 

Palacios-Rubios, who apparently authored the requerimiento of 1513 

that said it was just to wage war against Indian people as a preliminary 

to their conversion, believed the grant of Pope Alexander VI 

affirmed the Supreme Pontiff’s spiritual and temporal powers as


“vicar of Christ,” and thus allowed the pope maximum authority and 

jurisdiction over both the faithful and “infidels.” 52 The requerimiento 

explicitly presented one of the first instances of the “just war” theory 

as applied in the Americas. Accordingly, in his famous debate with Las 

Casas at Valladolid from 1550 to 1551 concerning the validity of the 

theory, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda’s approach to the matter relied on 

the Aristotelian “doctrine of natural slavery.” While Las Casas’s central 

argument was to peacefully convert the native population as it had 

been for years, Lewis Hanke noted that for the first time in modern 

history Sepúlveda attempted to brand a whole race of people as “inferior” 

in keeping with Aristotle’s theory. 53 He explains, “Sepúlveda 

made plain in his treatise, despite its complex and often confusing 

argument, that he considered the Indians to be natural slaves according 

to the Aristotelian concept and the Spaniards amply justified in 

carrying on war against them as an indispensable preliminary to Christianizing 

them.” 54 Here the notion of “natural slavery” relegated a 

people to a subhuman status as a means to convert them based on the 

“just war” theory. Sepúlveda declared that the Alexandrian “bulls of 

donation” authorized this policy, 55 which were of course rooted in the 

concept of discovery. 

In contrast to these views, other figures and legal scholars invalidated 

such an idea that popes could unequivocally assert their power 

with legal impunity. Paul Gottschalk points out that Spanish theologian 

Francisco de Vitoria and Hugo Grotius, both considered founders 

of modern international law, rejected the papal donation theory and 

“partition” of the world expressing their sentiment that even if the 

pope meant it: “he could neither dispossess the Indians of their property 

nor donate property which he had never owned.” 56 While his 

Law of Nations ultimately justified “the extension of Western power 

over the American Indians as an imperative of the Europeans’ vision 

of truth,” 57 Vitoria, like Las Casas, rejected the basic tenet of the 

requerimiento in critiquing a policy he apparently saw as inhumane. 

Hanke briefly summarizes his fundamental arguments: 

First, he appears to have been the first Spaniard to assert that the papal 

grant had no temporal value. Secondly, he emphasized the fact that 

certain titles were illegitimate and these he specified in detail. The 

emperor, he stated, was not the lord of the whole world and neither 

was the pope, who had no temporal power over the Indians or over 

other unbelievers. A refusal by the Indians to recognize any dominion 

of the pope is no reason for making war on them or for seizing their 

goods, nor are they bound to hearken to the faith. Even if the emperor

32 


were the lord of the whole world, that would not entitle him to seize 

the Indian provinces, erect new lords, or levy taxes. 58 

What did the indigenous peoples have to say about this? They most 

importantly rejected the granting of the bull Inter Caetera. According 

to A. Garcia, the Indian statement from Cartagena was that, “The 

Pope must have been mad when he did so, for he was giving what was 

not his.” 59 This repudiation of discovery meant that as far as the native 

peoples were concerned, the Papacy and Spanish Crown had no moral 

or legal right to take possession of their land, or to wage war against 

them for not converting to a foreign religion. Writing in 1519, Martin 

Fernández de Enciso explained in his Suma de geografía how the 

Indian people of “Cenú” reacted to his reading of the requerimiento. 

This reveals the true sentiment of some indigenous peoples to its 

reading, even if the account may have been exaggerated: 60 

They answered me that regarding what it said about there being only 

one God who governed heaven and earth and who was lord of all, that 

seemed fine to them, but in so far as what it said about the pope being 

lord of the universe in God’s place, and that he donated the land to the 

king of Castilla, they said the pope must have been drunk when he did 

that because he gave what was not his to give, and that the king who 

asked for and took the grant must have been crazy because he asked 

for what belonged to others, and that he should go there to take it so 

they could hang his head from a stick as they had hung other heads . . . 

belonging to their enemies . . . and they said that they were lords of 

their land and did not need another lord. 61 

We can see now that the “legal rights” promulgated by Inter 

Caetera were highly controversial. European nations also routinely 

violated their own laws in the colonial process, such as natural law 

and the right to possess property. The granting of laws to “protect” 

the rights of indigenous peoples didn’t really matter either as power 

politics usually prevailed. As Robert Williams, Jr. notes, “In the Europeans’ 

conquest and colonization of the American Indian, law and legal 

discourse most often served to redeem the West’s genocidal imposition 

of its superior civilization in the New World.” 62 Furthermore, 

how could sovereignty have been legally established if its underlying 

principle was an absurdity to begin with? As well known among some 

scholars over time, the “European discovery” of unknown or “vacant” 

lands and peoples could not have happened for a couple of important 

reasons. First and foremost is the impossibility of discovering lands


that had already been inhabited for thousands and thousands of years. 

The “historical success” of Amerigo Vespucci’s label called the “New 

World” does not make sense when considering that indigenous peoples 

had been present in the hemisphere up to forty thousand years 

ago or more. 63 To then coin the 1492 “discovery” as a time when the 

first European arrived and settled is ethnocentric and racist because 

it denies the prior American Indian presence and the people’s own 

rights and customs. 

The lands that come to be called the “Americas” were actually well 

known “to the millions of people who inhabited them and who had 

discovered them on behalf of the human species tens of thousands 

of years before.” 64 Historically, many indigenous peoples have outrightly 

rejected the legal claim of discovery on the very grounds of a 

previous ancestral presence that dates back since time immemorial. A 

native elder from the coast of Quebradillas, Puerto Rico, simply said 

to me, “Christopher Columbus discovered America with lies.” 65 The 

acknowledgement by numerous individuals, organizations, and international 

bodies of law that do recognize indigenous peoples as first 

peoples directly contradict the possibility of a European discovery. Luis 

Rivera expands on the myth of attributing the concept to lands already 

inhabited: “To speak of a discovery, in an absolute and transcendental 

sense, would imply the absence of a prior human and cultural history 

in the newfound lands. This is absurd and reveals a deep-rooted 

and anachronistic ethnocentrism.” 66 To have traditionally believed or 

rationalized indigenous peoples as savage or subhuman does not make 

it so. This was a misperception. However, by the assertion of its power 

through the creation of such representations, the West has been able 

to sustain a falsehood depicted as “truth.” The concept of discovery 

is a myth in terms of presence because it widely deviates from fact and 

to continue to uphold its principle reveals this anachronistic belief at 

a contemporary level. 

Discovery is further an impossibility as predicated on Edmundo 

O’Gorman’s theory that European explorers who had supposedly discovered 

a hemispheric land base did not know of its prior existence. For 

O’Gorman, discovery requires the discoverer to be previously knowledgeable 

of the nature or existence of the being that is found. 67 In 

reference to the Americas, both Columbus and Vespucci believed they 

had reached Asia on their voyages, and Columbus insisted on this 

view up until his death in 1506. O’Gorman writes the most important 

problem concerning this history, or “the history of America,” 

is explaining how “America” appeared on the historical scene. The 

dominant scholarly interpretation of the past has been that it was

34 


discovered one fine day in October of 1492, on an island Columbus 

believed to be in the vicinity of Japan. 68 However, instead of concentrating 

on the history of the “discovery of America,” O’Gorman’s 

work focuses on the “idea that America had been discovered.” He 

found the logical conclusion of this idea “implies a reductio ad absurdum, 

and therefore, that it is an inadequate way to understand the 

historical reality which it attempts to explain.” 69 

The evidence of Columbus’s intention to reach Asia and the belief 

he had done so is clear. Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli’s thesis of a western 

route to India (or the Indies) supported the Marco Polo story. 70 

Columbus received a copy of the Florentine scholar’s letter and chart 

of a shorter route to the east rather than the West African route being 

pursued by the Portuguese. This convinced him he could sail westward 

and is referenced in his journals. 71 His Lettera Rarissima written 

to Ferdinand and Isabella on his fourth and final voyage insisted that 

“Cuba was part of the Chinese province of Mangi.” 72 More convincingly, 

Bartolomé Columbus’s composite map depicts the belief 

surrounding the fourth voyage with the South American continent 

connected to southern Asia! 73 (see Figure 2.1). Nevertheless, despite 

the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Ferdinand Columbus 

thereafter misled the reader into thinking his father really knew where 

he was. Knowing full well his intentions, Ferdinand deliberately stated 

that Columbus thought he had made it to an unknown continent 

west of Europe. 74 

But it was not until Martín Fernández de Navarrete published his 

Collection (1825–1837) that the ambiguities of the early chroniclers 

and unequivocal intentions of Columbus were once and for all settled. 

Figure 2.1 Composite of Bartolomé Columbus’s three sketch maps from c. 1503–1506.


Navarrete’s work is based on the principal documents of Columbus’s 

voyages that prove he had “no other objective than to reach Asia.” 75 

Subsequently, Washington Irving, Alexander von Humboldt, and 

Samuel Morison agreed that the admiral’s goal and intention were 

specifically to reach Asia, yet they all (including Navarrete) managed 

in one way or another to rationalize Columbus as the “discoverer.” 

Morison’s rationale for the discovery of America was that it was 

purely by chance, an accident, since Columbus had no purpose of getting 

there nor the “faintest suspicion” of its existence. 76 O’Gorman 

explains that this is the way the chance 1492 “discovery of America” 

is taught today, as the “irrefutable truth.” 77 The extreme irony of the 

time is that neither Columbus nor anyone else, including the scholars, 

knew what had happened. Encouragingly, despite the fact that years 

later O’Gorman himself came to believe that the invention was “the 

decisive and irreversible step toward the fulfillment of the ecumenical 

program of Western culture,” 78 an increasing number of writers 

today openly acknowledge the impossibility of a European discovery. 

As Kirkpatrick Sale says, “Whatever may have been in the Admiral’s 

mind . . . we can say with assurance that no such event as ‘discovery’ 

took place.” 79 

To conclude, there is an important observation needed to be made 

about the Spanish presence in the Americas. Throughout all of the 

debates of the sixteenth century, no theologians, scholars, government 

officials, or movements appear to have come forward to support 

the right of the Indian people to maintain their own philosophical or 

religious belief, or their right of self-determination. 80 The only solution 

to the “pagan problem” was either through “peaceful conversion” 

or “by force.” Sepúlveda was certain that “the great mass of Indians 

would never voluntarily give up their own religion.” 81 He was absolutely 

correct. Why would the Carib, Maya, or Inca surrender their 

belief systems and laws when they had already been living quite well 

for thousands of years? For the indigenous peoples of Borikén, it must 

have been difficult “to throw their traditional beliefs out the window 

and embrace an unknown religion—especially since its preachers had 

the intention of overthrowing the sovereignty of the country of the 

future converts.” 82 Whether through peace or by force, the Christian 

conversion project based on the discovery principle was without 

a doubt legally and morally unjust to the indigenous peoples concerned, 

and a few scholars of the time. Indigenous descendants today 

overwhelmingly attest to this point, for example, through the support 

garnered by the movement to revoke the bull Inter Caetera. The 

Spaniards were merely occupiers of the lands they seized. The very

36 


basis for the “legality” of Spanish sovereignty in the Americas was 

continually reinforced through the rationale that posited the belief 

in the “moral superiority” of the Christian faith over “idolatrous” 

native belief systems. This thought was used to dehumanize and subjugate 

the people and, ultimately, take possession of their property. 

As Rivera notes, the natural right of Indian self-determination was 

grossly violated in the process: “From this perspective, the act of taking 

possession of the indigenous peoples, of expropriating their lands, 

goods, and persons, violating their autonomy and self-determination, 

goes against all law and justice.” 83 

The “Cannibal” and Resistance 

The myth of discovery weaves into the creation of other European fictions 

void of fundamental supporting evidence in relation to peoples 

and places encountered along the way. In the Antilles, the early images 

described and projected back to Europe by explorers and chroniclers 

would come to set the bases for deeply ingrained stereotypes and 

subsequent depictions of other indigenous groups. The image of and 

belief in the practice of native “cannibalism” was among the most 

prominent. According to Sale, reports of cannibalism for Columbus 

“provided the means of justifying the enslavement and deportation 

of those creatures so clearly beyond the pale of God’s favor that they 

could rightfully be regarded as beasts.” 84 Again, by dehumanizing a 

people, this time as “man-eaters” in breaking European projections of 

natural law, legal fictions were used to dispossess native nations and, 

in turn, expand empire. 85 The continual granting of papal edicts epitomized 

how a juridical need was repeated to gain and maintain control 

in the Antillean region and beyond. 

Columbus’s division of the people of the Caribbean as “peaceable” 

and “ferocious” is also symmetrical in terms of degrees of resistance 

to invaders and consistent with preconceived ideas based on other 

Western models. Regarding the latter point, Peter Hulme explains, 

“Indeed the radical dualism of the European response to the native 

Caribbean—fierce cannibal and noble savage—has such obvious continuities 

with the classical Mediterranean paradigm that it is tempting 

to see the whole intricate web of colonial discourse as weaving itself 

in its own separate space entirely unaffected by any observation of or 

interchange with native Caribbean cultures.” 86 His in-depth examination 

of Columbus’s journal of his first voyage pinpoints two competing 

outside discourses: the “Oriental” discourse of Marco Polo and the 

Grand Khan and the “discourse of savagery” in the Herodotian


tradition. Both are competing for a single signifier, the word “canibales,” 

which Columbus originally believed referred to “the people of 

the Grand Khan” (“la gente del Gran Can”). 87 The crucial moment 

signaling the defeat of the Oriental discourse takes place in Cuba, 

which Columbus thought was the province of “Cathay” because it 

was so extensive. However, his sudden shift from sailing northwest 

along Cuba’s northern coast in order to meet with the emperor, and 

an abortive “embassy” inland only to be met with deference by the 

Indian people there, were signs that his Oriental expectations were 

“becoming embarrassingly evident.” 88 

As the Marco Polo scenario fades away, the quest for gold took 

on a paramount importance. From this moment forward lands and 

peoples southeast simultaneously took on “savage” proportions: “. . . 

Columbus chose south-east because he was more likely to find gold in 

that direction: not of course the gold of Cathay, but exploitable mines 

of ‘savage gold.’” 89 It is thereafter that the “canibales,” or the Carib 

“Other,” became equated to a consumer of human flesh. The maneuver 

obviously had an economic motive to assure the admiral’s future 

status and booster the coffers of the Crown. It is further interesting 

how so-called Arawak inhabited islands increasingly came to be peopled 

by “hostile cannibals” as slavery and the quest for profit grew. 90 

This was a main reason why slavery was legalized, but it also had to do 

with native resistance to outsiders where it was not supposed to come 

from, that is, from the “peaceable Arawaks” of the northern Antilles 

as we shortly see. 

While on Cuba, Columbus records that his Indian interpreters told 

him there were people on the nearby island of Bohío (“Espaniola”) 

who had “one eye in their foreheads” and others who “eat them” 

and to whom “they showed great fear.” 91 José Barreiro alludes to this 

scene in his book, The Indian Chronicles, when a cacike of Cuba, Bayamo, 

jokes to Columbus about the “bad men” from the south. The 

old people had said to him, “Watch out when you see those uglies 

coming!” 92 These were “a bunch of jokes” being played on the Spaniards 

in order “to get rid of them,” said Lamourt-Valentín, 93 a form 

of passive resistance. It is important to stress here how two Caribbean 

Indian scholars draw analogies about “jokes” or games being played 

on the Spaniards with obvious implications that the practice of cannibalism 

was far-fetched, and that the people really just wanted to be 

left alone. This scenario is not unlike other fanciful narratives such 

as Bernal Diaz’s characterization of the Mexica diet of arms and legs 

mixed in with “a sauce of peppers and tomatoes.” 94 Remarkably, a 

common thread of the cannibal myth relates to recurring themes of

38 


resistance and instilling fear in Europeans, along with satisfying their 

expectations. Regarding the charge of Mexica “cannibalism,” Obeyesekere 

notes how the Mexica really used it as a political tool against 

the colonizer: 

I do not think that this statement of Bernal Diaz can be taken as proof 

of Aztec “cannibalism,” i.e., indiscriminate anthropophagy. The Spaniards, 

like some modern scholars, thought that the Aztecs ate human 

flesh as a food substitute. The Spaniards constantly expressed their 

fear and revulsion for human sacrifice and cannibalism, and the Aztecs 

exploited this by taunting them and saying that if they were captured 

they would be sacrificed and eaten. In the scenario quoted by Todorov, 

they ate the Spaniards with tomatoes and pepper or put them in their 

wild beast houses (or pretended to perform these actions by miming 

them) as a technique of humiliating and frightening the Spaniards. One 

cannot infer from this scenario that the Aztecs were “cannibals”; rather, 

they put their ritual cannibalism to new uses in the context of their 

conflict with Cortés and his men. 95 

Divide and conquer tactics deflected the consistently intense resistance 

to European colonialism in the Antilles making the violence 

look one sided. Degrees of resistance are how lands and peoples 

invariably came to be labeled as “cannibal.” Some who resisted were 

demonized, like the prominent Carib cacike Caonabó, similar to how 

Saddam Hussein was portrayed as a beast after his capture. While 

indigenous Caribbean peoples were a people of peace, they rightfully 

defended themselves at all costs. There were two important events 

that occurred early on in Kiskeya or Quisqueya (today Haití and the 

Dominican Republic) that exemplifies this. When Columbus returned 

on his second voyage in 1493, he found the 39 men left behind at 

“La Navidad” on his first voyage had all been killed. According to 

Las Casas, the men began to quarrel and fight among themselves. 

They “took women from their husbands and daughters from their 

parents, and they individually bartered for gold among themselves.” 

Caonabó was joined by others against the Christians who were then 

“separated in the country where they were killed for their offenses 

and evil doing.” 96 When Columbus returned, the Indian people began 

referring to the names of the dead Spaniards. His surprise was “very 

great” when he realized that the indigenous peoples were referring 

to themselves by the names of the dead, mimicking them and speaking 

Spanish. 97 Lamourt-Valentín points out that the Carib use of the 

Spanish names meant the two groups had gone through the native


ceremony called guatiao (the exchanging of names). He said, “We’re 

still doing that . . . everybody here [in Lares and other regions] has 

foreign names, the names of dead foreigners. In our own communities 

we have our own names . . . ‘Lamourt,’ for example, is the name of a 

dead foreigner.” 98 

The other event that took place concerned the cacike Guarocuya’s 

(Enriquillo) 14-year war against the Spanish Crown. After the rape 

of his wife by his encomendero and futile attempts at seeking justice 

in Spanish courts for other crimes committed, Enriquillo took to 

the mountains and “nearly paralyzed” the island because he and his 

many warriors could not be defeated. 99 Commerce, too, was heavily 

affected. Enriquillo and his people won that war, negotiating directly 

with a representative of King Charles V, which “resulted in capitulations 

that constitute the first treaty between a European power 

and an American indigenous people,” 100 signed in 1533. Thus, it 

should be emphasized that at least one segment of the population 

of Kiskeya was alive and well at this date. There were, in fact, other 

treaties made before this time in Borikén, such as the peace treaty 

entered into by the cacike Agüeybana and Juan Ponce de Leon in 

1508. However, as Nogueras-Vidal stresses, Spain consistently violated 

these agreements and has masked this history: “They do not 

speak of the times when our people met in peace because our people 

were people of peace, and how many treaties were broken. They 

do not speak about the treaties that were written just like with the 

North American Indians. We had treaties with these people. They 

broke our treaties! There is documentation that verifies this. We had 

treaties written in Spanish language. Our cacikes, our leaders, signed. 

They [the Spaniards] broke all the treaties just like the North American 

government.” 101 

It was actually on Columbus’s second voyage when the belief 

in native cannibalism became solidified as highlighted in the 1494 

report by the physician Diego Álvarez-Chanca. What he wrote for 

the municipality of Seville has been considered the principal account 

of the events that took place on the second voyage. 102 Continuing 

where Columbus left off, Chanca proceeds to sketch a familiar story 

of the peaceful Indians he meets with the “ferocious man-eaters” he 

has heard about. The indigenous funerary custom of suspending the 

bones of the dead in houses or from trees was a sure sign of anthropophagy. 

When some Spaniards got lost on Guadeloupe, he surmised 

they had surely been “eaten” and was surprised and “rejoiced” when 

they returned. 103 The slaughterhouse engravings in a book (1621) 

by Austrian Benedictine monk Caspar Plautius, Insulae canibalium

40 


(The Islands of the Cannibals) and “A cannibal feast” (similar to the 

engraving in Figure 2.2), strongly reinforced the imagery of cannibalism 

juxtaposed to the mission of Christian evangelization as described 

in his text. 104 This was another way such ideas and perceptions were 

projected and came to be unquestionably assumed as truth. 

Figure 2.2 Seventeenth century image of “cannibalism” on the island of Kiskeya 

(Española).


With all the rich varieties of fruit, vegetables, and fish then available 

in the Caribbean, it is really a wonder how cannibalism as 

a “food substitute” or “staple” could have been exalted on such 

a grand scale. Former Carib cacike Irvince Auguiste of Dominica 

elaborates on the myth. He explains how in war, a piece of the 

enemy’s flesh might symbolically be eaten, but in terms of human 

meat consumed as a staple food, the charge of cannibalism against 

his people is “a very wicked lie. . . . It goes back to the Spaniards, 

to the English. Columbus came to the new world looking 

for gold . . . he met the people inhabiting these islands and tried to 

enslave them. And the Carib people had enjoyed centuries of freedom, 

making their cassava bread and catching fish. Naturally they 

would retaliate against anyone trying to enslave them.” 105 In The 

Man-Eating Myth, W. Arens concluded his analysis of Caribbean 

anthropophagy by writing, “there is little reason to assume that the 

very aborigines whose name now means man-eaters actually were 

so.” 106 Consequently, the many dictionaries and encyclopedias that 

still refer to the “Carib” and “cannibal” interchangeably do a great 

disservice in continuing to mock a people still present in much of 

the region today. 

Lastly, the renowned Cuban scholar Roberto Fernández-Retamar’s 

analysis of the making of the cannibal corresponds to the right wing 

of the bourgeoisie of the time and solidifies our point as to “the 

typically degraded vision offered by the colonizer of the man he is 

colonizing.” 107 Though two sides of the same political coin, this 

view contrasted with the left wing bourgeois vision of the Americas 

as depicted in Thomas More’s Utopia. These competing ideologies 

informed Columbus’s thought: the indigenous peoples were at first 

seen as no less than angels but soon after came to be despised. For 

Fernández-Retamar, the European invention of cannibalism in the 

Antilles was essentially political: “That the Caribs were as Columbus 

(and, after him, an unending throng of followers) depicted them is 

about as probabl[e] as the existence of one-eyed men, men with dog 

muzzles or tails, or even the Amazons mentioned by the explorer in 

pages where Greco-Roman mythology, the medieval bestiary, and the 

novel of chivalry all play their part.” 108 As it turns out, the ideological 

creation of the cannibal was largely a reflection of the European 

self, the flipside of the “Enlightenment” in the Herodotian tradition. 

Indigenous resistance was a byproduct of this illusionary and preconceived 

thought. Most importantly, though, its dehumanizing motive 

would allow for unspeakable crimes committed against indigenous 

peoples worldwide.

42 


The Myth of Caribbean Extinction 

While some will undoubtedly continue to believe in and uphold the 

myths touched upon previously, to others they may seem to quite obviously 

be inventions. If this is the case, then the myth of the extinction 

of certain indigenous populations would be an invention too. Extinction 

and near extinction myths neatly overlap into the body of European 

ideas and stories meant to marginalize and dismiss indigenous 

peoples of any meaningful relevance or as no longer a living reality. 

Marginalization, as through low population counts, and erasure could 

also correspond to the presumed inability of native populations to 

improvise or rationalize techniques for survival. Likewise, indigenous 

peoples were and are often made to feel invisible within mainstream 

society and have pretty much been romanticized as a thing of the past. 

These beliefs are deeply instilled in the subconscious and difficult to 

dispel. James Wilson sums up the Amerindian experience: 

Why have these ideas about Native Americans—positive and negative— 

proved so difficult to dislodge? Partly, it is that they have very deep 

roots, reaching back to the first European attempts to make sense of the 

“New World” and its inhabitants in the period immediately following 

“discovery.” What unites them is the central belief that “the Indian” 

belongs essentially to the past rather than to the present. He (or she) is 

an exotic relic of some earlier stage that we have already passed through: 

either—depending on your point of view—a kind of primitive anarchy 

that we have overcome (in nature, in ourselves) or an innocent Golden 

Age that we have forfeited through greed and destructiveness. 109 

While the current plight of indigenous populations is a relatively 

dismal one from a mainstream societal view, there has been a considerable 

and vibrant indigenous resurgence in recent decades, and many 

native groups have lived on, reaffirmed themselves, and have been 

acknowledged as a people. However, one group that has been for all 

posterity relegated to the annals of the long distant past is the very 

people who greeted the Europeans on that memorable first voyage. 

The basic assumption is that since so many indigenous Caribbean peoples 

were killed off, then they “must have” inevitably become extinct, 

or nearly so. The key question to ask now is, were these inhabitants 

in fact extinguished, or did they actually survive? And if they did survive, 

how? It might seem surreal to some to think that they could 

have possibly survived the encounter. It’s as if this acknowledgment 

might put an uneasy damper on one of the said greatest feats of Western 

civilization, possibly adding unnecessary complications. It might


even throw into question the whole moral and legal framework of the 

imperial project to begin with. Imagine those who just about every 

historian has pitifully deemed as “extinct” coming back to speak about 

the experience and giving their take on the matter. This is phenomenal 

and those who might dare to make the attempt to lend clarity to 

this historicity are usually trivialized in the process. However, since 

indigenous Caribbean peoples have continued and reaffirmed their 

presence as a people, too, this issue is of great importance to them, 

and others, and requires some elaboration. 

It would first be pertinent to mention what “extinction” and its 

correlation to “survival” can mean. In his extensive study on the 

effects of intercultural contact, Bernard Hörmann pointed out that 

numerical growth and decay of native populations due to European 

cultural contact is “essentially a study of the extinction or survival 

of native peoples involved in the Europeanization of the world.” 110 

Writing in the mid-twentieth century, he noted the conflict between 

competing theories back then when some writers viewed extinction as 

“the fundamental process,” and others saw it in terms of the overall 

increase of non-European populations during the modern era. Hörmann 

attempts to resolve the theoretical problem arising out of these 

contradictions “with a unifying hypothesis in the light of which the 

diversities can be explained and the conflicts resolved.” 111 He poses 

some important questions that are relevant to this study: “What are 

the chances for survival, the Lebenschancen as the Germans would 

say, of native populations as they confront European invaders? Under 

what conditions does extinction take place, and under what conditions 

does the native population survive, either as a pure or a mixed 

group?” 112 He utilizes a combination of two rather distinct academic 

disciplines of the time, the then well-established demography or population 

studies and the newer field of race and “culture contacts.” 113 

His evaluation of the data and what is generally agreed upon by late 

twentieth-century scholars is that early estimates of non-European 

populations were inaccurate and often highly flawed. According to 

Hörmann, “We have seen that these data are in general very unreliable, 

more so for large than for specific small areas and for early 

dates than for recent dates; that they are often based, even today, on 

invalid or at least questionable assumptions which necessarily lead to 

invalid conclusions; that they seldom are adequate in detail, length 

of the series, amount of supplementary statistical information available, 

and amount of supplementary descriptive information available 

about environment, pre-contact culture, and the history of culture 

contact.” 114

44 


In Borikén, as in the rest of the northern Antilles, it is widely 

believed that the indigenous population was wiped out by the midsixteenth 

century. Our principal authority for this determination is 

Bartolomé de Las Casas, who Carl Sauer says “felt an obligation to 

keep the record straight for posterity,” and there was no one more 

interested in the Indian people or “knew their ways so well.” 115 Las 

Casas was definitely interested in the general population and a tireless 

rights defender, but, in his classic text The Devastation of the Indies, 

he declared for all intents and purposes the native population to be 

essentially no more. Of the islands of “San Juan” (Puerto Rico) and 

Jamaica he wrote, “Before the arrival of the Spaniards there had lived 

on these islands more than six hundred thousand souls, it has been 

stated. I believe there were more than one million inhabitants, and 

now, in each of the two islands, there are no more than two hundred 

persons, all the others having perished without the Faith and without 

the holy sacraments.” 116 

In examining this two-hundred-person figure for Puerto Rico, Hörmann’s 

assessment of questionable assumptions and invalid conclusions 

come to be defining moments in historiography. Las Casas’s blanket 

estimate of the destruction of the island population was likely inferred 

from the abuses that had taken place in Kiskeya. He surmised in the 

early 1550s that the population there, which he originally estimated to 

be over three million, had dropped to “barely two hundred persons.” 117 

This is an astounding population drop for a relatively large island. For 

Borikén, Las Casas certainly did not conduct a viable study based on 

the available data as he presented no evidence to validate his claim. He 

further did not evaluate the environmental and cultural conditions of 

the island, nor consult with the “remaining” indigenous peoples, this 

latter point being rather mute as the native was rarely if ever consulted 

with anyway. This goes to show how this voice or aspect of the colonial 

process was effectively silenced from the periphery, the assumption 

that the European was the authority when it came to such matters. We 

can gradually see how broad generalizations from respected figures like 

Las Casas came to be unquestionably passed down over the centuries a 

priori. Thus, by the twentieth century, Sven Lovén confidently stated 

that the people of the region “long ago became extinct.” 118 The well 

regarded Puerto Rican scholar Manuel Maldonado-Denis wrote this 

about Borikén: “The extinction of the natives around the middle of the 

sixteenth century made the introduction of a new type of labor—that of 

black slaves—indispensable.” 119 Federico Ribes-Tovar noted the indigenous 

population there had “practically vanished” by the end of the 

sixteenth century. 120 Irving Rouse has remarked that in the absence of


native survivors, “archeologists have had to assume sole responsibility 

for investigating the cultural ancestry” of the indigenous peoples of the 

northern Antilles. 121 

The supposed extinction of the inhabitants of Kiskeya is a myth 

in itself as there are still people on the island today (specifically in the 

Dominican Republic) who strongly identify with their indigenous heritage. 

On a trip I made there in 1999, I met a fairly large Indian extended 

family living in the far eastern province of Higüey. In my conversations 

with them, the people seemed to be quite aware of the colonial history 

to the point where one village elder was still cursing the Spaniards! 

The increasing number of indigenous Caribbean narratives being told 

contemporarily are not unlike the following passage by Jorge Estevez, a 

native person from the Dominican Republic: 

Many of us who, today, identify with the indigenous part of our multiethnic 

heritage, heard stories about a grandmother or other family 

member who was “a real Indian.” Some of us—like me—were told 

outright that we descend from indios. I became curious and began to 

look deeper into my history. Much to my dismay, I found notable contradictions 

between my family’s oral histories and the “official” history 

taught in schools and national museums. Most scholars claim that 

indios in the Spanish Antilles have long been extinct. I and the others 

with whom I began to compare notes discovered, however, that there 

were crucial inconsistencies in the extinction stories, so we began to 

investigate them. Among the inconsistencies we found in a multitude 

of books were the claims that the Taino burned their crops and ran off 

into the mountains in their desperate effort to escape Spanish domination. 

Supposedly the ploy backfired on them, because they were said 

to have starved to death in those mountains they had called home for 

thousands of years. Yet the African slaves who escaped into those very 

same mountains, terrain that was totally unfamiliar to them, survived 

in the thousands. 

The above is just one example of the senseless contradictions we 

have found. The more we research our history and the more we question 

our elders, the more perceptive we become. We know that the 

true story of our ancestors has not yet been told, but some scholars 

are finally beginning to ask the same questions that we have been 

asking, have finally begun to revise the inconsistencies and errors of 

the past. 122 

Historically, Enriquillo acquired a considerable amount of land 

in the treaty he signed with the Spaniards. Writing in 1907, Fewkes 

referred to this when noting that he was “never subdued” and

46 


“the descendants of the early natives still live” there. 123 Early on, the 

Europeans were a clear minority in the rural regions of “Hispaniola” 

(Kiskeya). 124 Referring to this, Lynne Guitar demonstrates that 

it was “throughout the first half of the sixteenth century—a period 

of relative stability compared to the conquest, which was continuing 

elsewhere—that important patterns for daily living among Indians, 

Africans, Spaniards and mixed blood peoples were forged.” 125 Indigenous 

survival took place within a synthesized cultural context. The 

census category “mestizos” was first recorded in the 1580s, 126 proving 

that the indigenous element of society was present beyond midcentury. 

Indeed, writing about the island in 1586, Fray Juan González de 

Mendoza remarked that “most [residents] are mestizos, sons of indias 

and Spaniards, or negroes.” 127 So regardless of “blood quantum,” 

the indigenous peoples of Kiskeya survived well beyond the period of 

their supposed demise. 

In addition, there has been a considerable indigenous survival in 

Cuba. Cuban Indian or guajiro resistance to the Spanish has been 

epitomized in the well-known story of the cacike Hatuey, a national 

hero. After being captured and sentenced to be burnt at the stake, 

he refused the offer of a Catholic priest to be baptized and become a 

Christian. This was after he was told that baptized Spaniards went to 

“heaven.” Hatuey therefore replied that he preferred to go to “hell!” 

rather than to go where Spaniards went. Numerous families on the 

eastern side of Cuba still practice their native culture. In the mountain 

village of Caridad de los Indios overlooking Guantánamo approximately 

350 Indian descendants remain. Describing the survival of 

his people, cacike Panchito Ramirez points out, “[Our] survival is 

evidence of persistent indigenous resistance to invasion, conquest, colonization, 

and assimilation. It is evidence that assimilation cuts both 

ways—that our colonizers also learned much from us.” 128 According 

to Barreiro, whose own indigenous roots are from a neighboring 

province called Camagüey, there are hundreds or “perhaps a thousand 

or more” native descendants in the mountain areas of Guantánamo- 

Baracoa. 129 They survived, in good part, due to the remoteness of 

the region and isolation from outside influences. Through academic 

research, both past and present, and the oral tradition passed down in 

native families, Barreiro has documented this part of Cuban guajiro 

continuity. In wanting to reveal his people’s survival and to retain 

their identity for future generations, elder Ramirez states, 

I want my folks to recognize who they are, some more and some 

less but all native people from here. It’s true we have marriages with


different people, but the root remains here, so they can keep on loving 

the mountain, loving the forest, loving that wonderful nature we 

have, because the mountain is the real thing, everything comes from 

here. And we, the mountain guajiro, have our value. I have my community. 

It is not a developed one, but humble, yet we live as the fingers 

in a hand, together. We are not all the same, but we are all equal 

because of the blood that runs within us. 130 

Las Casas was, of course, not the first to write the indigenous population 

out of the history books. Extinction had been determined by 

some a generation before. This may have influenced Las Casas’s work. 

According to Sauer, both the Licenciado Zuazo and Gil González- 

Dávila calculated in separate evaluations that the Indian population in 

Hispaniola had essentially disappeared by the 1520s. 131 The dilemma, 

again, is how this assessment is applied to other lands, but this time 

in a more contemporary light. Sauer utilizes these surveys in noting 

that “the end of the natives” was “apparently true also for Jamaica and 

Puerto Rico, and mainly as well for Cuba.” 132 The main word here is 

“apparently” because, despite mentioning an “occasional remnant” 

of survival in mountain refuges, he does not provide a bit of evidence 

for extinction in these islands but merely assumes it to have happened 

based on accounts from another island. Thus he undoubtedly concludes, 

“In less than twenty years from the founding of Isabela the 

impending extinction of the natives was apparent and in another ten 

it had occurred.” 133 Well there we have it, a definitive narrative to 

influence students, the general public, and for scholars to continue 

to quote on and on. Sauer seems so sure of his assessment that there 

is almost nothing left to say. Las Casas has been further criticized by 

some for presumably exaggerating his pre-contact population figures 

to make the destruction look as brutal as possible. He may have done 

this to booster his case for benevolently spreading the word of Christ. 

Regardless of the numbers, he does appear to have unwittingly erased 

from history those he was attempting to “save.” 

It is now important to point out that most scholars who have historically 

proclaimed indigenous Caribbean “extinction,” or near extinction, 

have not explained what they mean by the term. As touched upon earlier, 

it does appear to be largely a biological swipe as in the survival of 

only those of primarily “pure descent.” How many times have indigenous 

peoples entertained such comments like, “But you don’t look 

‘full blooded,’” or “You’re not the Indian I had in mind,” 134 minimizing 

them based on the idea of “blood quantum” or their physical look. 

This type of thought has been historically articulated and influential

48 


both academically and on mainstream society. In Darwinian terms of 

intercultural contact, species extinction of native peoples is attributed 

to the biologically dominant race, or “modern civilised nations,” with 

virtually no room for “mixed blooded” indigenous cultural adaptation 

and survival. 135 George Pitt-Rivers cites Franz Boas’s calculations 

of the lessening degrees of “pure descent” from interracial mixing 

over a number of generations. This factor is one of the ways “one race 

may extinguish another.” 136 Likewise, Ángel Rosenblat’s indigenous 

population decline for the “West Indies” has also been attributed to 

“racial mixture” and assimilation. 137 Rouse too infers this same type of 

extinction for the present-day northern Antilles when he writes that 

although persons claiming an indigenous ancestry “have survived” in 

these islands, the Indian people “themselves” are extinct. 138 This statement 

is a contradiction because if the people of the past are “extinct,” 

how could their descendants have possibly survived as he adheres to? 

While “some traces” may have been left behind, for Rouse the “real” 

people no longer exist. He severs both the physical and cultural links 

by freezing or romanticizing the image of the original people into the 

distant past simultaneously discarding a viable contemporary presence. 

If we therefore use the aforementioned formula of biological extinction 

in defining a people, then the large number of indigenous peoples 

asserting a lineal ancestry worldwide today would inevitably be considered 

extinct, since most are multiethnic. Many simply cannot accept 

one’s right to self-identification and desire to remain connected to their 

native cultural heritage regardless of blood quantum. 

On the other hand, Hörmann defined extinction by allowing for 

“mixed blood” survival as a result of intercultural colonial contact and 

examined the process of how a people adapt and change over time. He 

asked the question, “Can a race, when threatened with extinction by 

contact, be saved only through the growth of a mixed-blood population?” 

139 He specifically provided evidence of this type of survival 

for Native Hawaiian, Maori, and certain American Indian groups, 

although “full blooded” people were still present within these societies. 

Likewise, Amerindian population estimates in H. J. Spinden’s 

1928 study always made allowance for “mixed bloods at proportionate 

value.” He calculated at that time a “conservative minimum” of 

26 million Indian inhabitants throughout the hemisphere, and two 

hundred thousand for the West Indies. 140 While Hörmann does document 

degrees of assimilation into the dominant Euroamerican culture 

up until the time of his writing, indigenous groups and peoples were 

forced in some important ways to therefore go “underground” (e.g., 

in terms of speaking their own languages that had often been banned


or by practicing forms of spiritual healing or medicinal use seen as 

“taboo”). Subsequently, as highlighted by the large number of ethnic 

claims and conflicts, the assimilationist model of the first half 

of the twentieth century collapsed, both internationally and within 

the United States, from the post–World War II decolonization and 

civil rights era into the 1990s. 141 Many “mixed blooded” indigenous 

peoples clearly survived the colonial process and still maintain an 

indigenous identity, while many of their cultural traditions had either 

continued to be practiced, have been recovered, or are in the process 

of recovery. Here is where culture has been shown to be mutable, 

opposed to biology that has come to be seen as largely static. 142 It 

changes and adapts over time and is fundamental in relation to human 

survival. This point is crucial in terms of Jíbaro survival and continuity 

in Borikén as brought out in the coming chapters. 

We can see clearer now how the Caribbean extinction myth parallels 

Deloria’s comment about the acceptance of the mythical Bering Strait 

theory by merely referring to it. Most scholars have simply reinforced 

what they have previously learned. Like Estevez, I have ironically found 

in my research on Borikén many contradictions to extinction all along 

the way. For instance, the governor reported that by 1582 “not one 

Boriqueño remained on the Island.” 143 But four years later, the bishop 

declared the Indian people to be “ill-concealed heathens” falling back 

into idolatry. 144 There was, in fact, a tremendous amount of indigenous 

survival on the island, and throughout the rural and mountain 

regions. This is not surprising when considering that the Cordillera and 

Luquillo regions are extensive territories of mountains, caves, hills, and 

valleys. Indeed, 40 percent of Puerto Rico is covered by mountains and 

35 percent by hills. 145 A Spanish census in 1778 revealed 2,302 “pure 

blooded” (“de raza pura”) “Indians,” and 34,867 “Free Colored” 

people, or “pardos libres.” 146 As I elaborate on later, “pardos libres” were 

primarily mestizo Indian people. This was actually a considerable underestimation 

of the total number of indigenous peoples in the mountains 

because the figure for “full bloods” was taken from but one region, and 

the category “Free Colored” pertained to only those areas that had 

established towns at the time. And when 61 percent of Puertorriqueños 

are testing positive for Amerindian DNA today (taken from the 

female line only), something strange appears to have happened that just 

doesn’t quite equate with the official version of history.

50 


Conclusion 

The myths examined in this chapter fall right in line with the contradictions 

to the extinction theory. Though not immune to contradiction 

myself, the myths, beliefs, rationalizations, and portrayals of 

the indigenous “Other” were really falsehoods sustained as “truths” 

through Western representations of power. Power politics and brute 

force, grounded in largely baseless laws and doctrines, were the ultimate 

tools used to sustain these representations and a Eurocentric 

ideology. As Williams noted, “In Western colonizing discourse, the 

thin veneer of law and legal argumentation does not obscure so much 

as add value to what otherwise might be regarded as an underlying 

baseless substance.” 147 There was a clear pattern of mythmaking created 

and relied upon by early colonists and scholars. The inventions of 

European apotheoses, discovery, and native cannibalism are examples 

to show that the thought of indigenous Caribbean extinction is also 

far-fetched. Nonetheless, these myths are still viably projected within 

the academy and onto the contemporary public eye. But as all peoples 

and cultures adapt and change over time, this was no exception for 

the Carib. Despite fictions that widely deviate from fact, the people 

are still there and many do know who they are. Let’s now see how the 

Jíbaro resisted and survived the Spanish incursion early on.

Chapter 3 

Early Resistance and 

Survival in Borikén 

A man may not know that he is Indian. A man may know and may 

not admit he is Indian. “But it does not matter. The ignorance of 

your father and mother does not change who you are,” he said. “No 

matter what a Puertorriqueño decided he is, it already has been 

decided for him.” 1 

The Spanish chroniclers who originally erased the indigenous peoples 

of the Caribbean off the map had forgotten to do one important 

thing along the way. They forgot to ask the people concerned what 

they thought about “their extinction.” If they had asked, they would 

have likely been ridiculed in the process. This is the way it would have 

been on the island of Borikén, since everyone had agreed with this history 

except the Indian people themselves. Borikén was an indigenous 

stronghold of the Antillean chain long before the European arrival. 

The southwestern coast, known as Baneke, or the “territory of the 

sea iguana,” was the nucleus of the Carib hegemony led by the cacike 

Agüeybana. 2 “This was the nucleus of the empire,” said Lamourt- 

Valentín. “We were a great empire.” Loida Figueroa-Mercado writes 

that the indigenous culture “reached its zenith in Boriquén.” 3 The 

island further comprised the northwestern territory called Caniba, 

or the “lizard,” 4 from where the creation of the “canibal” came to 

be derived for the Carib or Jíbaro people living there. They fiercely 

resisted the Spanish encroachment so that cultural and oral traditions 

survived, have been passed down for generations, and are still preserved 

today. Cognizant of the indigenous influence and legacy in 

the 1970s, Steiner wrote, “Of all the islands in the Caribbean the

52 


influence of the Indians has been the strongest and most lasting in 

Borinquén. In the traditional words and music, dishes, and dances. 

And some say the ways of the Indians are visible in the easygoing way 

people look at the earth, the life of the family, and the life of the spirits 

of the dead.” 5 

This chapter takes a look at the sixteenth-century indigenous 

resistance to Spanish colonialism in Borikén. By examining some of 

the oral and written history and traditions passed down, we can better 

understand the long-term process of indigenous survival. As the 

dominant scholarly view had effectively suppressed the indigenous 

voice and presence over the centuries, the words and works of late 

twentieth-century writers like Steiner, Lamourt-Valentín, and Arroyo 

present a refreshing and very different perspective of the sociocultural 

development on the island. Steiner actually goes to the mountain 

regions to record the legends and stories of the Jíbaro, and Lamourt- 

Valentín does not tell the story as an outsider, but as one who lived 

the culture and language of a region where the Indian words are still 

used. Steiner records the words of an old man born on a mountain 

from one of the oldest and most respected families in his village: “‘In 

the Institutes they do not know this history of the Indians,’ the storyteller 

said. ‘Who knows the history of the Indians? No one knows but 

the Indians.’ As long as the Indians lived, history was a living thing. 

He did not need books to know these things.” 6 And Arroyo pointed 

out that for hundreds of years “it was thought that the Boricua Indians 

were extinct. But it was not so. The[y] believed in their own way 

of independence and paid little attention to the outside world. They 

were content to live poorly but free. However, each time their freedom 

was threatened, they would resist.” 7 

What we find is that the sixteenth-century Indian population was 

not at all extinguished. Despite the changes and hardship, the indigenous 

peoples persisted in retaining a sense of pride and dignity in 

their lives. Although the colonization and slavery process developed 

uniquely on each of the Caribbean islands, there are important parallels 

regarding resistance and cultural survival in Borikén that can 

be drawn from particularly the neighboring indigenous stronghold of 

Kiskeya. Guitar’s work on the cultural genesis among Indians, Africans, 

and Spaniards in rural Hispaniola is helpful to us in this regard. 

Contrary to common thought, things there did not happen overnight 

and the indigenous population did not become extinct. Although 

Sherburne Cook and Woodrow Borah have written that “all scholars” 

agree the indigenous peoples of the island became “extinct” shortly 

after contact, 8 some scholars, at least in more recent times, do not

Early Resistance and Survival in Borikén 53 

agree with this assertion. “The island did lose much of its indigenous 

population—but not all of it,” writes Guitar, “as well as much of its 

Spanish population—but not all of it.” 9 While introduced diseases did 

devastate the population, she points out that the effects of epidemics 

were often exaggerated by the colonizers in order to secure positions, 

favors, and grants from the Crown: “It would not have been beneficial 

for the officials and encomenderos on Hispaniola to give an accurate 

count of the Indian workers who remained under their control or to 

admit how many had fled to regions outside their control; therefore, 

the documents exaggerate the effects of the epidemics and report that 

‘less than one-third’ of the Indians survived, or ‘less than one-fourth,’ 

or ‘few,’ ‘an insufficient number,’ or even, in several cases, ‘none.’” 10 

Here, the Indian numbers are deflated or minimized in terms of status 

and primarily in an economic context. 

War and Resistance 

Ever since the time Europeans first set foot onto indigenous soil in the 

Americas, degrees of animosity and conflict took shape in one form or 

another and on both sides of the spectrum. In such a clash of cultures, 

there would inevitably be for those whose lands were encroached 

upon an equal reaction or degree of resistance set into place. Resistance 

can manifest itself in many ways and is usually political. Political 

resistance can be either passive or active. Selwyn Cudjoe writes that 

active resistance involves “open revolts and rebellions,” while passive 

resistance can include “suicide, voluntary abortion, poisoning masters 

and sabotaging crops.” 11 In his in-depth study of Indian and African 

forms of resistance in Caribbean literature, Cudjoe defines resistance 

as “any act or complex of acts designed to rid a people of its oppressors, 

be they slave masters or multinational corporations.” 12 Resistance 

to European imperialism in the Antilles was essentially about 

human and cultural survival, but further concerned the maintenance 

of one’s dignity, spirit, and sense of equilibrium: “The corresponding 

resistance on the part of the Indians and the Africans in the New 

World was the necessary corrective to that expansion and dehumanization, 

one action bringing an equal and opposite reaction in order 

to retain equilibrium. Resistance, then, was the reaction needed to 

maintain the equilibrium, to preserve human dignity, and to ennoble 

the human spirit.” 13 

Resistance in Borikén took on both active and passive forms. The 

early war and rebellions were more formal organized campaigns to 

oust or injure the Spaniards, actions that gained attention all the way

54 


up to influencing the policies of the Crown. The passive or everyday 

forms of resistance that occurred in the 1500s, such as establishing 

kinship relations, fleeing, hiding, suicide, and avoiding census takers, 

overlapped with the active forms. While these types of less organized 

forms of resistance “make no headlines,” they can be powerful and 

effective and in the end may “make an utter shambles of the policies 

dreamed up by their would-be superiors in the capital.” 14 Passive resistance 

was also primarily practiced in rural and mountain regions of 

the island from the seventeenth to late eighteenth centuries, a period 

essentially void of an Indian presence in the literature of the time, 

when an ethnical transformation takes place in an indigenous cultural 

context. This period is explored in the next chapter. It was the tremendous 

amount of resistance in the sixteenth century that paved the 

way for this continuum. 

Columbus first landed along the western coast of Borikén on his 

second voyage in November 1493 and christened the island “San Juan 

Bautista,” supposedly taking possession of it. Although he may not 

have actually stepped ashore, it is said the inhabitants had so ignored 

him as mentioned earlier. This rebuff could be seen as one of the first 

acts of resistance to the Spanish arrival, a rejection of the idea that the 

admiral had somehow “discovered” the island, since the indigenous 

presence had been well established. When Ponce de Leon arrived in 

1508 to begin the formal colonization of Borikén the principal cacike, 

Agüeybana (the Elder), who was well aware of Columbus’s arms and 

exploits in Kiskeya, prepared to accommodate him on his arrival. In 

the beginning, the two leaders entered into a “treaty of friendship 

and alliance.” 15 This treaty was accomplished through the traditional 

Indian areito called guatiao, or the exchanging of names or mixing 

of blood in order to establish kinship relations, peace, and friendship. 

In order to make peace, Agüeybana opted to transform the Spaniards 

symbolically and physically into kinspeople, just like the Iroquois 

had done since ancient times and attempted to do with the Dutch 

and French settlers in Iroquoia. 16 The Spaniards did not assimilate the 

indigenous peoples in Borikén. They did not and could not. While 

many never came into contact with the colonizer until much later, 

it was actually the opposite transformational process where Indian 

women often bore the brunt of Spanish impetuosity so that the children 

would survive and live on. Our grandmothers and grandfathers 

“blessed the alignment of the Spanish blood with the Indian blood 

in order for the children to survive . . . in order [that] the seed that 

the woman carried would not be eliminated,” explains Nogueras- 

Vidal. 17 This form of passive resistance was also the standard response


in Kiskeya: “Instead of fighting, the standard reaction of the Taínos 

to their early encounters with Spaniards included attempts to adopt 

Spaniards into their cacicazgos [territory of a cacike or chiefdom] and 

to recognize their leaders as caciques in their own right. The Taínos’ 

aim appears to have been to join with the Spaniards in reciprocal kinship 

and trade relations, as they would have done with a powerful 

Indian group.” 18 This was the aim of Agüeybana: “Agueybana, the 

great chief of Guaynia, had news of the devastation of the Tainos of 

Hispaniola. The historian Fernandez de Oviedo affirmed that in order 

to avoid such a fate in Puerto Rico, Agueybana opted to be a guatiao 

or bloodbrother, with Ponce de León. He agreed to make conucos to 

provide cassava bread to the Spaniards and instructed his subchiefs to 

assist the colonizers.” 19 

Agüeybana agreed to allow Ponce de Leon to set up a settlement 

of his choice on the island. This resulted in the founding of Caparra 

on the northern coast next to the bay that came to be known as 

“Puerto Rico,” or “Rich Port.” As designated by the name, Ponce 

de Leon chose the area because it was found to be abundant in 

gold. The Indian cacikes had provided naborías (a class of workers) 

to assist in its search in the northern rivers of Bayamón, Cebuco, 

Cayniabón, and Manatoabón. 20 However the naborías kept fleeing 

from the mines, which soon after resulted in the implementation of 

the encomienda system to attempt to force them to work. 21 Paradoxically, 

even though the Indian leaders were contributing to their own 

colonization, “these concessions do not signify that he [Agüeybana] 

was ceding any sovereign rights to the Spaniards.” 22 The use of the 

guatiao meant the cacical system became secularized by the cacikes, 

and thus was not destroyed as it had been in Santo Domingo. 23 “The 

cacical system persisted here. It was changed. It was secularized. 

Instead of cacikes, you had a lot of economic arbitrators. You had 

large landowners, large properties producing and exporting. This 

was always an exportation economy,” points out Lamourt-Valentín. 24 

Agüeybana knew of Spanish intentions so he attempted to mitigate 

or “buy time” in order to lessen the impact of the colonial process. 

Thus, it makes more sense to view these initial events in Borikén as 

tactical long-term survival strategies. 

At the same time, an active rebellion was brewing. The exploitation 

of labor and gold for profit was completely incomprehensible to the 

Jíbaro, who had only utilized the mineral for ornamental purposes. 25 

They resented their own labor being used to enrich the Spaniards and 

deprive themselves of their cultural ways and customs:

56 


What they would not tolerate was that their own labor had to put the 

gold in the hands of the invaders. These realities and the belief of the 

natives that they could not have intercourse with their wives while working 

the mines, prolonged by many days when carried out by the Spaniards, 

began to create in the landowners a growing resistance to the 

demands of the invaders, in spite of the agreement with the Caciques, 

who were becoming more and more reluctant to lend laborers. 

The meaningless work in the mines; the insist[e]nce on the abandonment 

of their customs, such as the bathing and nudity; the changing 

of their diet of yuca derivatives for others requiring less time in 

preparation; the impeding of the celebration of the areytos and the 

missionary spirit of those who arrived as guests and now were converted 

into lords, began the slow incubation of the desire and the duty 

to throw off the yoke. 26 

The implementation of the encomienda led directly to the Indian 

war of 1511. After the death of Agüeybana, his nephew, Agüeybana 

(the Brave), led an uprising and destroyed the Spanish settlement at 

Guánica. This led to more battles. Of the initial rebellion, Francisco 

Moscoso writes, “More than 350 Spanish settlers were reported to 

have been killed in the towns or scattered in the haciendas in the 

countryside.” The war was meant to free the land from “foreign domination 

and exploitation.” 27 According to Juan Angel Silén, “When 

the Indians began to protest, it was against a violence imposed by 

forced labor, against a religion which threatened their whole world, 

and against a European morality which threatened their legitimate 

customs.” 28 Steiner also commented on the action: “The revolt of the 

Indians failed. Yet it was not a failure. Within a few days the Indians 

had killed ‘more than half of the Spaniards’ on the island. Led by the 

caciques Guarionex, Urayoan, and Agueybana the Brave, they burned 

not only the town of Sotomayor, but other settlements. The mines 

were halted. The battle reports of the Conquistadors boasted of no 

more than a few hundred dead Indians. Most had safely escaped.” 29 

Many fled to the mountains to survive the hard labor of the encomienda 

and the spread of diseases. 30 Since very few Jíbaro had been 

killed in the initial uprising, the battle reports referred to by Steiner 

would have been in all likelihood the recorded deaths from the subsequent 

battles at Yauco, Culebrinas Valley, and in the Yagüeça province. 

Ponce de Leon went on the offensive and had supposedly pacified the 

island after the battle at Yagüeça. In initially writing that the revolt had 

failed, perhaps Steiner was referring to the fact that the indigenous 

peoples were unable to expel the Spaniards from the island. But the 

revolt was not a failure because they had formidably challenged the


colonizer and dealt them a severe blow. While a number of prominent 

cacikes were killed, injured, or surrendered, the mountain regions, 

and other isolated regions of the island, were definitely not “pacified” 

because the colonial Spanish did not settle there, except for having 

established a royal plantation in Utuado. In any event, the war of liberation 

continued until 1516. 31 Thousands of Indian people attacked 

and destroyed Caparra. 32 When Diego Colón established a Christian 

settlement near the “rebel center” on the eastern side of the island in 

1514, it was reduced to ashes in a brutal attack before the settlement 

could be relocated. 33 There were apparently many indigenous casualties 

in coastal areas. According to Moscoso, a thousand natives were 

reportedly killed in battle and hundreds of others made captives in the 

northern region of Amanio (Loiza). 34 Indian losses were also severe 

in the eastern yucayeke (village or province) of Bieke (Vieques). Moscoso 

notes that during the war there, over five hundred warriors were 

captured and “hundreds of others killed.” Because of their supposed 

“negative” influence on the youth, many elders were also executed 

and “their bodies cut to pieces and scattered along the shore” as a 

form of intimidation. 35 

Resistance to Spanish Foreign Policy 

Unbeknownst to most, the war in Borikén had a very significant 

impact on the theological and juridical debates taking place in Spain in 

1512 and 1513. This influenced Spanish foreign policy. The first protests 

by the Spanish clergy of abuses against the indigenous peoples 

in Española and some dangerous uprisings taking place, specifically 

in “San Juan Bautista,” resulted in the issuing of the requerimiento 

in 1513. 36 This document, as previously discussed, was “an attempt 

to give theological legitimation to the papal grant of the New World 

to the Castilian sovereigns for the purpose of evangelizing it.” 37 It 

had become necessary to Spanish jurists and theologians to somehow 

require native peoples to consent to convert to Christianity. To this 

effect, Queen Isabella had issued an earlier royal decree in 1503 justifying 

the subjugation and enslavement of the Carib by authorizing 

war on them if they refused to convert. 38 Not surprisingly, the decree 

was usually read in Spanish and often from a distance. This version is 

quoted from Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés: 

I beg and require of you . . . to recognize the church as lady and superior 

of the universe and to acknowledge the Supreme Pontiff, called pope, in 

her name, and the king and queen . . . as lords and superiors . . . by virtue

58 


of said donation; and consent to have these religious fathers declare and 

preach these things to you. If you do so, you will be acting well, and 

those who are over you and to whom you owe obedience, and Their 

Highnesses and I [whosoever leads the Spanish expedition in question] 

in their name would welcome you with love and charity. 

If you do not do it . . . then with the help of God I will undertake 

powerful action against you. I will make war on you everywhere and 

in every way that I can. I will subject you to the yoke and obedience 

of the church and of Their Highnesses. I will take you personally and 

your wives and children, and make slaves of you, and as such sell you 

off . . . and I will take away your property and cause you all the evil and 

harm I can. 39 

As a result, the Indian people naturally resisted a law they believed 

to be inhumane, unjust, and a violation of their own laws and customs. 

They did not willingly consent to such a proposition where Christian 

conversion amounted to cultural genocide, or the stripping of a people’s 

will and desire to live. As indigenous peoples have asserted for 

decades within the international community, and Canadian researchers 

Mark Davis and Robert Zannis sum up succinctly, “One should 

not speak lightly of ‘cultural genocide’ as if it were a fanciful invention 

. . . The cultural mode of group extermination is genocide, a 

crime. Nor should ‘cultural genocide’ be used in the game: ‘Which is 

more horrible, to kill and torture; or remove [the prime cultural symbol 

that is] the will and reason to live?’ Both are horrible.” 40 Indeed, 

the option presented to many indigenous Caribbean peoples was 

either to be stripped of their cultural soul, or die. Many preferred the 

latter in hopelessness or as an act of defiance, which helps to explain 

the high rate of suicide among our ancestors. They obviously did not 

want to live under an abusive system like the encomienda, which was 

so antithetical to the good life they were used to. 

Moreover, while the forced conversion method of the requerimiento 

was detrimental to the population, indigenous resistance to Spanish 

colonialism has been largely ignored as a factor contributing to 

changes in Spanish policy. It is the clergy’s stance against abuses that 

has been acknowledged for policy change rather than the leading figures 

of the struggle—that is, the indigenous peoples and their wars 

and resistance versus the colonizer. Rivera explains that “Spanish 

scholars generally stress the first factor, neglecting the importance of 

native rebelliousness, especially in Boriquén. This is in line with the 

continual omission of the principal protagonist of the conquest—the 

subjugated native.” 41 It was actually the shedding of Indian blood that


was the bottom line motivation for changes in policy, which set the 

stage for the Spanish chroniclers to assume their “immortal” roles. 

Ironically, as the indigenous voice was squashed throughout the process, 

these changes often turned out to be just as criminal as to what 

they were “well intentioned” to repair. 

The history of resistance to Spanish policy also effectively debunks 

the idea of Puerto Rican “docility.” Silén examined where this concept 

originated and how it was used as a scapegoat for colonialism 

and the native “acceptance” of the colonial regime. The Puerto Rican 

intellectual elite came to use the indigenous word tara “to describe 

an inherited sickness or weakness.” 42 Somehow interracial mixing 

produced “taras,” which “deprived us of control over our destiny,” 

and so “we became ‘passive’ and submissive,” he wrote. Native rebelliousness 

has thus been minimized in the process, while the bourgeois 

leader’s lauding of docility turned out to be “no more than a wish that 

the worker and peasant be docile to them.” 43 This history has been 

reproduced in the standard literature of the island and parallels how 

myths come into being. Responding to the charge, nationalist independence 

leader Pedro Albizu Campos once said, “This is a legend 

that frightened men have used to traffic with the life of the nation. 

Our people is an heroic people. Our people is courageous.” 44 

Silén essentially concludes that it was really the colonization of Borikén 

and exploitation by foreigners that fueled the anger and lament of 

the people, rather than an exaggerated weakness not to fight back. He 

takes on Antonio Pedreira, René Marqués, and others for their failure 

to understand the concept and colonial process in general: “Some of 

the Puerto Rican historians, writers, and essayists who believe this 

have been relying on a determinism produced by theories which modern 

man, through science and technology, has discredited. Others 

have failed to explore the past for evidence of the people’s victimization 

by a leadership which, because of its class origins, allied itself 

with foreigners to maintain its privileged ‘junior partner’ position.” 45 

This latter point is looked at more later and speaks to how the criollo 

elite today continues to maintain their privileged status and interests 

under the protection of the United States. They are more than happy 

to uphold the political status quo at the hands of the discarded native. 

Origins and Mountain Survival 

In Antillean tradition, indigenous Caribbean peoples believe they 

came from the earth or from caves and have always been present. This 

belief does not necessarily run counter to the theory surrounding the

60 


lost continent of Atzantiha (or Atlantis). In Borikén, the “Caverns 

of Creation” in the mountain region of Lares are where all humans 

emerged from. 46 When the people were asked why they venerate the 

cavern, “they answered seriously and sensibly because from there 

emerged the sun and the moon that were to give light to the world.” 47 

Anthropologically speaking, the evidence to date indicates that the 

first peoples arrived in the Antilles about six thousand years ago. They 

are believed by many to have come from the Yucatán peninsula or 

from other parts of Central America. 48 In my research, I have been 

able to find a continuous native presence showing that the original 

peoples to populate the region (the so-called “Archaics”) survived 

well into the post-European contact era, thus rejecting Irving Rouse’s 

first “repeoplying” theory. 49 Along the same lines as Alegría’s “conquest 

of the Archaics” theory, 50 Rouse’s theory contends in large part 

that the original “Casimiroids” of Central America were “replaced,” 

or virtually eliminated, by a later South American group 51 that had 

supposedly emigrated into the region. Needless to say, Rouse’s work 

has been controversial and as one scholar has noted, his “mechanical 

reductionism,” or near exclusive use of pottery typologies in providing 

a history of indigenous peoples, “prevents communication among 

most social scientists and runs counter to contemporary movements 

in both history and anthropology toward an integral understanding 

of the past.” 52 

The implications of continuity would mean that the indigenous 

peoples present in the fifteenth-century northern Antilles were likely 

of Mesoamerican origin, rather than the dominant scholarly view that 

has promoted South American origins. Among other scholars, Betty 

Meggers and Clifford Evans dispute the South American origin of the 

“Saladoid,” who are thought to be the ancestors of the “Taíno.” They 

favor an expansion from the west “because white-on-red decoration 

[ceramic type] is widespread in Mesoamerica and the Andean area, 

but has not been reported from central Amazonia.” 53 There is much 

data to suggest a very strong Mesoamerican and Mayan cultural, 

philosophical, and anthropological connection to the Caribbean. 54 

Linguistic evidence of a Mesoamerican origin has also countered the 

dominant “Arawakan” basis of the indigenous language. 55 Eugenio 

Fernández-Méndez’s in-depth and important work on Antillean art 

and mythology seems to have been pushed aside as it articulated theories 

of origins in contrast to the mainstream academy. His findings 

reveal that “certain ancient mythological concepts of the Antilles are 

definitely of Mesoamerican origin,” and “we may point out that the 

Antillean art forms and mythology of very remote times present many


similarities to the art forms and mythology of Mesoamerica, Mexico, 

Yucatán and Central America, but most specially to those of Yucatán, 

Costa Rica and Panamá, and seem to have been derived from these 

areas.” 56 Regarding the ethnological data I have collected in Borikén, 

a significant portion of information regarding the Maya has been 

passed down from generation to generation. Aside from the philosophical 

and archeological records, I have often been reminded orally 

about “our Mayan past” and “our Maya ancestors” in my work and 

travels there. Elder Doña Herminia (Monsita) Vargas would say, “The 

clue is hidden in the Maya, but the key is in the Cemí.” 57 The clue 

hidden in the Maya “refers to the experiences that have been occurring 

within Creation, the planet Earth, the Universe, and Humans up 

until the year 2012. The wisdom of the Mayan Culture presents these 

teachings as the culmination and beginning of a new life process.” 58 

Accordingly, some of the most revealing archeological data 

concerning the earliest indigenous presence in Borikén are the radiocarbon 

datings made at Ponce in the mid-1990s at the south coast 

site of Maruca. These show “Archaic” habitation dating back about 

five thousand years. 59 Roberto Martínez-Torres, who is an expert on 

“Archaic sites” having completed his Master’s thesis on the La Tembladera 

site in Morovis, Puerto Rico, 60 told me in 1999 that there had 

been about ten sites studied, and many more found on the island in the 

past decade, concluding, “There were a lot of Archaic people around 

the island living in a lot of places.” 61 This evidence and other findings 

in the 1990s demonstrate that there was a very early indigenous presence 

in Borikén. More significantly, Martínez-Torres believes that the 

first peoples to populate Borikén controlled the whole island, and certainly 

the mountain regions, as they would have been well-established 

by the time of the arrival of other groups. Rouse also depicts the relative 

strength and conditions for survival of the original “Casimiroid” 

people of Kiskeya when he writes, “They could retreat into the interior 

of Hispaniola and use it as a base from which to defend their 

territory. Their larger population and more advanced culture must 

have enhanced their chances of success.” 62 Ironically, he then goes on 

to provide a paucity of evidence for their virtual extinction. 

The indigenous peoples of Borikén had been living for hundreds 

if not thousands of years in the mountain yucayekes of, for example, 

Guama, Otoao (Utuado), Coabey (Jayuya), Jatibonico, Guaynabo, 

Turabo, and Cayeco. This is a very important point because it shows 

that the mountain regions, that bear Indian names, were already populated 

prior to European contact. Most scholars have typically failed 

to mention this, or that people had fled there after the war, leaving the

62 


reader with the unwitting impression that the mountains were essentially 

“barren” of a human presence. Fernando Picó most recently 

writes that after the suppression of the Indian rebellion, many people 

either fled to the islands of the east or perished under the brutal system 

of servitude. Nothing is said about the mountain regions before 

or after the Spanish arrival so that by the 1520s, “it was evident that 

the population the Spaniards had tried to conquer had disappeared.” 63 

This emblematically ends the section as so many do. When I was in 

San Juan in 2006, the word going around was that Picó was a popular 

professor delivering a “nuanced” history. On the contrary, Fewkes had 

pointed out long before that the early repartimientos (distribution of 

native people) took “no account of those in the mountains who had 

not been conquered.” 64 María Teresa Babín added, “The isolation of 

certain mountainous zones in Puerto Rico resulted in nuclei of Indian 

families that maintained consciousness of their origin till the end of 

the eighteenth century.” 65 While Fewkes too somehow surmised an 

early native “extinction,” it appears to have been passed down a priori 

that the mountain regions were really not populated at all. 

In solidifying an indigenous mountain presence, there were always 

Indian bateys (ceremonial grounds or ball courts) near yucayekes. 

Oviedo noted that there was a batey near each village. 66 Fewkes 

wrote of the many bateys and remnants thereof that he learned about 

in Borikén at the turn of the twentieth century. Most were evidently 

located along the coastal plains, but the best preserved sites were 

those “in the high mountains in the middle of the island” near 

Utuado and Ajuntas. 67 Other mountain areas where ball courts and 

vestiges had been located include Jayuya, Corozal, on the border of 

Aguas Buenas and Bayamon, and between Comerio and Barranquitas. 

68 In addition, the size of the batey apparently correlated with the 

size of villages. “That is why the fields are here,” said the storyteller, 

in reference to the Caguana ceremonial grounds in Utuado. “That 

is why they built the batey so big. That is why there are so many 

Ceremonial Grounds here. How do I know this? I have been told 

this. This is why I know. Wherever there was a big batey, there was 

a big village.” 69 Fewkes located “several large villages” in Utuado 

alone, with bateys nearby. 70 Another point of significance concerns 

the burial mounds found near these sacred sites. “The discovery that 

these mounds are Indian cemeteries sheds light on the nature and 

use of the neighboring inclosures. The conclusions drawn from my 

excavations of the Utuado mounds are that large numbers of the 

dead were buried just outside the dance courts and that the elaborate 

areitos, or mortuary dances, were held in the latter,” exclaimed


Fewkes. He remarked that the majority of the “prehistoric” dead in 

Puerto Rico were “undoubtedly buried in the cemeteries” in this 

manner, while internments in caves were another plausible method 

of burial. 71 We can therefore reasonably conclude this section by 

saying that there was probably a fairly large indigenous population 

residing in the mountains of Borikén prior to Spanish contact. 

Lando’s Census and the 

Flight of the Jíbaro 

Indigenous resistance to the Spaniards continued throughout the 

sixteenth century. Taking flight to the mountains, avoiding census 

takers, hiding, and more physical rebellions were among the most 

prominent forms. Active resistance was recorded in the mountains in 

1517 and during the 1520s 72 and was stepped up in the 1530s against 

coastal settlements. 73 Delgado mentions that with the assistance of 

African runaway slaves and the Santa Cruz Indians, “guerrilla” warfare 

organized in the Sierra de Luquillo lasted until the mid-sixteenth 

century. 74 Since the encomienda system was never well established in 

Borikén, the Carib continued to freely revolt. Steiner noted the system 

was “doomed” in Borikén and exported to México. 75 This was 

likely a partial result of the king of Spain’s freeing of Indian encomendados 

(those held under the encomienda said to be “free persons”) in 

Puerto Rico in 1520, 76 although some scholars and many colonists 

strongly resisted and prevented actions to this effect. 

The instability of the encomienda helps to explain the extremely 

low indigenous population figure recorded for the island in the 

1530–1531 census conducted by the governor, Francisco Manuel de 

Lando. By order of the Spanish Crown, the census measured two 

population centers, the then city of Puerto Rico (San Juan) and the 

southwestern settlement of San Germán. 77 According to Moscoso, 

Lando reported that “there were less than 2,000 natives (many of 

whom had been brought from other parts of the Caribbean) registered 

in the last encomiendas in Puerto Rico.” 78 Salvador Brau noted 

that Lando’s census calculated 1,148 total indios, both slaves (“Indios 

esclavos”) and “free people” (“Indios libres encomendados”) subject to 

the encomienda. 79 Adolfo Pérez-Comas’s recent study measured 970 

“Yndio” and “Yndia” slaves, with free people not counted. 80 Regardless 

of the total, the dilemma with these census figures is that they 

have been interpreted by scholars over the generations to be an inevitable 

sign that the native population throughout the island had been 

wiped out. The idea that has endured “from generation to generation

64 


is that the Spaniards exterminated the Indians in thirty-six years,” 

writes Figueroa-Mercado. 81 

This was an “idea” Spanish colonists sought to perpetuate in numerous 

places to rid themselves of the “Indian problem” by intentionally 

reducing indigenous population numbers. Regarding Kiskeya, Guitar 

points out that it was not in the interest of officials and encomenderos 

to give accurate counts of native laborers. In order to secure positions, 

grants, and favors from the Crown, documentation downplayed those 

who remained under their control and exaggerated the effects of epidemics. 

82 While the measles and small pox epidemics of 1518 and 

1529 as reported by encomenderos in Borikén would have apparently 

reduced the indigenous encomienda population enormously, as Moscoso 

notes, 83 the encomenderos there probably exaggerated their losses 

for other reasons. “It might also have been true that the colonists who 

held natives under the encomienda exaggerated the disappearance of 

the native element to force the limitless introduction of Negro slaves, 

which were not subject to the ordinances or scruples that impeded the 

exploitation of native labourers,” stated Figueroa-Mercado. 84 Indeed, 

six years after Lando’s census Governor Vallejo found “a great number” 

of indios up for sale on rural farms together with African slaves. 

Some owners had been hiding them. 85 Lando’s census figure would 

have also concerned a smaller number of the total encomienda population 

as niños (children) were not accounted for. 86 

More importantly, the census did not count the “number of natives 

not under encomienda.” 87 As the encomiendas measured by the census 

were only set up near the gold mines on the northern coast in 

the vicinity of San Juan and near San Germán, the census did not 

take into account the large number of Indian people in villages, valleys, 

caves, and other places in the mountainous interior, nor those in 

other parts of the island. Delgado writes that the census of 1531 did 

not count the “hundreds or thousands” hidden in the mountains. 88 

This what Fewkes alluded to previously. Pérez-Comas confirms that 

in all probability those located in isolated areas of the island were not 

considered. 89 Furthermore, it was not in the interest of the Jíbaro or 

Boricua to be counted by the Spaniards in their surveys anyway: “A 

man hiding in the hills from the swords of the Conquistadors was 

not likely to report his wife and his children to the census taker. The 

official censuses of the Indians grew smaller and smaller. Any count 

of the conquered by the conquerors was always about as meaningful 

as a census of rabbits made by wolves.” 90 Writing about Kiskeya, 

Jerónimo de Aguero likewise noted, “Indians want very much never


to see Spaniards . . . so they frequently go to the mountains.” 91 This 

pattern was duplicated in other Spanish colonial territories. 92 

Still, the indigenous peoples would continue to pop up in the 

sixteenth-century history. The bishop determined that landowners 

had lied about the quantity of natives under their control when they 

learned about King Carlos’s total abolition of the encomienda system 

in 1544. 93 When General Don Francisco Coloma retook the city of 

San Juan in 1599, which had been captured by the English Earl of 

Cumberland, he was amazed to find the city “inhabited almost entirely 

by Indians. He reported that the settlers had fled to the mountains, 

from the city, and the Indians had fled to the city, from the mountains.” 

94 The Indian people came down from the mountains where 

they had been living since ancient times. Even more joined them after 

the Spanish coming. The post-war exodus of the Indian heading to 

high places is remembered as “The Flight of the Jíbaro”: “On the 

mountainous island there were hundreds of deep caves and hidden 

valleys. In these the Borinqueños hid and lived for generations. They 

became even then, as they were to become again, exiles in their own 

land. A writer of contemporary Puerto Rican history, Marianna Morris, 

has said: ‘They escaped by the hundreds, making their way into the 

hills at night.’ It was the fleeing Indians who were the ancestors of the 

jíbaros, the men from the mountains, she has written.” 95 

Conclusion 

This chapter has presented part of the evidence indicating that the 

indigenous peoples of Borikén had survived throughout the sixteenth 

century. I outline some of the active and passive forms of 

resistance that took place during this early period. The Jíbaro had 

fled the colonial Spanish in large numbers during and after the war, 

and many had not been a part of the encomienda system to begin with 

as exemplified by the regional mountain presence prior to European 

contact. Therefore, Lando’s survey most importantly dealt with a 

very small percentage of the total Indian population on the island 

from 1530 to 1531. Looked at closely, his census does not reflect 

that the indigenous population was on the verge of “extinction.” 

This becomes strikingly clear when we look at two late eighteenthcentury 

censuses. Lando’s underestimation is typical of Spanish census 

misinterpretations of lower than actual native population counts 

throughout the Americas. 

Finally, it is necessary to shed light on the point Moscoso makes 

about the Indian people brought to Puerto Rico from other parts of

66 


the Caribbean during the early slavery era. Many scholars have acknowledged 

this history and that native slaves were brought in from other 

places, too. Of the early repartimientos, Fewkes writes, “The figures 

given in the enumeration of slaves sometimes include those introduced 

from other islands.” 96 This point is undisputed. Yet, with the recent 

DNA evidence revealing a strong contemporary Amerindian presence, 

some have continued to uphold the extinction myth by now saying, 

among other spurious things, that because of the importation of Indian 

labor to the island a “distinct” Puerto Rican Indian presence cannot be 

determined. 97 This is not surprising as the dominant establishment can 

in one way or another continue to sustain antiquated beliefs when seriously 

challenged. Those who were brought in as slaves were obviously 

subject to the limited areas and population sizes of the encomiendas. 

While some would have inevitably escaped, those imported would have 

made up a small number of the overall indigenous population as demonstrated 

from the gathering data. 

While I think it is a sad commentary that DNA testing has had to be 

resorted to in Puerto Rico to “prove” that a people still exist, to quell 

the skeptics who have feverishly maintained that the indigenous peoples 

are long gone, the findings by Juan Martínez-Cruzado and colleagues 

of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez that 61 percent of Puerto 

Ricans today possess Amerindian mitochondrial DNA are quite revealing. 

98 Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the female line only. Thus, 

how many female Indian slaves were brought to the island during the 

post-European contact era? Indian slaves imported were in all likelihood 

male laborers, as inferred by Martínez-Cruzado, who also points 

out that slaves were brought in from the Circum-Caribbean and South 

America. He found that the diversity of Amerindian mitochondrial 

DNA taken from his samples was “not high, as may have been expected 

if the Amerindian predominance in Puerto Rico was the consequence of 

post-Columbian migrations.” 99 As a strong matriarchal society to begin 

with, this would mean that Amerindian women from Borikén survived 

the early colonial era in large numbers. As a result, the women absorbed 

the men to a high degree in order for our people to survive in the long 

run. Further, the traditions and stories that have been passed down 

for generations corroborate a distinctly Jíbaro (Puerto Rican) Indian 

culture and metaphysics. Like other indigenous societies, the traditions 

related come from the land where the people originated and have been 

culturally established.

Chapter 4 

Jíbaro Resistance and Continuity 

Both active and passive resistance to Spanish colonialism defined 

the sixteenth-century indigenous struggle in Borikén. The next two 

hundred years of history would see a form of passive resistance that 

could be described as a type of silence from the outside world. Aside 

from some census figures and their own inner selves, the Jíbaro Indian 

as a living reality is virtually nowhere to be found during this period. 

But this is precisely the way they would have wanted it, by not drawing 

attention to themselves. Their safety and survival would depend 

on their anonymity. As James Scott writes about resistance in peasantry 

struggles, “the self-interested muteness of the antagonists thus 

conspire to create a kind of complicitous silence that all but expunges 

everyday forms of resistance from the historical record.” 1 The Jíbaro 

continued along their stubborn way not caring what anyone else 

would think as long as they remained free. 

Indigenous resistance and continuity from the seventeenth to late 

eighteenth century are examined in this chapter. The Jíbaro was actually 

“neither a peasant in the feudal sense nor landless in the modern 

sense.” 2 Most were independent farmers, or campesinos. By the seventeenth 

century they had solidified their presence in the mountains, 

and in many rural and coastal areas too. Many had been intermarrying 

with runaway African slaves and Spaniards. This “blood mixing” 

was basically a continuation of the indigenous tradition of guatiao, 

utilized as a survival tactic like Agüeybana had done when meeting 

up with Ponce de Leon. In a sense, the Indian was in the process of 

being physically transformed. But they were still indios, just as brave 

and independent as their ancestors. Arroyo noted, “The mixing of 

these races may have changed the outward features of the Boricuas,

68 


but only strengthened the inner spiritual need for freedom.” 3 They 

went “underground” in order to protect their cultural ways and customs. 

Thus, the mestizo Indian survived in large numbers and, more 

importantly, maintained a cultural consciousness. As Spanish population 

censuses imply and the dialectic would explain, they and many 

of their “full blooded” kin were present throughout the mountain 

regions and in many other places of the island at the end of the eighteenth 

century. The final section of the chapter discusses how both 

pre and post-European contact indigenous population figures were 

minimized for ulterior reasons. Recent studies show how factors such 

as altitude and climate conditions have helped to explain long-term 

indigenous survival in interior regions of the Americas and may neatly 

apply to our findings about Borikén. 

Spaniards, African Slavery, and the Jíbaro 

It is somewhat ironic how the Indian population has been continually 

minimized when the populations of other major groups that went to 

Puerto Rico were actually quite small. While indigenous population 

figures have been underestimated, the Spanish and African populations 

were never very large. Moscoso writes that by the 1530s, “The 

Spanish population was small and most of the settlers were heavily 

indebted.” 4 Many of the original settlers had died, returned home, or, 

as mining declined, moved on to more profitable pursuits in México 

and Perú. Figueroa-Mercado says it is very obvious from Lando’s census 

that whites made up a “dangerous minority.” 5 Census data indicates 

that there were 369 married and unmarried Spanish colonists 

on the island in 1530, not including wives and children. 6 Others have 

noted there were only 327 whites at the time. 7 The Spanish exodus 

became so severe, according to Adalberto López, that the governor 

thought “unless it was checked all the Spaniards would eventually 

leave and the island would be lost to Spain. He issued an order that 

no one was to leave the island without written permission from him 

and he brought his point home by publicly cutting off the legs of two 

Spaniards who tried to disobey him.” 8 

Since gold mining was no longer economically viable, the Spaniards 

who remained took to agriculture and cattle raising. Sugar became 

a principal export product by the mid-sixteenth century as several 

sugar mills had been established in the 1520s, and cacao and ginger 

assumed an export importance in the early seventeenth century. 9 The 

sugar farms were mostly small family-run businesses located along the 

northern coast. As Indian labor was fleeting due to factors previously

Jíbaro Resistance and Continuity 69 

discussed, the planters turned to the importation of African slaves to 

fulfill their labor demands: 

Since Indian labor was rapidly disappearing by the 1530s and since 

there were too few Spaniards available and willing to supply the necessary 

labor in the sugar farms and cattle ranches, Spanish landowners 

on the island turned to the importation of black slaves to meet their 

labor needs. Permission to import black slaves into its American possessions 

had been granted by the Spanish Crown in 1503, and in the years 

immediately following the Spanish occupation of Boriquén some slaves 

were brought to the island. However, it was not till the late 1520s and 

the 1530s, as a critical shortage of Indian labor developed, that black 

slaves assumed an economic importance on the island. 10 

The African presence and influence in Borikén has been significant 

ever since. In not minimizing the horrific effects of slavery, it is 

important to point out that in comparison to other Caribbean islands, 

African and Indian slavery were limited. Through information attained 

from Alegría, Steiner wrote, “Slavery in Puerto Rico had always been 

limited by the island’s geography. On the coastal plains there was little 

more than fifteen miles of flat, arable land. There was simply not the 

land for the vast slave plantations that were cultivated in the rest of 

the Caribbean, and in the Southern United States.” 11 This curbed the 

number of African people brought in. Michael Conniff and Thomas 

Davis note that by 1530 there were 2,292 slaves on the island. 12 

Indian and African slaves were apparently included together in this 

figure as Lando’s census revealed a total of 1,523 African slaves at 

the time. 13 However in Hispaniola, up to thirty thousand slaves were 

possibly brought in by 1565. 14 Cudjoe says that by 1787, the French 

were importing over forty thousand slaves per year to Haití, and there 

were more than eleven thousand annual deaths. 15 And Jamaica (Xaymaca) 

introduced more than sixty-three thousand slaves between 

1801 and 1807. 16 In sharp contrast, Alejandro O’Reilly’s 1765 census 

estimated a little more than five thousand total slaves in Puerto Rico. 17 

A 1778 census showed 6,603 “negro slaves.” 18 While African slavery 

did increase in the nineteenth century, Figueroa-Mercado confirms 

that after a slave uprising was brutally crushed by whites in 1532, 

“the numerical superiority of the Africans diminished, and, apart from 

that early epoch, Puerto Rico differed to the other Antilles in that she 

never had great numbers of slaves.” 19 

As the Carib had rebelled against the encomienda, African slaves, 

too, resisted an inhumane system they were put under. They often

70 


joined up with the Indian people along the coasts and in the mountains 

to battle the Spaniards. The political relationship was one emboldened 

by a love of freedom and fierce resistance to colonialism, like that of 

the Garifuna (Black Caribs) of St. Vincent who were ultimately exiled 

by the British to Central America at the end of the eighteenth century. 

In terms of intermarriage, Africans tended to intermix and marry 

with Indian and Spanish people along the coasts where most of the 

plantations were located. 20 Many poor Spaniards who did not receive 

“the gifts,” or lands, went to the mountains to become subsistence 

farmers. They tended to intermix and marry with the indigenous peoples 

there. 21 Rape and forced marriages by Spanish men with Indian 

women were also prevalent. According to Naniki, this is an important 

factor in the making of the mestizo as it reveals the abuse and hardship 

that women had to endure at the hands of the colonizer. 22 

It should be noted here that DNA evidence now showing proportionate 

Amerindian frequencies in coastal areas to mountain regions 

could be explained by more recent emigration patterns from the 

mountains to coastal centers. 23 For example, the larger robust areas of 

Ponce, Arecibo, Aguadilla, and Mayagüez all had high DNA counts. 24 

However, the data also shows high frequencies in more isolated coastal 

regions suggesting high degrees of indigenous survival historically 

as these more secluded areas were less prone to European contact. 

Juan Antonio, the elder I met from the coast of Quebradillas, told 

me his family had been living there for as long as he could remember. 

When he was growing up, the surrounding area consisted of all Indian 

families, and many are still there today. They continue some of their 

traditional ways and practices such as the use of medicinal plants for 

healing and instruments to make music. In the 1950s, almost everyone 

in Quebradillas was living in bohíos (traditional Indian houses) 

made of yagua (the “boards” or tabla de palma from the native yagua 

palm tree), and the floors were made of bare earth. He said all of his 

family was indio, on both his mother and father’s side. Juan Antonio 

was addressed as “el indio” at times in the past and even today. “There 

are many indios because you hear many people calling others ‘el indio’ 

in many places if they look like me.” 25 

African slaves also often fled, alone or in groups, into the forests 

and mountainous interior. 26 The Indian people in these areas would 

have been their best potential allies, like they had been in Brazil 

and Kiskeya, although they were effective opponents in these places 

too. 27 Guitar writes that the indigenous peoples of Kiskeya “knew 

the island—the escape routes, the isolated regions, what grew where 

and how to find it or grow it, and how to best utilize the region’s


resources.” 28 This knowledge would not be different for any people 

residing in a particular place for hundreds of years. Thus, the African 

and Spanish people who fled to isolated areas of Borikén were 

often embraced by the Indian people and culture and assimilated 

through intermarriage as their numbers would have been small compared 

to the native population. They inevitably became a part of 

the root indigenous culture, similar to the transformation process 

as described earlier by cacike Ramirez in Cuba. While foreigners in 

coastal centers tended to assimilate the Indian people there, it was 

the opposite transformational process when it came to the Jíbaro 

in many other places. Don Pedro Matos-Matos of Utuado said the 

Jíbaro has always resisted assimilation: “And that is why the jíbaros 

are so stubborn, so silent, so humble, and so independent. Because 

we are so Indian. That is why we resist assimilation.” 29 He described 

the assimilation process and the heart and soul of the Jíbaro, a 

fiercely independent people whose cultural and spiritual roots and 

love of the land extend back since time immemorial: 

“If it were not for us, the jíbaros, there would be no Puerto Rico. The 

heart and soul of Puerto Rico is in the heart and soul of the jíbaros. 

“For hundreds of years we have resisted all the foreigners—the 

Spaniards and the Americans. You know how? It is no mystery. On the 

coasts, in the cities of San Juan, Ponce, Mayagüez, when the foreigners 

came, they assimilated the Puerto Ricans. Not here! In Utuado, in 

the mountains, the foreigners were assimilated by us. ¡Sí ! They marry 

our women. And our women they make Puertorriqueños out of them. 

The jíbaros are very stubborn. Especially if they are women. I think our 

women may be a little more Indian than our men. 

“Anyone who wishes to know the Puerto Rican must know the 

jíbaros,” said Don Pedro. “Or he knows nothing. We are Puerto Rico.” 30 

The social interrelationship that formed resulted in the continued 

political, social, and cultural development of the Jíbaro. The development 

of Jíbaro music, art, dance, poetry, and food crops, for example, 

provides important clues about the adaptation and growth of the 

Indian culture. Regarding the music, there were originally 18 instruments 

such as the drum, trunk, tortoise shell and string instrument. 31 

The gourds used for percussion instruments like the güiro, maracas, 

and early drum were of Indian origin. The African people introduced 

a certain drum and a one-string instrument like a harp, while the 

Spaniards brought over the six-string guitar. 32 This synthesis forms

72 


the basis of the Jíbaro music that lives on today. It is still popularly 

played in places as far away as Hawai‘i. 

Subsistence farming and particularly diversified agriculture in rural 

and interior areas are also uniquely Jíbaro. The people were expert 

agriculturalists carrying on in the tradition of their ancestors. A subsistence 

economy continued in the seventeenth century, 33 and later. “In 

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Puerto Rico’s chief characteristic 

was abundance, built on a diversified agriculture and an illicit 

trade—smuggling.” 34 In 1788, a prominent priest noted the “bountiful 

nature” of the land that permits the many kinds of food crops that 

“reproduce themselves all year round.” 35 Don Pedro elaborates on 

this history and how indigenous forms of planting such as by conucos 

continued in the mountains. Multicropping is still the norm among 

campesinos: 

It was the Indian way. And it was the jíbaro way. The colonization of 

the land by the Spaniards and then the Americans, into a one-crop 

economy, was resisted by the jíbaros. “At first, we grew cocoa beans 

for the conquerors, then we grew ginger, which grows wild along the 

riverbeds, then we grew coffee, then we grew sugar cane, and then 

tobacco,” said Don Pedro. “But in Utuado we always managed to 

grow many crops simultaneously—the tobacco, the coffee, and our 

own food. So, though in the lowlands they had a one-crop economy, in 

the mountains we boasted a diversified agriculture. That accounted for 

our more sound economy in our towns. In our land we raised corn, all 

kinds of beans, rice, and roots—the old Indian food. Even our land had 

an independent spirit.” 36 

Origin of the Proletariat 

At the start of the seventeenth century, a large cultural and psychological 

barrier between the towns and rural areas permeated the island until 

the end of the nineteenth century. 37 Hundreds of subsistence farmers in 

rural and mountain regions were basically isolated from the sugar farms, 

cattle ranches, and towns. López notes that those in the interior were 

“the ancestors of the latter-day jíbaro,” 38 of which a present and future 

indigenous continuum can be obviously inferred as confirmed earlier by 

Morris. In addition, the only municipalities set up at this time were San 

Juan and San Germán, both of which were small and sparsely populated. 

In fact, by the end of the eighteenth century, no roads had been built 

on the island. 39 Sugar production and cattle exports grew slowly and 

so for Spain, Borikén was of minor economic importance marketwise


until the late 1700s. 40 Thus, the Jíbaro were living independently at 

this time and doing things in their own way. They were cut off and 

ignored by the government and Spanish elite, and misunderstood 

by the dominant academy then as well as now. The renowned native 

Pacific scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa alluded to the general plight of grassroots 

indigenous cultures, which applies to the Jíbaro story: “The 

other level is that of ordinary people, peasants and proletarians, who, 

because of the poor flow of benefits from the top, skepticism about 

stated policies and the like, tend to plan and make decisions about 

their lives independently, sometimes with surprising and dramatic 

results that go unnoticed or ignored at the top. Moreover, academic 

and consultancy experts tend to overlook or misinterpret grassroots 

activities because they do not fit with prevailing views about the nature 

of society and its development.” 41 

Spain’s interest in Puerto Rico was essentially strategic in terms of 

maintaining control over the Spanish Caribbean and Central America. 

They could have cared less about the people. Internationally, it was 

“imperative that Spain hold on to the island, for should it fall into the 

hands of the enemies of Spain it could serve as a base of operations 

that could disrupt and even paralyze the entire Spanish-American 

commercial system.” 42 Attacks by the English, French, and Dutch 

throughout the seventeenth century actually revealed Spain’s weaknesses 

and loss of territory, which resulted in the establishment of a 

permanent presence among its enemies in the Antilles and other places 

in the Americas. 43 From a contemporary perspective Figueroa-Mercado 

concluded, “there was more smoke than fire and that Spain was 

not as powerful as was thought.” 44 Lamourt-Valentín affirms Spain’s 

weaknesses, loss of influence in the Caribbean, and how the Spaniards 

were astounded at the major civilization they had encountered. The 

native account here runs counter to the history taught of Spanish 

dominance lending a sharp alternative perspective on events: “This 

[was] a major civilization. It freaked the Spanish out. The Spanish 

were not established in the Caribbean. They reestablished themselves 

on the continent. They lost the Caribbean . . . They were kicked out 

of all the major islands. They only had Havana and the western part 

of Cuba . . . In Santo Domingo, the only thing they had were two or 

three trade outposts. And the rest of Santo Domingo they never conquered, 

and they never conquered, definitely, never conquered Haití. 

The French were invited into Haití by the cacikes.” 45 

One of the interesting phenomena about Borikén was the large 

number of nonslaves who contributed to the labor force. This had 

also begun in the early seventeenth century. As the economy began

74 


to grow in the eighteenth century, particularly the sugar industry, 

more slaves were imported to the island as a needed source of labor. 46 

However, as López writes, nonslave labor by the mid-eighteenth 

century had “assumed great importance in certain activities, and in 

some sugar and coffee farms non-slave laborers often outnumbered 

the slaves. These free laborers, however, constituted an unstable 

labor force since many of them would work only for part of the year, 

and others often left their employers and settled as subsistence farmers 

in the interior.” 47 This situation resulted in the first appearance 

of the proletariat as recorded in Western history, notes Lamourt- 

Valentín. The Frenchman André Pierre Ledru was sent to Puerto 

Rico in the 1790s where he recorded free laborers working “arm-inarm, 

shoulder-to-shoulder at the same work in the same way as the 

slaves. What he’s describing is the proletariat.” 48 Marriages by slaves 

to Indian people compromised the slave owner to employ the free 

laborer. The slave would not be allowed to work if the owner did not 

also employ the free laborer because the slave belonged to the community, 

not to the owner. 49 These “free laborers” were mostly “Free 

Colored” Indian people and “Free Negroes” as interpreted from the 

1771 and 1778 censuses analyzed below. By the end of the eighteenth 

century, some important censuses had been taken and the 

population of the island had grown, with a good number of people 

located in the interior: “The population was over 150,000 and a 

significant proportion of it was now concentrated in the mountain 

chain of the interior. There were several dozen towns; Ponce and 

Mayagüez were expanding commercial centers, and San Germán had 

a population of several thousand. Town life throughout the island 

was livelier than in the past; contact between the towns and the rural 

areas was greater. More merchants now traveled through the interior 

and more people lived year round in the towns. San Juan, which still 

remained the commercial, administrative and ecclesiastical capital, 

was a bustling community of over 10,000 people.” 50 

Late Eighteenth-Century Censuses 

The written and ethnological narrative of a continued indigenous 

presence on the island of Borikén is corroborated by certain Spanish 

censuses that were taken in the second half of the eighteenth century. 

These unequivocally show that hundreds of Indian people were still 

there almost three hundred years after Spanish contact. This data in 

itself disproves the mid-sixteenth-century theory of indigenous Caribbean 

extinction. Given our discussion in the next section of typically


underestimated indigenous population figures in the Spanish colonies, 

and largely underestimated totals for the Americas as a whole, 

the censuses analyzed below, specifically the categories “Indians” and 

“Free Colored,” were also underestimations. I further importantly 

view both “full blooded” and mestizo Indian people in Puerto Rico as 

essentially one family, as they were closely related to each other culturally 

and biologically. The concept of distinguishing human beings 

based on “racial purity” and “blood quantum” measurements were 

racist European colonial inventions meant to separate native peoples 

from each other, whether for political, cultural, or economic reasons, 

in order to assimilate, marginalize, or slowly verify their extinction. 

Thus, the implications of estimating an overall Indian population 

count for the island in the late eighteenth century are huge. In order 

to get a better idea of the size of the population, I will examine two 

censuses taken. The figures brought out are arbitrary or rough estimates, 

but should give the reader an idea of the significance of the 

indigenous presence at that time. 

Most of the data from the censuses of 1771 and 1778 are provided 

here by Puerto Rican historians Salvador Brau, Loida Figueroa-Mercado, 

and Juan Manuel Delgado. The censuses were by order of King 

Carlos III 51 and conducted by Fray Íñigo Abbad y Lasierra. Both reveal 

the category “Indians,” or “Indios” as written in Spanish. Regarding 

this category, Brau wrote, “These Indians, whose existence had been 

proven officially, were not the progeny of racial mixtures classified as 

pardos libres, but pure blooded [de raza pura] types, descendents of 

those emancipated by Charles V, who tried to distance themselves 

from their oppressors. Still settled in lands close to San Germán del 

Guadianilla in 1570, they migrated up to the harshest [agrio] mountain 

range, in a vicinity called La Indiera.” 52 This group comprised 

“360 heads of family with 752 male sons and 1,190 women of every 

age and status,” 53 for a total of 2,302 people as noted in the 1778 

census. These censuses were taken in the region of Maricao, in the 

communities now known as Indiera Alta, Indiera Baja, and Indiera 

Fria, where the population had lived in isolation for over two hundred 

years. 54 A census taken in 1799 showed that their numbers had 

remained virtually unchanged with 2,300 Indian people counted. 55 

The results of the 1771 and 1778 censuses noted in Table 4.1 are 

extracted from Figueroa-Mercado. It should be pointed out that Brau 

cites the years of these censuses as 1777 and 1787, 56 with the exact 

same categories and figures as Figueroa-Mercado’s. I am using her 

dates, which are also cited by Arturo Santana and Rafael Torrech in 

their atlas, 57 and as the 1778 census is commonly referred to today.

76 

Table 4.1. 


Year 1771 Year 1778 

Whites 31,951 46,756 

“Indians” 1,756 2,302 

Free Colored 24,164 34,867 

Free Negroes 4,747 7,866 

Mulatto slaves 3,343 4,657 

Negro slaves 4,249 6,603 

Note: Figueroa-Mercado writes, “Please note that there was a majority of non-whites. In 1771, 

38,259 compared to 31,951, and in 1778 56,295 compared to 46,756. Please note, moreover, that 

crossbreeds are not specified (native with White) or other mixtures, under the term ‘free coloured 

people’. If we compare this census with O’Reilly’s made in 1765 we note an increase in the number 

of slaves from 7,592 in 1771 and 11,560 in 1778, as compared to 5,037 slaves in 1765.” 58 

In an interview with Delgado, he made three important points clear 

to me regarding the data from the census category “Indians”: (1) at 

the time these censuses were taken and previous to that La Indiera (lit., 

“place where the Indian lives”) comprised the entire mountain region, 

not just the areas around Maricao as Indiera is known as today; (2) the 

censuses were conducted by the Catholic Church and the information 

taken from church baptism records, or from Indian people who had 

been baptized; and (3) the censuses did not take into account the 

many who had not been baptized. Delgado emphasized, “There were 

many more people there than the census indicates.” The census data 

actually revealed “10 percent of the reality.” 59 This information can 

be corroborated through Delgado’s extensive research and knowledge 

of the subject matter since his childhood. In the mid-1960s, this 

educator began documenting the resistance and continued survival 

of the indigenous population through archival records and oral history. 

60 Some of his important findings reveal how the Jíbaro protested 

against abuse, discrimination, and the imposition of names by the 

Catholic Church, 61 and how hundreds of Indian names or surnames 

were hidden or disguised as nicknames (apodos) that survived as actual 

names used mostly by campesinos. 62 Much of this resistance came 

about in the nineteenth century in conjunction with the establishment 

of towns in central mountain regions. Prior to this time, there were no 

“towns” or churches set up in many places to conduct censuses and 

implement Spanish policies. 

In focusing on the 1778 census, since the category “Indians” only 

took into account those who were baptized, or 10 percent of the total 

according to Delgado, there would have been approximately 23,000


“full blooded” Indian people in the vicinity where the census was taken, 

that is, in the communities now known as Indiera Alta, Indiera Baja, 

and Indiera Fria in the municipality of Maricao. Next, the general data 

for the censuses were extracted from numerous pueblos (towns) established 

at that time, primarily coastal and rural areas including the capital 

of San Juan. 63 The light areas of Figure 4.1 indicate the pueblos from 

where the censuses were taken. The black areas of the municipalities of 

San Germán, Arecibo, and Coamo were also measured in the survey. 

Since the censuses only considered the category “Indians” from the 

region of Maricao, they did not take into account the Indian people 

living throughout the Cordilleras or other mountain regions, as La 

Indiera was known as back then, nor those in the Sierra de Luquillo. If 

we estimate the number of indigenous peoples in the interior regions 

of, for example, Las Marias, Lares, Adjuntas, Jayuya, Ciales, Morovis, 

Orocovis, Villalba, Barranquitas, and Aibonito, all of which were not 

a part of the census count as there were no towns established in these 

areas at the time, 64 the population count becomes much larger. These 

regions and others that had yet to establish towns, with the exceptions 

of Guanica and Vega Alta, are highlighted in the gray areas of 

the map. If we multiply Maricao and the ten areas listed previously by 

the population count determined for Maricao in 1778 (11 × 23,000), 

we arrive at a tentative figure of 253,000 inhabitants. However, since 

indigenous survival “may” have been greatest in Maricao due to the 

remoteness of the region, we should reduce the 23,000 count for the 

other regions. If we halve this figure, which may be generous because 

Figure 4.1 By permission and copyright of Editorial Cordillera, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1988.

78 


other mountain areas were also very remote as mentioned below, we 

come up with an indigenous population count of about 11,500 people 

per region. In multiplying this number by the ten regions and adding 

the 23,000 figure for Maricao, we arrive at a total count of approximately 

138,000 indios residing in these mountain areas in 1778. This 

number is still likely an underestimation, since the censuses did not 

account for the people living in other mountainous places such as 

Cidra, Aguas Buenas, Comerio, Naranjito, and Corozal, which too 

had yet to establish towns, 65 or people in coastal and rural regions not 

measured in the censuses. 

Some have indeed questioned whether Maricao comprised the largest 

concentration of indigenous peoples in the mountains. Naniki says 

the Ciales and Orocovis regions were “just as remote” as Maricao, 

adding that the total count mentioned previously is a “minimum.” 

Back then, “all mountain regions were remote,” including the Sierra 

de Luquillo. 66 This makes sense as, again, La Indiera comprised most 

of these regions and, as some who have been in the mountains know, 

you can get very lost up there even traveling by car today! For those 

who may be skeptical about the 138,000 estimate, this figure would 

no doubt include many “Free Colored,” or free “mixed blooded” 

people, the offspring of the racial intermixing that took place. They 

were also not counted in the mountain regions noted in the gray areas 

of the map. This category of the censuses is the other important area 

to consider, the data taken from the light areas of the map. “Free 

Colored” people, or “pardos libres” (“free browns”) in Spanish, comprised 

the largest population of nonwhites in the censuses who were 

not slaves, and their numbers had actually increased considerably from 

1771 to 1778. 

In his research at the Catholic Church in Morovis, Martínez-Torres 

found out that Catholic priests had written in their baptism records 

that “pardos people were Indian descendants.” 67 This is in spite of the 

fact that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Governor Toribio 

Montes “banded all the non-whites together under the title of free 

colored people (pardos),” 68 and eliminated the category “Indios” in 

the process. 69 He did this when “faced with the difficulty of fixing 

ethnic origins.” 70 Thus, there was a strong Indian presence in Morovis 

at the end of the eighteenth century as this town was not founded 

until 1818. Martínez-Torres confirmed to me that “pardos people” 

were commonly descended from Indians. Federico Ribes-Tovar noted 

that pardos included “Indian halfbreeds.” 71 And Picó also acknowledged 

that “part of the population then called pardo had Amerindian 

blood.” 72 I have been able to determine from my research that the


category “Free Colored” primarily pertained to mestizos, or Indian 

people intermixed with Africans, or “native with White,” as Figueroa- 

Mercado indicated. When this author discusses “natives” in her book, 

she is specifically referring to the Indian population. 

This category would also include African people who intermixed 

with whites, or so-called “mulattos,” who were not slaves. However, 

Manuel Álvarez-Nazario wrote that prior to Montes’s grouping, the 

established use of the term “mulato” in Puerto Rico was without a 

doubt reserved for mestizos who were slaves, and pardo for mestizos 

who were free. 73 So when Abbad y Lasierra penned in 1788 that 

“mulatos” on the island comprised the largest segment of the population, 

74 he was unwittingly referring to mestizo Indian people. This is 

apparent as Pablo Morales-Cabrera keenly revealed Abbad y Lasierra’s 

ignorance of the Indian population, and how he perceived them to 

have a very “limited mentality.” 75 This was the thinking of the dominant 

establishment of the time as the Indian presence was minimized, 

and the people misunderstood and essentially perceived to be incapable 

of reasoning or abstract thinking. Given that the indigenous 

peoples routinely intermixed on the coasts and rural areas, where most 

of the census data were collected from, Indian descendants would 

have mainly comprised the second largest total in the censuses. The 

34,867 count in 1778 is alone quite revealing for the purposes of our 

study. However, since the gray regions of the map were also not a part 

of the census count for this category, this group would have made up 

a considerably larger portion of the population through the intermarriage 

that had taken place in these areas. 

Lastly, I’m reminded of my talks with Cuko, who emphasized that 

“todo indios” had populated the Cordilleras at least until the time of 

the 1868 Grito de Lares revolution. Regarding the 1778 census, he 

agreed with Delgado’s assessment that only 10 percent of the Indian 

population in Maricao would have been counted. 76 Of the Catholic 

Church, he said, “The people who didn’t go to church were nonexistent 

to them.” The Catholics were “the first intruders to destroy 

our past.” They did not come to help the native people but to help 

the Spaniards to establish themselves and to change the minds of the 

people. Liko remarked that if there were five thousand natives in a 

community but they had only changed the minds of a few, those few 

might be counted, but they would ignore the rest. As to the culture, 

he explained that all of the people in a great region, in maybe thousands 

of places, who had already died—all had lived the same Jíbaro 

lifestyle. This continuity applied to the whole island. He believed 

there were “much more people on the coast.” Because there are a lot

80 


of rivers there, whole communities of indios remained for hundreds 

and hundreds of years. The only difference today, he added, is that 

they have become “modernized.” The government does not care that 

the people could be conscious of who they are. 77 

Given all of this, we can now estimate that there could have been 

well over two hundred thousand Indian inhabitants present in Borikén 

in the late eighteenth century. This figure does not contradict 

López’s statement that the population of the island was over 150,000, 

with a significant proportion in the mountain interior, or Pico’s comment 

about “the families of farmers and squatters who made up the 

mass of the population at the end of the eighteenth century.” 78 This 

figure does not contradict the hundreds of Jíbaros who had fled to the 

mountains two hundred fifty years earlier, and who would have continued 

to propagate among themselves and with those who were already 

there. These people had maintained or synthesized into new forms 

many of their cultural traditions. The figure also takes into account 

indigenous survival in rural and coastal regions, which was probably 

much more widespread than previously acknowledged. When I gave 

this presentation of survival at an annual indigenous peoples’ festival 

in Jayuya in 2006 and 2008 (as colloquia), my findings were roundly 

agreed upon by those in attendance. The president of the Cooperative 

Center where the festival is held said a two hundred thousand 

population figure was “on the low side.” 79 The main point to be made 

about the late eighteenth-century censuses is how they grossly underestimated 

the Indian population by not taking into consideration the 

Jíbaro (both “full blooded” and “mestizo”) residing throughout the 

island at the time. As to her research, Figueroa-Mercado concluded, 

“it is evident that the time has come to throw overboard the fallacy 

of the extermination of the native population.” 80 In our search for 

the dialectical truth, the data revealed up to this point does indeed 

debunk the myth of the mid-sixteenth-century extinction of indigenous 

Caribbean peoples. 

Minimizing Population Figures 

Extinction myths and motives and rationalizations for them have 

of course not been limited to the Carib or Jíbaro. Low population 

counting and extinction and near extinction myths of many indigenous 

groups have been, at least until recently, the dominant trend of 

Western scholarship contributing to their marginalization. The Tasmanian 

and Yuchi had long ago been written off as “extinct,” yet the 

aboriginal Tasmanian voice still speaks today, 81 and the Yuchi appear


to be alive and well. 82 In Hawai‘i, the Hawaiian Homelands program 

was set up in 1921 because the Kānaka Maoli were, for one, thought 

to be on the brink of extinction and thus in need of “rehabilitation.” 

While most have not benefited from the program, the Kanaka Maoli 

population in the Hawaiian Islands today is approximately two hundred 

thousand, with another two hundred thousand or so people living 

in the diaspora. This is not unlike the high recovery rates and 

numbers of American Indian groups in the United States. By 1930, 

“a surge to 333,397 had occurred, and the Native North American 

population has grown every decade since.” 83 It was simply inconceivable 

to many scholars in earlier times to believe that these populations 

could have survived such horrendous encounters with the European 

world. This survival and continuity clearly applies to the indigenous 

Caribbean and Borikén. 

Recent studies reveal that pre-European contact native population 

figures were deflated for various reasons. The general contemporary 

trend for the Americas, for example, is toward the acceptance of higher 

numbers of inhabitants having populated the region. What does this 

mean in terms of indigenous political, social, and cultural development? 

What might it mean in relation to extinction and post-contact 

survival? For social scientists, the size of the Amerindian population 

“directly affects their interpretations of New World civilizations and 

cultures.” 84 Larger population sizes have been linked to degrees of 

socioeconomic and cultural sophistication. Regarding the numbers, 

William Denevan writes, “It would not be an overstatement to hold 

that almost every major investigation of pre-Columbian cultural evolution 

and ecology, of the European conquest, and of colonial social 

and economic history must ultimately raise the question of Indian 

numbers. Thus, the effort to determine those numbers continues, and 

as the quality of the research improves, the trend is toward acceptance 

of higher numbers.” 85 The extensive studies conducted by researchers 

in the 1960s and 1970s reveal much larger indigenous populations 

throughout the Western hemisphere than initially thought. One estimate 

derived from a number of serious studies indicated a population 

total in 1492 of 57,300,000 for the Americas as a whole, including 

5,850,000 inhabitants in the Caribbean. 86 Cook and Borah calculated 

a midpoint range of seven to eight million indigenous peoples for Hispaniola 

alone. 87 The single most important reason for the initial low 

figures appears to be because surveys did not consider the enormous 

population losses due to introduced diseases. Epidemics often arose 

decades and sometimes centuries prior to the first European censuses

82 


taken. 88 While these high counts were controversial when originally 

revealed, the numbers kept climbing: 

Less than twenty-five years ago conventional scholarly opinion held— 

as it had for generations—that the pre-Columbian population of the 

Americas was somewhere between 8 and 14 million persons, with no 

more than a million in North America. Today’s historians and anthropologists 

now commonly accept figures up to ten times as high—as 

many as ten million in North America, twenty-five million in central 

Mexico alone, and 90 to 112 million for the entire hemisphere. If correct, 

such estimates mean that the population of the Americas in the 

15th century was equal to that of Europe, including Russia, at the time. 

With every passing year vastly higher estimates appear in the scholarly 

literature of so-called “pre-contact” native populations, from the 

Canadian forest and lake regions to the mountains and coasts of Peru. 89 

Despite this, many writers have traditionally downplayed the evidence 

and meaning of higher population counts, and not all accept 

the recent figures. Borah points out that for particularly Spanish 

areas of penetration many researchers have tended to dismiss early 

high population calculations, such as tribute counts or Las Casas’s figures, 

or revised them considerably downward at will. 90 For the North 

American continent, it has been “expedient for non-Indian ‘experts’ 

to minimize the size of aboriginal Indian populations, while denigrating 

the level of socio-economic attainment that presumably resulted 

in such sparseness of human presence.” 91 This lessening can be applied 

to both pre and post-European contact indigenous populations. One 

implication for post-contact figures is that while Indo-European contact 

reduced indigenous populations at incredibly high attrition rates, 

scholars did not consider the different forms and tremendous amount 

of resistance that did occur. This point seems to be universally missing 

from the literature until recently. The conditions for survival to take 

place were also important factors as elaborated on shortly. 

There are other important reasons for discrediting high population 

counts. Borah affirms that varying interpretations of history related to 

population fuel disagreements of the past and present and the human 

condition. Accordingly, a smaller native population that experienced 

less or no loss of life, along with the belief in the more “primitive” 

nature of indigenous political and social structures, diminishes European 

guilt. 92 Conversely, the destruction of large populations and 

sophisticated native structures are held to signify greater European 

guilt as a result of colonialism. This issue directly refers to reparation


“for historical and material wrongs to native peoples.” 93 The Spanish 

denial of the “Black Legend” of terrorism and genocide in the 

Americas would fit in neatly here because if few or no crimes were 

committed, there would be no basis for reparation, seeking justice 

and taking responsibility for policies and actions. This point could 

also explain why the theory of indigenous Caribbean extinction has 

been so vigorously upheld. If the people no longer exist, or if they 

have been “assimilated” into mainstream society, then the issue would 

be mute. Lewis Hanke mentions how many scholars, although seemingly 

biased, have linked Spanish guilt and conscience with its actions. 

What is lost in the following quotation is how the Spanish campaign 

was ultimately sanctioned by the Crown through royal letters, papal 

decrees, and subsequent European treaties. These historians appear 

to be correct, as Spanish “theories” to work out their “problems” 

did largely turn out to be just theory: “Historians, especially those 

writing in English, even when they have recognized the existence of 

Spanish theories dealing with Spain’s American problems, have usually 

confined themselves to pointing the finger of scorn to show how 

far Spanish practice in America departed from the theory elaborated 

by the crown in Spain. The Spaniards’ concern to work out a policy 

which they could justify to their own consciences has been dismissed 

as hypocritical religiosity akin to the spirit of the walrus in Alice’s 

Adventures in Wonderland, who shed such bitter tears while busily 

assisting the carpenter to consume so many oysters.” 94 

The notion of “progress,” where the present is thought to be superior 

to the past, is also woven into the belief that earlier periods of 

history consisted of smaller populations, particularly if the population 

size was estimated to equate to a present-day one. 95 This is a subjective 

response and plays into the belief that Western civilization and the 

development of state societies are more “advanced” than “stateless” 

political and social structures. However, stateless peoples as conceptualized 

as “primitive” are invented by intellectuals in relation to state 

societies and diametrically opposed to modernity, 96 or to what is considered 

to be “civilized.” This bifurcation is a manufactured construct 

for it is scholars who have ethnocentrically defined the concepts and 

thus empowered them. Ashley Montagu points out that such terms 

can be damaging because they may “embody prejudices and pseudological 

rationalizations based on unanalyzed systems of values.” 97 

The negative notion of “primitivism” has been routinely employed 

in theory and practice against indigenous peoples precisely because 

native value systems have been either dismissed as “superstitious” or

84 


misunderstood. Montagu notes how the concept is actually a myth of 

evolutionary theory: 

So entrenched, however, have our beliefs become concerning the ortholinear 

evolution of man that our conceptions of “progress,” “development,” 

and “evolution” have rendered the assumption automatic that 

what developed later in time must therefore be more “advanced” and 

more “evolved” than that which developed earlier. From this the “logical” 

inference followed that what was less developed must be earlier 

than that which was more developed, and therefore the earlier was the 

more “primitive” and the later the more “advanced.” Furthermore, 

since straight-line evolution is taken for granted by so many, it followed 

that the more advanced developed from the less advanced, from the 

“primitive,” and that the former was “superior” to the latter. 98 

Another idea that the lands of the Americas were sparsely populated 

is derived from the Roman concept of terra nullius, or “vacant 

lands,” which came to be applied to the “doctrine of discovery” where 

non-Christian lands could be seized with impunity. Here it would 

be legally advantageous to Euroamerican nations to rationalize small 

native population sizes. For instance, while Emmerich de Vattel 

implied that Indian nations had rights of “occupancy,” he branded 

them as “wandering tribes” and “savages” whose “small numbers” 

could not possibly populate large territories of land, much less fulfill 

their “obligation of cultivating the earth.” 99 He therefore “legalized” 

the taking of their lands: “Their uncertain occupancy of these vast 

regions can not be held as a real and lawful taking of possession; and 

when the Nations of Europe, which are too confined at home, come 

upon lands which the savages have no special need of and are making 

no present and continuous use of, they may lawfully take possession of 

them and establish colonies in them.” 100 We should recall here that the 

bulk of the early English journeying to North America was to escape 

religious persecution, rather than being “too confined at home” in a 

territorial sense. Paradoxically, the need to “cultivate the earth” was 

merely an excuse to take it, for Indian people had long been fulfilling 

their cultural obligation as the first agriculturalists of the hemisphere 

as explained here by M. Annette Jaimes. This refutes the idea of the 

“primitive” in regard to Amerindian value systems and “sparseness” 

in populating the land: 

Upwards of 60% of the subsistence of most Native American societies 

came directly from agriculture, with hunting and gathering providing


a decidedly supplemental source of nutrients (just as fishing did and 

does, throughout the world). This highly developed agricultural base 

was greatly enhanced by extensive trade networks and food storage 

techniques which afforded precontact American Indians what was (and 

might well still be, if reconstituted) far and away the most diversified 

and balanced diet on earth. 

In actuality, fully two-thirds of all the vegetal foodstuffs now consumed 

by humanity were under cultivation in Native America—and 

nowhere else—at the moment Columbus first set foot on Hispañola. 

An instructive, but by no means exhaustive, list of crops includes corn, 

potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, most 

variety of beans, all varieties of pepper except black, amaranth, manioc 

(tapioca), mustard and a number of other greens, sunflowers, cassava, 

some types of rice, artichokes, avocadoes, okra, chayotes, peanuts, 

cashews, walnuts, hickory nuts, pecans, pineapples, bread fruit, passion 

fruit, many melons, persimmons, choke cherries, papayas, cranberries, 

blueberries, blackberries, coffee, sassafras, vanilla, chocolate, and 

cocoa. In order to raise this proliferation of food items, American Indians 

had perfected elaborate and sophisticated agricultural technologies 

throughout the hemisphere long before the arrival of the first European. 

This included intricate and highly efficient irrigation systems, 

ecologically integrated and highly effective planting methods such as 

milpa and conuco, and the refinement of what amounted to botanical 

experimentation facilities, among other things. 101 

Vattel’s justification for the confiscation of indigenous lands ultimately 

reverted back to the discovery principle. 102 Similarly, U.S. 

Chief Justice John Marshall invoked terra nullius in the 1823 landmark 

case Johnson v. McIntosh, when the United States first established 

plenary power over Indian lands and affairs. 103 In order to uphold the 

concept of discovery and avoid adjudication to the prevailing laws 

of the time, Stiffarm and Lane explain that “it was/is necessary to 

believe that there were very few native people prior to the onset of 

the European invasion of North America. A substantial precontact 

native population would imply that the land was for all intents and 

purposes not vacant. In that event, the supposed rights of discovery 

and conquest Marshall wished to rely upon would be governed, under 

the then prevailing Laws of Nations, by certain fairly strict criteria pertaining 

to prosecution of ‘Just Wars.’” 104 Thus, along with the 1831 

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia decision, where Marshall branded the sovereign 

and independently recognized Cherokee nation as a “domestic 

dependent nation,” based again on “discovery,” 105 the United States, 

in its genocidal westward expansion, came to violate Indian law, the

86 


Law of Nations, and the separation of church and state as written in 

its constitution. 

While the debate over the size of pre-contact native populations 

has not been fully resolved, the tendency is clearly toward the acceptance 

of higher figures, with more sophisticated and complex societal 

development than previously thought. This can be applied to the 

Caribbean and Borikén, too. Las Casas’s high Antillean population 

counts were probably tending closer to the reality than not and have 

been substantiated by recent studies. Aside from Cook and Borah’s 

more than doubling of his figure for Hispaniola, some of the earliest 

evidence and reports showing very large populations in Spanish occupied 

areas would support him. Fewkes confirmed this when he wrote 

about Puerto Rico: “The Europeans who first landed on the shores of 

Porto Rico [sic] reported the island to be densely peopled. The early 

Spanish voyagers state that the population was distributed over the 

whole island, but that it was thickly settled in the littoral tracts and 

along the banks of the rivers.” 106 This corresponds to what Cuko said 

earlier. It should be pointed out that the mountain regions would not 

have been fully reported upon because the early voyagers could not 

have possibly traveled its vast and isolated terrain. The implication is 

that the overall population would have been even larger than reports 

suggested due to population concentrations there. 

Still, the initial high population numbers for Borikén, of two hundred 

thousand, six hundred thousand, or more than a million there 

and in Jamaica as reported by Las Casas, 107 have been routinely 

rejected. Figueroa-Mercado notes that the six hundred thousand 

person figure given was “impossible” as a “rudimentary” agricultural 

economy could not have sustained such a high population. 108 Brau 

reduced this figure to an incredibly low sixteen thousand. 109 Alegría 

says that Las Casas’s figure “seems exaggerated” given what is known 

about the “native economy” and distribution of natives in smaller 

islands in the region. 110 He calculated a maximum figure of about 

thirty thousand inhabitants. 111 Unfortunately, these beliefs and calculations 

fall right in line with the concept of “primitivism,” which as 

we have seen is a myth of evolutionary theory. Alegría, ironically, goes 

on to support Fewkes in pointing out the “densely populated” islands 

the Spanish chroniclers documented in traveling along the Antillean 

coasts. “They write of valleys full of cleared fields and dotted with 

communities, many with ceremonial plazas.” 112 Regarding the use of 

agricultural techniques in relation to population size, he affirms, “The 

use of conucos indicates that, as was the case with many other large 

and complex societies in the Americas, the Taíno needed to increase


agricultural production in order to support a large population on a 

limited amount of land.” 113 Jaimes’s previous description of agricultural 

diversity, abundance, and sophisticated utilized techniques in the 

early Americas would support these statements. The very elaborate 

Antillean art, artifacts, and pottery found, along with the many ceremonial 

grounds crafted, are testament to a highly skilled culture. 

Since Borikén was a main cultural center of the Caribbean (along with 

Kiskeya), is it really inconceivable that the population there could 

have exceeded a million inhabitants at the time of European contact? 

Much higher population rates than previously known throughout the 

Americas would support this idea. 

Finally, given the right conditions, the chances for post-contact 

survival would also increase as a result of colonization. This survival 

appears to depend on factors such as climate conditions, topography, 

isolation, and the spread of epidemics. Studies have shown that “epidemics 

did not have a uniform impact within a region, depending 

on settlement pattern, degree of isolation, population density, climate 

conditions, and other factors.” 114 These factors have helped to explain 

long-term indigenous survival in various mountain interior regions in 

the Americas. Cook and Borah’s methods and findings of demographic 

pre- and post-European contact population counts for central México 

and Columbia could have direct implications for the mountainous 

interior of Borikén. Indigenous survival is explained by the authors’ 

look at zonal differences and climate in relation to the destruction of 

population. Their inquiry into differences between plateau, intermediate 

zone, and coastal regions of central México led them to realize 

that “the higher the altitude the less the loss of population in central 

Mexico through factors introduced by the Europeans. Obviously the 

relation is one of temperature and humidity.” 115 

In Colombia, the variety of climate zones also exhibits a direct corollary 

between altitudinal differences and destruction of population. 

Like central México, “the areas studied in Colombia show destruction 

of population but with the same marked altitudinal differences 

in impact; that is, the higher the altitude and consequently the colder 

the climate, the less massive the operation of the factors and the 

greater the proportionate survival of the aboriginal population.” 116 

For instance, population loss for the Tunja and Pamplona living in the 

interior regions of Colombia was much lower than for the Quimbaya, 

who resided in the intermediate zone analogous to central México. 117 

The Tunja and Pamplona achieved equilibrium and began the recovery 

process near the mid-eighteenth century, whereas the Quimbaya 

are said to have become effectively “extinct” by 1650. 118

88 


The direct correlation made between altitude and climate in relation 

to survival means that the proportion or chances of survival in 

higher mountain areas, compared to lower zones, would likely be 

greater. Aside from the isolation of many rural and coastal areas of 

Borikén that contributed to survival there, this correlation could 

directly be applied to the mountain regions with altitudes extending 

up to four thousand feet and lower temperatures than in other parts 

of the island. In terms of disease, the reported measles and small pox 

epidemics of 1518 and 1529 took place among the encomienda populations 

along the coast. There is no indication that these epidemics 

effectively spread to the mountains. The ancient presence and postcontact 

flight of the Jíbaro occurred before these outbreaks. All in 

all, the conditions for survival—isolation, isolation from disease, altitude, 

and climate—were most conducive to the mountainous interior. 

The remoteness of these regions is substantiated from our previous 

discussions. This survival is confirmed by the late eighteenth-century 

indigenous presence. 

Conclusion 

The Jíbaro continued to resist the Spanish presence in their own subtle 

way from the early seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Intermarriage 

and the absorption of the smaller African and Spanish populations 

enhanced the survival and growth of the indigenous culture. This type 

of synthesis has taken place within many indigenous societies worldwide. 

The late eighteenth-century Spanish censuses grossly underestimated 

the tens of thousands of Indian people residing on the island 

at that time as it measured “Indios” from only one region and did not 

consider “pardos libres” as indigenous peoples. This determination is 

consistent with deflated Spanish native population counts throughout 

the hemisphere. As to the pre-European population, the nonconsideration 

of epidemics that took place prior to surveys, European guilt 

resulting from the consequences of colonialism, the ethnocentric concept 

of “primitivism,” and justifications for the seizure of lands were 

main reasons for minimizing the numbers. As noted, isolation and 

altitudinal and climate factors likely increased the chances for postcontact 

survival in Borikén, particularly in the mountain regions. The 

passive resistance and continuity outlined in this chapter have proven 

to be successful, for this history has been passed down for generations 

and is still recounted by Jíbaro descendants today.

Chapter 5 

The Modern Jíbaro 

The jíbaro and the slum dweller continue to tell stories orally, stories 

in which the experience of daily life and the nightmares and the 

dreams of bright nights sparkled by the coquí and the cucubanos 

awaken the imagination to invent the legends that beautify the 

historical reality of the island’s past and present life. This persistent 

trait seems to gain momentum instead of waning as the centuries 

pass, as if we had made a secret pact to communicate with each other 

in this search for our image in all the sources of our inner self. 1 

The Jíbaro man told me a story that profoundly influenced him and 

one he could never forget. His mother was ill and had been unconscious. 

His family had taken her to the hospital but because it was 

a Sunday, they would not receive her. Desperate, he began driving 

around and took a side road to the end where there was a two-story 

house. The man saw a woman on the second floor, who soon asked 

him what he wanted. He said his mother was sick, unconscious, and 

they could not find help. The woman told her daughter she was going 

to help them and to keep an eye on the beans on the stove. They 

carried the woman into the house, into what the man described as a 

“temple.” He remembered seeing candles and images of saints. The 

woman then did something he had never experienced before. She 

gathered a good bundle of certain plants and began to ceremonially 

wave them, as if to extract something out of the sick woman. The 

woman woke up and walked out of the temple on her own two feet. 

When they got home, she ate abundantly. She had been unconscious 

for a week and is still alive today. 2 

The momentum of the stories and experiences have indeed magnified 

as the Jíbaro has always existed in Borikén. The wife of Cuko

90 


expressed that her whole family has forever been from a certain mountain 

region of the island. They had no memory of being from any 

other place. She said they were Jíbaro because they culturally grew 

up that way. 3 The Jíbaro influence in shaping nineteenth and parts of 

twentieth-century Puerto Rican society, along with their continued 

resistance to colonialism and fight for independence, are the primary 

focuses of this chapter. The voices brought out further reflect the 

attitudes, character, culture, and values of the Jíbaro, past and present. 

It could be said that the “modern Jíbaro,” who popular literature 

has portrayed, emerged in the early nineteenth century together with 

the erasure of the census category “Indios” and birth of a “Puerto 

Rican” nationality. Again, “Indios” became listed as “pardos libres.” 

This act came directly on the heels of the development of a Puerto 

Rican political and national consciousness. In other words, the creation 

of a Puerto Rican awareness came at the expense of the Indian 

or Jíbaro. This form of ethnocide negated or instantly wiped out 

the Indian presence from the record books, and since the category 

“pardos libres,” which we now know primarily pertained to Indian 

people, has not been interpreted this way in history, the job was complete. 

As with indigenous groups historically, this negation assumes a 

national consciousness to be superior to, and thus takes precedence 

over all things indigenous, particularly one’s identity. Franke Wilmer 

explains that the push for national integration was a phenomenon that 

came at the expense of indigenous peoples and was encouraged by a 

world system primarily centered on economic benefits: “Indigenous 

peoples belong to the non-European, decentralized local communities 

that resisted the process of assimilation, national integration, and 

incorporation into areas of the world colonized and now controlled 

by descendants of Europeans. Because incorporation into the world 

system is largely, but not exclusively, an economic process, claims to 

resources (land and subsurface minerals) occupied or used by indigenous 

peoples are often made by the modern state on the grounds that 

indigenous peoples are morally incompetent to make the so-called 

best use of resources.” 4 

As it turns out, the modern Jíbaro of the nineteenth century 

were (and still are) Indian descendants. The name “Puerto Rican” 

came to apply to the general population, or ironically, the majority 

Jíbaro people of the island. Made invisible and not given the 

credit deserved, they became a principal contributor to a Puerto 

Rican nationality. The politically and socially conservative colonial 

Spanish and Puerto Rican criollo elite of the early nineteenth century 

set the political or neocolonial boundaries of the Puerto Rican

The Modern Jíbaro 91 

national consciousness. Their strong ties to Spain contributed to 

their fear of “the masses.” López notes that at no time “did these 

groups develop a program of socio-economic reform beneficial to 

the masses to go along with their political demands.” 5 The ruling 

class fear of revolution, as was taking place in South America and 

México, together with the importation of conservative French planters 

escaping the revolution in Haití, contributed to their stringent 

policies. As agricultural production increased, slavery grew and so, 

too, the number of African slaves brought in. The late eighteenth 

and nineteenth centuries also saw an increase of immigrant groups 

to the island such as Corsicans and the Irish. All of this does not 

detract from the established indigenous presence, which has been 

consistently underestimated. High birth rates in the eighteenth and 

nineteenth centuries contributed substantially to the natural increase 

of the total population. As touched on later, for instance, Jíbaro 

women in the old days bore many children and often did not register 

them. 

An Indigenous Consciousness 

Despite the push toward a national awareness, the Jíbaro maintained 

an indigenous consciousness because they were the native people. 

This is a very important point because nearly all writers have not 

acknowledged or drawn this ethnical and cultural link as the Indian 

for them has been a memory of the past, or the Jíbaro cannot possibly 

fit that “image.” For example, in his book on the development 

of the Jíbaro in 1935, José Rosario noted that the indigenous peoples 

were “practically exterminated” and then makes the incredible statement 

that the large majority of Jíbaros are of “pure Spanish blood.” 6 

Although physical traits remained in some inhabitants in the countryside, 

“The Indians disappeared too rapidly to leave marked traces 

of their features in the present-day Puerto Rican.” 7 This is the sort of 

double talk that has been continually recycled, but, as we have shown, 

the Spanish population in Borikén had always been limited. Thus, 

the Jíbaro has been typically portrayed as “country folk” wandering 

around aimlessly, rather than a people grounded in the earth as the 

first agriculturalists. Also, since the name “Jíbaro” is ethnically Indian 

in origin, why would Spaniards collectively call themselves something 

they were not? Some sort of deep transformation must have occurred 

for “Spaniards” to become Jíbaro. 

Indeed, the Indian and Jíbaro are both culturally and genealogically 

linked. The Jíbaro man whose mother was sick told me both of his

92 


grandmothers were india. Many people addressed him as “el indio,” 

and he thinks he is of “90 percent” native blood in reference to the 

DNA testing that has taken place. 8 In reference to time, marriage, and 

survival, an elder from Yauco replied, “We keep being indios.” As to 

his rebellious youth, he stated, “When you have the Indian blood, 

I can tell you, the Indian blood is too hot—very hot.” He said he 

was “Jíbaro,” and felt “more than proud to be Jíbaro, than Puertorriqueño.” 

In the community where he lives now, everybody’s Jíbaro. 

“Everybody who lives in the [countryside] like us . . . is Jíbaro.” 9 

Another person I interviewed, named Uahtibili, wanted me to know 

that since he was four years old his mother would tell him, “Nosotros 

somos indios.” He said his whole family is Jíbaro. His grandfather on 

his mother’s side of the family was “indio” and his grandmother was 

“mestiza,” of both Indian and African descent. He noted that his 

father was a part of the DNA study. He tested “100 percent”—“indio 

completo.” 10 Uahtibili’s grandparents on his father’s side were from 

Utuado. According to the oral history told to him by his uncles and 

the rest of his family still living there, their family has been native to the 

Caguana area for hundreds and hundreds of years. The lands of barrio 

Caguana around the ceremonial center were a part of his family’s land 

before the government took it. Until that time, the last grandmothers 

to do traditional ceremonies there were his grandmother and aunt. 

His grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother 

were all comadronas (midwives) and cuanderas. His family continues 

to carry on what traditions they can today. 11 Despite Rosario’s claim, 

these are the types of testimonies commonly told by Jíbaro people 

contemporarily as to their ethnic makeup. 

The distinction between the Jíbaro and the Puerto Rican criollo 

or “blanquito” (whites) has also been one of culture, values, and 

character. Pepe said they have always known this because “in our communities 

people are always criticizing the values and behaviors of the 

blanquitos . . . They have power and money, but they are not us.” He 

added that everyone is conscious that the criollo as a socioeconomic 

class has control over the land and businesses they stole from them. 

“The criollos have developed a Puerto Rico in the image of the European, 

not a product of the natives.” 12 Even though they may have 

been born in Borikén, they are still foreigners to the Jíbaro because 

they keep stealing and oppressing them. “Our values are good,” he 

continued, because they are values that give them a good spirit and 

make them happy. “The values that the people express constantly are 

more of a spiritual thing . . . We have happiness.” He said the Jíbaro 

work hard, have a good meal, and then go to rest. They are not so


concerned about the value of money. The challenge for them is to 

preserve their happiness, despite adversity. 13 

On the other hand, the ruling class has looked at the Jíbaro with 

disdain. Steiner noted that the “scholarly scions of the older colonialism 

of the island—the wealthy criollos—viewed the jíbaro more 

solemnly, but no less contemptuously.” 14 He referenced Rosario, who 

had written that the Jíbaro “is ignorant and sickly, superstitious, and 

as a producer, he is dreadfully inefficient.” 15 He also wrote that “since 

the jíbaro comprises nearly three-fourths of Puerto Rico’s population, 

he constitutes the island’s greatest social problem.” 16 Rosario does not 

understand the Jíbaro because he is obviously not one of them. What 

he wrote would be laughable to them. He only sees color, not realizing 

that there were and are many “white Indians” on the island, as well as 

throughout the Americas (both pre- and post-European contact). As 

the indigenous peoples, the Jíbaro had a different worldview from the 

settler and criollo and, hence, were misunderstood and looked down 

on. Ironically, Rosario unwittingly infers that in the 1930s the Jíbaro 

Indian comprised the majority of the population. This is indeed true. 

Culturally, according to him, “the Indian was as potent in forming the 

social inheritance of the jíbaro as the Spaniards themselves.” 17 But if 

the Indian was practically extinct, how could this be? His “explanation” 

is that the Spaniards “adjusted themselves to the environment,” 

and inherited the indigenous culture before the Indian people disappeared! 

18 This is a most remarkable tale as this would have had to have 

happened over the course of about a single generation. However, the 

reality as we know was that the Indian women, in large part, endured 

and absorbed the Spaniard, the two groups intermixing and marrying 

from the beginning of contact, and, as already noted and expanded on 

shortly, many Jíbaro did not come into contact with the Spanish until 

the nineteenth century. While some Spaniards, no doubt, became 

Jíbaro through inheriting the indigenous culture, or ways of doing 

things, the large majority of Jíbaro people are of Indian blood. Most 

today are mestizo. All of this goes to show how potent the Indian 

aspect of society has been in comprising the physical, cultural, and 

social inheritance of the Jíbaro. 

An Attitude of Freedom 

Pepe’s description of a more contemporary cultural rift can be easily 

transported back to the early nineteenth century. Up until this time, 

the Jíbaro in the mountains and many isolated areas of Borikén had 

basically remained free. Aside from a couple of established settlements

94 


and towns such as Utuado, the Spaniards did not move to colonize 

the mountain regions until the early 1800s, and they did not have full 

control over the island until after the 1868 Grito de Lares. 19 According 

to Lamourt-Valentín, “We were a free country up until 1812. This 

is the same history as any of the African and Asian countries when 

European expansionism explodes after the Napoleonic wars, and they 

[the Spanish] take over Puerto Rico . . . Historically, the Spanish supposedly 

had sovereignty here over all that period of time previous, but 

that was only an economic arrangement. What they had was San Juan. 

They didn’t have the island.” 20 Picó essentially confirms Lamourt- 

Valentín’s statement in writing about the eighteenth century: “The 

daily life of the vast majority of Puerto Ricans who lived outside the 

walls of San Juan was organized in a different manner from that provided 

for in the laws and regulations. If one reads the reports of the 

bishops’ pastoral visits or the accounts of eighteenth-century travelers, 

one can detect that, in the workplace and in social activities, there 

was no constant presence of the state or of its ideology.” 21 Life was 

organized differently based on the values, culture, and character of the 

people. Those in San Juan sought power, money, and public esteem, 

while those in the country were generous, humble, and wished to be 

left alone. They were also strong when their freedom was threatened. 

The Jíbaro has always made a point of this. William Feliciano, the 

elder from Yauco, said, “Everything is okay . . . We don’t have no 

problem with nobody.” But if somebody has a problem with them, 

“then they have a problem” in dealing with the Jíbaro. 22 The typical 

character of the Jíbaro or Boricua, highlighting those who went to 

Hawai‘i over a century ago, is depicted here by Arroyo: 

They were proud of their indian culture as inhabitants of the island of 

Boriquen. Their heritage was based on a love of freedom and independence. 

The Spaniards called them “jibaros” which meant men of 

freedom. They were also called “Los Macheteros” for their use of cane 

knives as weapons in the fight for freedom and independence. An early 

commander of the island’s Spanish regiment referred to the jibaros as 

“the free coloured inhabitants of Porto Rico” [sic]. So the most significant 

aspect of the Porto Ricans who migrated to the plantations in 

Hawaii was that they were free persons. Their attitude of freedom was 

to determine their behavior in a slave-like environment on those plantations. 

The haol[e] (white) landowners, in their ignorance of culture and 

history, seeking laborers for their sugar cane, sent agents to Puerto Rico 

to recruit to a slave condition a group of people who had historically 

fought for and fiercely protected their freedom. 23


In the workplace, the Jíbaro had been farming the land as their 

ancestors had done. They were a self-sufficient people. “On his small 

plot of land, that was his not by deed but by inheritance, the jíbaro 

grew all the food he needed for his family. He freely picked the wild 

tropical fruits growing about his bohío, or hut, to sweeten his diet. On 

the island there were no droughts, no crop failures, and the growing 

season lasted all year. The jíbaro had little money. But he was a 

free man,” remarked Steiner. 24 This comment is aside from the great 

storm, or huracán, which would destroy crops, take lives, and was 

critical in bringing the Jíbaro to Hawai‘i in the first place. Cuko noted 

that in the “old times of the ancestors,” the land was to be worked 

and used to provide for the people. They had no “papers.” He said the 

outsiders invented the papers of private property to steal the land from 

them. 25 Lipio, an old and wise Indian elder from Isabela, expressed 

that when he was growing up in the early 1900s they grew “more 

than enough” of the native foods such as yuca, yautía, ñame, batata, 

maíz, beans, and fruits. He said his father owned a store and was a 

campesino who owned a lot of land in the area. Many people were 

living in the vicinity and a lot of them were living in bohíos made of 

yagua and madera. 26 The Jíbaro man told me that when he was growing 

up in the 1950s, they would produce everything they consumed. 

In the conuco gardens they would plant many different things. In the 

area where he lived, everybody had fields and produced. When you 

harvested you would share with the neighbors, and they would likewise 

share with you. At one time in his youth he did not believe in 

the relationship between the stages of the moon and planting. But as 

he began to observe and ask questions of people in the community, 

he came to believe in the process because you do not produce the 

same results if you do not follow the rules. If you do not plant at the 

right moment, the greatest yield will be lost. He said this makes you 

believe in the stages of the moon. The man still grows all types of 

fruits and other essentials such as yuca, yautía, batata, and maíz. 27 It 

is, therefore, most inaccurate to say that the Jíbaro was “dreadfully 

inefficient” when they had been growing and eating everything they 

needed. They did not meet the colonizer’s pretentious “expectations” 

but certainly met their own. 

Given the sheer isolation of so many communities and places, the 

influence of the state ideology on the masses was indeed minimum. 

It would of course increase as the Spaniards colonized and established 

more towns in the nineteenth century, but still did not extend 

to many isolated areas of the island. The impact of the ideology of 

Catholicism on the masses was also not as influential as has been

96 


commonly thought. As the official religion of the state, López noted 

that the Catholic Church essentially functioned as “another branch 

of the government, loyal to, controlled by and dependent on it for a 

good proportion of its income.” 28 Many Jíbaro were nominal Catholics 

in order to please the authorities and avoid their wrath. While 

the church was very apparent in terms of its religious dogma, “The 

jíbaro came to church only two or three times during the year. On 

the other hand no chapels were established in the country, so that 

there was no influence which could start a process of evolution in the 

religion inherited at the beginning of the settlement.” 29 The church’s 

influence did not reach into the cracks and crevices of the countryside 

and mountain regions. This point harkens back to the large percentage 

of Indian people who had not been baptized and counted in the 

late eighteenth-century censuses. Cuko expressed that he does not 

believe in censuses because in those days, at the time of his father and 

grandfather, the women would bear 10 or 12 children and not go to 

register them if she was not a participant of the church. He said everything 

happened in the community away from the church. He pointed 

out that the native people would baptize their children on their own 

without the presence of the church, so they wouldn’t know anything 

of their existence. 30 Déborah Berman-Santana adds that rurally people 

were “most often married not by the church but rather by local 

customs, such as going away together and then setting up housekeeping.” 

31 The Jíbaro had their own traditional form of “baptism,” as 

expanded on in the next chapter. 

Cuko explained that when the census people would come, if there 

was a difficult dirt road to maneuver, they would not go there. But if 

you were to walk to the end of the road, you would find 40 houses 

that might have eight children in each house. These people would not 

be counted in the census, he said. This is traditionally why the people 

went so far away: so they would not be identified, have to deal with 

the government and church, and remain a free people. This is also a 

very recent history as the time period Cuko is referring to was the late 

nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The people in these places had 

been well established having resided there for centuries. Cuko then 

told the story of what he witnessed when the census people came to 

his house to talk to his grandfather, who was very old at the time. They 

asked him what his “race” was of which he replied, “I am trigueño” 

(brown skinned). The census taker said, “No, no, what I want to 

know is what race you are.” His grandfather then remarked, “Well, 

I am Puertorriqueño.” The census man again said, “No, I want to 

know your race.” His grandfather never did reveal his “race,” or that


he was indio, so the census person wrote down whatever he wanted 

to. 32 Perhaps the census taker’s curiosity would have been satisfied 

if he had revealed his true identity. But this was the pattern, and the 

indio was once again not counted, nor wanted to be counted. This 

experience speaks to the Jíbaro’s independent spirit by not wanting to 

associate with or be dependent on outsiders. 

Revolts and Atrocities 

In these mountain towns lived the guerrilleros and macheteros who had 

fought the Spaniards in the revolts of the early 1800s. On the Plaza of 

Lares it was the jíbaros (many had come from neighboring Utuado) 

who raised the flag of Puerto Rico in the Revolution of 1868. When 

that revolution was lost after the Spanish repressions of 1887, the ‘Terrible 

Year,’ many of its intellectual leaders had to flee the country, but 

it was the illiterate but knowing jíbaros who kept the independence 

movement stubbornly alive. By 1891 they had become so strong that 

the colonial police arrested seventy members of the Asociación Liberal 

Separatista de Utuado on the charge of ‘conspiracy’ to drive the 

Spaniards out. They were defended by the statesman and poet José de 

Diego. Not even his eloquence could help them, though, for several of 

the accused proudly proclaimed their guilt in court. 33 

The many revolts and attempted revolution of the nineteenth 

century, all the way up until the 1950s, and exemplified today by 

the continuing struggle in Bieke (Vieques) versus the U.S. military, 

were continuations of the sixteenth-century revolts and war of independence. 

The Jíbaro was the primary impetus of these struggles, 

while slave uprisings were also significant. Their plight and condition, 

along with the push for abolition, were motivating factors for 

some Puerto Rican criollo elite to assume their leadership roles in 

supporting these causes. “And the revolts of the jíbaros, both of 

overt and passive resistance, were now eulogized, and often led, 

by the Creole intellectuals,” wrote Steiner. 34 The more progressive 

leaders born in Puerto Rico had developed a nationalist identity, and 

increasingly yearned for autonomy or independence. They viewed 

themselves apart from the Spaniards, often resenting their imposed 

dictates. With the need for more labor, repressive laws and policies 

implemented in the first half of the nineteenth century greatly 

affected the grassroots general population. Subsistence farmers, 

now called “squatters,” were often evicted from their own lands 

that had been seized by large landowners. The goal, states López, 

“was to create a landless peasantry who would be forced to seek

98 


employment or sharecropping agreements in the sugar, coffee and 

tobacco establishments in order to survive.” 35 The landless were 

compelled to work and forced to register on rolls. As used in South 

Africa, “work books” (libretas reglamentarias) were distributed to 

workers to update their employment service. These were maintained 

by employers, who imposed strict penalties if the books were lost. 36 

The Guardia Rural (rural police) and Spanish Guardia Civil were 

established to enforce labor laws and protect landowners: “On the 

whole, the rural population remained poor, illiterate, isolated from 

the main urban centers, exploited and abused and often brutalized 

by the Guardia Rural and the Guardia Civil.” 37 

These factors contributed to the revolts of the 1860s culminating 

in the 1868 Grito (“the Cry”) de Lares, or when “the people 

rose against injustice,” remarked Cuko. 38 This attempted revolution 

of independence was meant to free the people of Borikén from Spanish 

rule, abolish slavery, and “represented the interests of most of the 

population.” 39 It was orchestrated and led by revolutionary figures like 

Ramón Emeterio Betances, Segundo Ruiz-Belvis, Mariana Braceti, 

and a number of foreign hacendados (landowners). While much credit 

has been rightfully attributed to these leaders, the revolution would 

never have been possible if it were not for the unacclaimed masses. 

Picó notes, “some 600 or more people armed with shotguns, revolvers, 

and machetes entered Lares,” and “551 people were arrested 

in connection with the Grito de Lares.” 40 Women, like Braceti, also 

played important roles as Figueroa-Mercado alluded to: it is “a fact 

that many of the leaders were related through the women, who were 

one hundred percent behind the revolution.” 41 Lares was one vital 

link (or cell) in the larger takeover, so there were many people in 

other parts of the island ready and involved in the action. Along with 

Lares, most of these places such as San Sebastián, Camuy, and Utuado 

were Jíbaro strongholds. Silén describes the profound meaning of 

the event: “The Grito de Lares marked the birth of our Puerto Rican 

nationality. It was the voice of a Puerto Rico that had its own interests 

and its own consciousness. . . . The revolutionary nucleus was 

recruited from among our campesinos. The jíbaro, as the man who 

produced the coffee on the hacienda, was cast in the leading revolutionary 

role of the anonymous hero fighting for the demands of his 

class. In joining the revolution he put his protest on the line against 

the privileges and luxury of a tiny minority. From that day on, the 

jíbaro was the people.” 42 

The grandfather of Cuko’s grandfather was a fighter at the time. 

He was a tiznado, or “native warrior.” Through the oral tradition


passed down to him by his “fathers,” Cuko told me that native warrior 

groups would paint their faces with ashes and go out for a few 

days at a time to sabotage the Spaniards. When I asked him of those 

who were fighting at the time of the revolution, he said everybody 

(“todos”) was Jíbaro and tiznado. He likened their role to a soldier or 

army looking for the victory for “one people.” Cuko recalled learning 

that a group of tiznado had gathered in his community during the 

Grito. They went down to the border area of San Sebastián to try to 

prevent the Spaniards from getting to Lares. Their success was partial. 

Commenting on the overall outcome of the revolution, he expressed 

that they “neither lost nor won.” While the Spaniards made it into 

Lares, their success was not so strong because if you go to Lares today 

you find native communities everywhere. In this sense, the Grito was 

a victory because you don’t see many Spaniards there, but there are 

many barrios of Jíbaro people carrying on their traditions. Cuko said 

that this side of the history is not told in “the books.” 43 

Another part of the event that has been largely left out of the narrative 

is how the people continued to fight the Spaniard afterward. 

Pluma, a Jíbara cultural practitioner born and raised in Lares, pointed 

out that a lot of fighting continued in the mountains. As she has 

learned through her family history, native revolts also continued in 

the town. The people burned down many of the stores owned by 

wealthy Spaniards and criollos. 44 She then began to sing a song that 

was composed to signify this turn of events. So despite Maldonado- 

Denis’s comments that the revolution was “snuffed out immediately,” 

and there was “no revolutionary consciousness” to sustain the revolution, 

45 the resistance continued well after the initial uprising had 

been put down. It would be more accurate to say that there was no 

leadership remaining to sustain the revolution as most leaders had 

been arrested, fled, or were not there to begin with. But the revolutionary 

consciousness of the Jíbaro, which had been instilled since the 

early 1500s, remained. While it certainly did not produce the desired 

results, the Grito de Lares lives on historically in the consciousnesses 

of many as the event is annually commemorated. Steiner recalled his 

journey to Lares a century after the Cry: “It was like that all day 

on the road to Lares. On mountainous slopes so steep they would 

have defied goats, in the bateys of jíbaro huts, and on the verandas of 

country houses, thousands and thousands of people sang and shouted 

and waved Puerto Rican flags and happy clenched fists at the passing 

cars; while the young people danced to the tune of patriotic and 

revolutionary songs on the loudspeakers. Even ‘La Borinqueña,’ the 

national anthem, was sweet on the lips.” 46

100 


While the revolution from Spain was apparently lost, it became a 

catalyst and reference point for subsequent liberation efforts. “When 

a revolution is not won, it has no end.” 47 The movement had become, 

more or less, an indigenist nationalist struggle for social, cultural, 

economic, and political independence. This coincided with the continuation 

of repressive policies against the masses. “From 1875 to 

1885 a procession of ten Spanish governors heaped new persecutions 

and limitations on top of the old tyrannies,” wrote Silén. 48 With Spain 

close to losing all of her “possessions” in the Americas, and the then 

governor’s fear of losing control, they clamped down even further. 

The infamous torture era, or “el componte,” 49 was ignited after the 

formation of the Autonomist Party in 1887 and influences of underground 

separatist societies. Extremist conservative propaganda aimed 

at “separatist” autonomists, many of whom were actually quite conservative, 

led to a flood of Spanish atrocities committed throughout 

the island. The atrocities would periodically continue until the Spaniards 

were finally expelled from Puerto Rico in 1898. 

When I first began hearing stories of the acts that were carried 

out against the people at this time, I thought for sure these must 

have been descriptions of the crimes the Spaniards had undertaken 

in the sixteenth century. However, I soon learned that what I was 

hearing were accounts of a very recent history. Elder Lipio’s mother, 

who had lived during el componte, used to tell him about what happened. 

When the Spaniards and the government came, they would 

follow “los indios” around and kill the men and rape the women. They 

would also throw the babies in the air and have them fall on their 

swords. When the people would run away and hide in the woods, 

the Spaniards would then burn down the forest. 50 Surely, I thought, 

these must have been of the descriptions of Las Casas’s time and witness! 

But Lipio said that a lot of Indian people had been fighting the 

Spaniards in the area where we were. This was going on shortly before 

he was born. In speaking, he was actually referring to his own people 

as elder Lipio is about as “full blooded” as one can get. I then met 

another elder, named Domingo Guzman, from the same area of Isabela 

as Lipio. He was about 108 and born in the “suburuko,” or deep 

forest. His daughter was told that there were many families that lived 

back there in those days. She had “strong Indian features.” I highlight 

this because a good number of the faces I have seen in Borikén over 

the years remind me of the faces I have viewed paging through North 

American Indian picture books. Both of elder Guzman’s parents were 

born in Puerto Rico, and he said his son had the blood of an “indio.” 

When talking about el componte, he was told by elders and his parents


that the Spaniards came “two years” before he was born. This would 

have been right about the time of the Spanish American war. He said 

the Spaniards would “throw the babies up” and stick them with their 

knives. They did this to make the “Boricuas” “respect them,” he 

added. Again, this happened at that moment, two years before he was 

born. The elder uttered that the Boricua were fed up with the Spaniards. 

There was too much poverty, so they began the uprisings and 

upheaval. Thus, the Spaniards brought el componte to them. 51 

The Jíbaro man said he learned a lot about this era from his grandmother. 

She was born about 1838 and lived until she was 127. She 

died in 1965. Her name was Catana; her mother’s name was Calaya; 

and her grandmother was Naina. His grandmother told him about the 

torture and internment of el componte. When the Spaniards came, they 

were not good. They would “pull out” the fingers of the natives and, 

for those who resisted, they would break their central spine. The people 

used to flee to the forest. He said his mother knew some of those 

who had their fingers broken and went through this experience. The 

man then noted that Borikén was in a difficult situation because of the 

Spanish American war. When the Spaniards were retreating from the 

Americans, they would inundate the countryside, stealing and looting 

from the people. They had to bury their goods and money to 

prevent them from being taken. 52 Lastly, Cuko confirms for us what 

elder’s Lipio and Guzman had said. He was told by his grandparents 

that the Spaniards would tie a belt around the waists of women who 

were pregnant. Then, after forcing the babies out, they would throw 

them up and catch them with their knives. Cuko pointed out that his 

grandparents did not talk much about the time of the early Spanish 

coming, but they spoke about what was happening in their lives and 

what they personally knew. 53 As a consequence of these brutal actions, 

it would be very interesting to see the reaction of King Juan Carlos of 

Spain, who only a few years ago downplayed the negative effect of the 

colonial Spanish presence in the Americas! 

The repression and atrocities heaved upon the population were, in 

large part, in relation to the resistance perceived or carried out. Separatists 

societies like the Asociación Liberal Separatista de Utuado, 

as mentioned previously, and Club Borinquen, were prominent. 

These pro-independence types of groups continued in the 1890s 

with Cuban influence: “The Separatist activities gathered force in 

the decade of the ’90’s [sic], due to the influence Cuban Separatism 

had on Puerto Rican Separatism, this time under the leadership 

of José Martí.” 54 There were more uprisings of significance like the 

one attempted and put down in Yauco in 1897. So many grassroots

102 


people in particularly the rural and mountain areas of the island had 

resisted the Spanish presence until the very end. The autonomous 

status granted to Puerto Rico in 1898 lasted only a short time, 

until the Americans crushed it. After fighting for nearly four centuries 

to expel the Spaniards, it must have been truly demoralizing 

to the Jíbaro when the Americans moved in. The reluctance of the 

autonomist leadership to heed Betances’s repeated calls to take up 

arms before it was too late meant they went from puppets of one 

regime to another. Still, the Jíbaro was ready: “As late as 1901, when 

‘Premier’ Luis Muñoz Rivera was threatened with death by pro- 

American mobs, he was secretly visited by independentista leaders 

who told him that a guerrilla army of eight thousand jíbaros was 

waiting ‘to march on San Juan’ to defend him. Muñoz refused the 

offer. ‘There must not be bloodshed,’ he said. In the mountains the 

jíbaros waited for another day and another leader.” 55 

The U.S. military presence in Puerto Rico also came at the expense 

of the general population, despite their pronouncements of “benevolent 

intentions.” The Americans invaded out of their own political, 

economic, and moral self interest, like they did in Cuba and numerous 

Pacific countries like Hawai‘i, and as they had done in their wars 

against North American Indian nations. The first thing they did in 

Borikén, said the Jíbaro man, was to devalue the currency. The dollar 

became the official exchange to the advantage of American businesses. 

The period of military rule was “particularly harsh,” writes Picó. “In 

the countryside there were still bands of tiznados who attacked Spanish 

property. The military government repressed these with a heavy 

hand, but in some parts of the island it took time to reestablish the 

institutional order.” 56 The Americans were apparently committing 

similar atrocities like the Spaniards in “reestablishing order.” When 

he was a young boy, elder Lipio personally witnessed American troops 

going into homes where they would rape the women and kill the children. 

They would wait for the husbands to come home and then kill 

them. Some would take the women and the land. My initial surprise 

led me to confirm if it was really the Americans he was talking about 

in revealing this oral history. Elder Lipio expressed that he saw this, 

and it was the “gringo.” He said the gringos came to take the land 

from the people. 57 Pepe told me of testimonies he has learned about 

from mostly elders that tell of American massacres and assaults on 

native communities through information attained from the Spaniards. 

The two sides were apparently collaborating. He said the Americans 

knew they had to crush the native people in order to take the island, 

and there are a lot of oral accounts to support this. 58 These actions


by the Americans are, in fact, not surprising given their track record 

and that they were carrying out similar outrages at this time in Cuba 

and the Philippines, both of which were very bloody affairs. Torture 

such as “waterboarding,” then known as the “water-cure,” was used 

by the Americans during the Philippine-American War. The following 

sentiment displayed during the northern Luzon campaign could be 

applied to Borikén, especially to those who resisted: 

If the people sympathized with and supported the guerillas, and if, 

indeed, this was a “people’s war,” then the only solution was war 

against the people . . . An American congressman who visited the Philippines, 

and who preferred to remain anonymous, spoke frankly about 

the results of the campaign: “You never hear of any disturbances in 

Northern Luzon,” he reported, “because there isn’t anybody there to 

rebel . . . The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos 

that were put under ground. Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept 

no records; they simply swept the country and wherever and whenever 

they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him.” 59 

Resistance to American and criollo rule would continue throughout 

the first half of the twentieth century. At one point in 1936, after 

the Nationalist party was established and had gained strength, New 

Deal strategist Earl Hanson wrote, “The majority of Puerto Rican voters 

are now committed to independence.” 60 For the Jíbaro, nationalist 

hero Pedro Albizu-Campos was a leader they supported. His unequivocal 

stand for the independence of the country and the struggle he 

endured meant he was one of them. Uahtibili’s father was an admirer 

of Albizu-Campos, and a descendant of native warriors who fought 

for the land. He had said Don Pedro was indigenous and following 

the native way. He was a part of the nationalist movement since he was 

15, a cadete of the Republic. Uahtibili has a fond memory of when, 

as a boy, his father took him to see Don Pedro at the plaza in Río 

Piedras. He was an electrifying speaker and great leader. 61 When Pepe 

was very young, he remembers his father and those around him talking 

about the nationalist movement and Albizu-Campos. Pepe would 

always think that this was something about their lifestyle and struggle 

as native people. His family was living at that time in the swamps of 

San Juan, so he felt the movement had to do with “us,” or “the people 

that lived the way we lived.” He was told that Albizu-Campos “fought 

for our liberty” and was a victim of the government because he was 

doing the right thing. His family and close friends strongly identified 

with the values of Don Pedro and his fight for the people, opposed

104 


to the ruling class. When Pepe would see him in the news, he would 

think, “Our own people can do this, put up a fight.” He used to feel 

very frustrated when people would talk about the defeat of the nationalist 

uprising. 62 

Carlos Feliciano, a leader of the Cadet Corps who was imprisoned 

with Albizu-Campos for several months, noted, “The struggle for 

independence begin when Columbus landed. And the first Indian 

fight against him.” 63 He spoke very highly of Don Pedro: “Oh, he 

was a beautiful man. He was the most beautiful man I ever know. 

Never in my life I see a man like Albizu Campos . . . If I tell you this, 

you won’t believe it. But in the five years I was in prison, I never was 

so free as the time I spent with Albizu Campos. I feel free. That was 

the truth.” 64 Feliciano also commented on the revolution of 1950, 

which he said was provoked by Luis Muñoz-Marín’s government to 

“break down” the Nationalist party. “After that, in Jayuya, in Utuado, 

in Arecibo, in Río Piedras, in San Juan, in Mayagüez, in many other 

towns we begin to fight. It’s true the Lares revolution was big; but 

that was just in Lares. This time, in a dozen towns we start the real 

struggle for independence and open revolution.” 65 Muñoz-Marín 

later said the Nationalists were “just a minority lunatic quirk,” 66 a 

reference to “the armed jíbaros of Don Pedro,” according to Steiner. 

Yet, the government had to use the five thousand soldiered U.S. 

296th Infantry to suppress the revolution! 67 Perhaps the following act 

of Bolívar Marquez during the Ponce Massacre epitomizes the Jíbaro 

or Puerto Rican spirit and tenacity for freedom in a long struggle: 

“On sunny Palm Sunday afternoon, a young Puerto Rican dragged 

his dying body over the hot pavement of a Ponce street. It was March 

21, 1937. Summoning all his strength, he reached the sidewalk. His 

finger moistened in his blood, he wrote, 

¡Viva la República! 

¡Abajo los asesinos! 

Long Live the Republic! 

Down with the assassins!” 68 

Final Reflections of Continuity 

After the American takeover in 1898, the construction of cemeteries 

was directly related to the indigenous presence. “Even after the 

conquest of the island by the United States, the religious rites of 

the Borinquén Indians seemed to have survived at Caguanas, near 

Utuado. The ‘pagan rituals’ of the dead caused the first American


Governor to order the immediate building of modern cemeteries,” 

explained Steiner. 69 He remarked how certain religious offerings 

continued “well into the twentieth century,” referring in part to Fewkes’s 

findings. 70 In the section of his study titled, “Present Descendants 

of the Porto Rican [sic] Indians,” Fewkes repeatedly noted 

the “Indian features” of people he came across “everywhere,” and 

particularly in isolated mountain areas. 71 Of the bohíos the inhabitants 

lived in, he compared the modern “cabins” he encountered in 

his research with the more traditional Indian bohío. As with the modern 

incorporation of madera and tin roofs in the building of bohíos, 

the following passage provides a good example of how the people 

retained their traditional ways, in synthesized forms, in adapting to 

Western culture: “The houses of the aboriginal Porto Ricans were 

like those of the Haitians and not very different from the cabins of 

the poorer people of the island to-day [sic], especially those in the 

mountains, where old types of construction still survive. Naturally 

modern cabins present many modifications, as the use of iron nails 

in fastening the beams, but the materials used in construction are 

practically the same, and the old architectural types are still followed 

in modern dwellings.” 72 

Martínez-Torres noted that people were still living in bohíos in the 

mid-twentieth century. Regarding present-day descendants in the town 

of Morovis, he said, “There are a lot of families here in Morovis who 

are Indian descendants,” including his own. 73 People were also living in 

caves before and after European contact. Martínez-Torres showed me 

the Indian pictographs he had found in the caves of Morovis. Some 

of these pictographs are of horses that were drawn after the Spanish 

arrival, since the horse is not endemic to the region. 74 The then director 

of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture suggested to him that 

they might have been “dogs,” to which Martínez-Torres replied that 

dogs didn’t have reins. 75 He has further conducted oral interviews 

with some of the “old people” of Morovis. These elders revealed stories 

about their Indian grandparents being captured by Spaniards with 

their trained dogs. One woman he interviewed, named “La India,” 

said her grandmother was captured and made to be a wife. Martínez- 

Torres found out that La India’s grandmother had been baptized in 

1842. He stressed that these types of stories are still told in the center 

of the island, with many of these events happening in the nineteenth 

century. When he first heard these testimonies, he thought these 

people were perhaps “dreaming with fantasies” and remembering old 

stories of a very long time ago. But through his research, he came to

106 


realize that “these people were talking about their real grandparents 

that were [there] three generations ago.” 76 

Another family I had the opportunity of meeting is the Chéverez 

family. They still live in a fairly isolated area of Morovis and have 

continued to maintain certain cultural traditions such as the making 

of ceramic pottery. Elder and matriarch, Doña Varín, told me their 

family has always lived there, referring to the mountain regions. She 

confirmed that people were living in the mountains prior to the Spanish 

presence, and that people had lived in caves, too. 77 Delgado comes 

to let the cat out of the bag in his research by most significantly revealing 

that thousands of people were living in caves, especially before 

1830 up until the mid-twentieth century. They went there to escape 

from the Spaniards. The oral history of the Jíbaro constantly refers 

to the memory of this era as the “año de las guácaras,” or “the time 

we lived in the caves.” 78 This was the most important time of these 

people’s lives. We can say with utter assurance that those who were 

living in these caves were Indian descendants. Delgado states that the 

Puerto Rican academy does not acknowledge this era in the official 

history of the island. 79 This is basically just another way the academy 

has attempted to “whitewash” the Jíbaro out of existence and has 

failed to tell the truth regarding the native plight. 

Finally, Angel Santiago-Cruz, Boricua and president of the United 

Puerto Rican Association of Hawai‘i, recalled that when he was growing 

up in Bayamón in the 1960s and 1970s, bohíos were still being 

used, and, while most people were not living in them, there were 

Indian families scattered throughout the area. 80 He also told me there 

were a lot of native families present in many other regions of the island 

at the time. Santiago-Cruz said many of the things his mother and 

grandmother did were not introduced by the Europeans. For instance, 

the way they prepared their foods and the ingredients and utensils 

they used were indigenous in origin. Those around him specifically 

grew plants for medicinal use, and they always planted by the cycles of 

the moon. He pointed out that during his mother and grandmother’s 

generation, it was not popular to talk about these things because they 

had been made to feel ashamed of their Indian background. This was 

due in part to the American takeover of Puerto Rico and the foreign 

cultural influences that had been introduced. Nevertheless, they still 

did things in the native way. 81


Conclusion 

As the population of the mountain regions of Borikén at the end of 

the eighteenth century was primarily indigenous, this was largely the 

case throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. 

At the end of the 1800s, there were “entire villages of Indians in 

the mountains.” 82 The Jíbaro largely comprised the population of the 

rural areas of the island, too, and many were living in caves. They had 

in one form or another continued to resist Spanish imperial policies 

in the nineteenth century, endured the “el componte” torture era, and 

has been a main impetus in ousting the colonizer. This resistance has 

persisted during the American occupation era. While an important contributor 

to the formation of a Puerto Rican nationality, the Jíbaro maintained 

an indigenous consciousness and many of their social and cultural 

traditions, albeit often in synthesized forms. As revealed in this chapter 

and the next, I have learned through my experiences and sources that 

a strong native cultural identity and distinct values and characteristics 

have been passed down through many many families over generations. 

The oral history and voices brought out reveal intimate testimonies that 

contradict and add life to accepted historical accounts.


Chapter 6 

Cultural Survival and the 

Indigenous Movement 

The first sections of this final chapter expand on and go into detail 

about certain customary and spiritual areas of cultural survival in 

Borikén. The testimonies are powerful and help us to see clearer the 

extent of the Jíbaro presence. The shamanistic practice that came to be 

known as “espiritismo” (spiritualism), essentially predicting the future, 

spiritual healing, or assisting one on a spiritual level, has deep roots 

on the island. Over time, some important aspects of the Christian and 

African traditions were adopted and syncretized into the indigenous 

belief structure. I will comment on the meaning of this syncretism and 

how it pertains to certain spiritual traditions, such as the Rosario Cantar. 

I’ll further draw on analogies of how these practices relate back 

to ancient times and a general indigenous philosophy. Espiritismo was 

widely used in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, 

and is still practiced today. Medicinal healing and linguistic survival 

are other significant areas that are looked at. These forms of survival 

are testament to degrees of resistance that were set into place over 

time. It should also be noted that espiritistas and cuanderos were prevalent 

and widely used among the early Boricua who went to Hawai‘i. 

This is documented by Arroyo, who tells numerous stories of different 

forms of healing performed and of telepathy. He wrote, “The espiritista 

was usually a good person, but could also put a curse on someone. 

Even though the Borinkees were religious, mostly Catholic, they all 

believed in the old ways, sometimes referred to as voodoo.” 1 The latter 

parts of the chapter explore the role of the Jíbaro-Boricua in influencing 

the twentieth century independence movement on the island. 

I look at the indigenous meaning of the contemporary movement

110 


and struggle and how breaking the cycle of dependency could create 

a more sustainable and just future. 

Customs, Espiritistas, and Cuanderos 

The practice of espiritismo has been passed down since ancient times 

as our ancestors routinely evoked the spirits to assist them. The most 

sacred and cherished spiritual symbol of indigenous Caribbean peoples 

is the cemí. Made of stone or wood, cemís are not “gods” or 

“idols,” as they have often been interpreted to be, but personal or 

familial guardians representing various spiritual entities and a link 

between the physical and ancestral worlds. They may be compared to 

the functions of Christian saints. 2 The cemí, whose powers were often 

evoked through the cohoba (a native plant that is inhaled) ceremony, 

was used as a means to, for example, heal the sick, assist women in 

childbirth, help bring about an abundant harvest, achieve victory in 

war, and make prophesies about the future. Although Pané, Peter 

Martyr, and Las Casas all equated the tradition with “devil worship,” 

they recorded numerous functions of the cemí. Las Casas observed, 

“When I would ask the Indians at times: ‘Who is this zemi you name?’ 

they answered me: ‘He who makes it rain and makes the sun shine 

and gives us children and the other benefits we desire.’” 3 The powers 

drawn forth by the modern-day espiritista are basically a continuum of 

the spiritual practice of the ancient behike, similar to a shaman. 

A woman I met in her seventies told me that when she was growing 

up everybody believed in espiritistas. Her Indian apodo is “Güiya.” 

When she was young she lived with her aunt in a bohío made of yagua. 

The floor was made of earth. She recalled that when she was pregnant 

with her son, one of his feet became positioned improperly. She was in 

pain and knew it would be dangerous if she went into labor. She consulted 

an espiritista, or “a man who worked with spirits,” who helped 

her and solved the problem. 4 Güiya said her mother was india. She 

never ate on the table or sat on a chair. She always squatted and ate 

with her fingers. She ate from dita (a bowl-shaped calabash made from 

the native higüera tree), as most did in the old days and some still do 

today. 5 The people back then also commonly drank from coca (a cup 

made from coconut that is African in origin). The use of the calabash 

of course relates back to the story of Yaya and Yayahel in the creation 

myth of the sea. Güiya expressed to me what her mother would do 

if she wanted it to stop raining. She would use a piece of stick, wrap 

one end with cloth, and light it on fire. She’d then wave it and say, 

“Santa Clara, make the rain go away,” repeatedly. “Clara,” or “claro,”

Cultural Survival and the Indigenous Movement 111 

means to clear. It would work. Güiya would do it, too. Her daughter, 

Migui, remembered one time when it was “raining really hard,” and 

her mother “did it.” Five or ten minutes later, “the sky cleared up, and 

the sun came out.” 6 Here, a Christian saint’s name was adopted to fit 

an indigenous practice in adapting to the times. The use of the stick 

and fire was strictly a native way of carrying out the act. Migui also 

recalled that if her grandmother felt that something was going wrong, 

she would wave her arms and say, “Espiritumado get away from me!” 7 

It still gave her the chills to reflect on this. 

Pepe, who is the son of Güiya, said his grandmother strongly 

believed in espiritismo. “She believed that everything was due to 

spirits.” His mother used to sew for a living. He remembered one 

day when the sewing machine broke. His grandmother rushed into 

the room and got out a bottle of “alcoholado” (alcohol distilled with 

plants). She then sprinkled the alcoholado over the machine and began 

to talk to the spirit that was causing the damage. She would say, “Get 

out of that machine and go to where you should be! Go to where you 

belong. You don’t belong here anymore.” She was adamant about this 

because the family depended on the money generated from her daughter’s 

work. Pepe said he was always frightened whenever she would 

do these types of things. For his grandmother, there was “always the 

presence of spirits in any happening.” For instance if there was a social 

problem with the neighbors, she would immediately evoke the spirits 

to resolve the conflict. While she was not “formally” an espiritista, this 

is the way she lived her life. 8 Her speaking to the sewing machine is 

a good example of how indigenous peoples believe that all things are 

alive and communicate. 

When I entered the kitchen of Isabel Serrano, the wife of elder Feliciano, 

she was in the process of peeling about six hundred bananas. 

She said she had peeled fifteen hundred the other day. 9 She and her 

husband were in the process of making some of the most delicious 

pasteles I have ever tasted. They did this every week and sold them 

as their business. She was born in Arecibo. Her mother, who I met, 

was originally from Utuado and had strong Indian features. She told 

me her mother’s mother was “india.” 10 Back then, they lived in a 

barrio far from town. Their house was made of yagua and the roof 

of tin. Everyone had tin roofs where they lived, instead of traditional 

thatched roofs made of yagua or enea leaves, in adapting to the use of 

metal. She noted that they cooked with fogón and used dita and coca. 

They also raised animals and cultivated crops. She then said, “In those 

times, we lived better than now.” One dilemma today is that everything 

is too expensive. They didn’t have to pay very much for things

112 


before, and life was more community oriented. She also talked about 

the times when there would be a drought, which usually lasted for six 

or seven months. As a remedy, they would go down to the river where 

she would pray the rosary and the young people behind her would 

put statues under the water to make it rain. It would work because 

it would rain after that, she said. 11 We see here how Christian statues 

became substitutes for the cemí, which was associated with water and 

used to make it rain in ancient times. The Carib also buried them in 

the earth in seeking assistance from the ancestral world and later to 

keep them away from the Spaniards. 

I came to ask Isabel if there was African ancestry in her family 

because she was very dark skinned. She answered, “I suppose, yes, 

but I don’t know them.” I then had the pleasure of viewing her family 

photo album. The multiethnic makeup of the many members of 

her family clearly revealed African, Indian, and mestizo influences. She 

actually looked more “indio” when she was younger. In terms of the 

root culture of her family, she commented, “All of them are indio, no 

matter what.” 12 I asked Uahtibili the same question because one of his 

grandmothers was mestiza of African descent. He replied that he does 

not know of his African cultural background. 13 That part of his family 

history was lost. He did not know of his family from Africa similarly 

to how most African Americans in the United States were removed 

from knowing about their African ancestral roots. What he knows is 

immediate, or what he learned about when he was growing up. And 

that is that the cultural base of his family is indio. This experience is no 

different for many indigenous groups or peoples who are accustomed 

to knowing about the places or lands where they are from. This point 

also speaks to the critics who are constantly remarking about how the 

African aspect of the Indian “revival” is ignored and disregarded. But 

this is not an issue of disregard but one of familiarity. Uahtibili said 

he knows of many people who look African on the outside but their 

culture is of the Indian of Puerto Rico. They may refer to themselves 

as “Afro-Boricua,” because they are of mixed African and Indian 

descent. 14 

Isabel told me she had cooked with wood and used dita her whole 

life. She was about to make more dita as the higüera fruit in her yard 

was ready to harvest. They also used spoons made of the maya leaf. 

Isabel used to be an espiritista. She said she was “born” an espiritista 

and did it for many years, but not any more. Elder Feliciano intervened 

saying he did not believe in espiritismo. “I never see nothing,” 

he replied. “They make you a fool.” 15 My immediate thought here 

drew back to the way Pané’s religiously biased and mocking narration


of the philosophy made the Indian people look rather silly. He was 

the one who originally portrayed the practice as foolish and “deceptive.” 

16 Isabel tried to explain that people used to be more espiritista 

than Catholic, seeming to imply that the belief and practice back then 

were more respected, as well as widespread. The main point to keep 

in mind here is not whether espiritismo “works,” but that this belief as 

a form of spiritualism still exists and was well practiced until recently. 

It has survived in Borikén for centuries. 

When Isabel said they also used to look more to curanderos and 

comadronas, elder Feliciano agreed and added, “The people who come 

from the Indians” use plants to get better. 17 Curanderos were and are 

sophisticated in their knowledge of medicinal herbs. Since doctors and 

hospitals in the nineteenth century were normally located in the main 

urban areas caring primarily for the elite, rurally, according to López, 

“the vast majority of people usually turned to home remedies or local 

curanderos when ill.” 18 As documented in interviews with contemporary 

practitioners by María Dolores Hajosy-Benedetti, a scholar and 

practitioner of traditional folk medicine, healing through traditional 

medicinal plants and herbs was still being practiced in Puerto Rico in 

the late 1980s. 19 And there are many curanderos on the island today. 

Hajosy-Benedetti writes about the many benefits and healing power 

of wild plants and how they have sustained our species for thousands 

of years. In addition, using wild plants affirms “our connection with 

our ancestors, and thus with the traditions that sustain and define 

us as a people . . . and as natural beings.” 20 One of her interviews 

was with Bárbara Rodríguez, a practitioner from the central mountain 

region of the island, who shared some familial background of what 

she knows about native plants: 

My great grandmother always had all kinds of medicinal plants 

growing in her garden. She never ran to the doctor for pills or injections. 

In those days, everyone used the medicinal plants growing in 

their gardens; they knew how to prepare them because their parents 

and grandparents and their great grandparents had done it. The 

knowledge passed from one person to another, from one generation 

to another. 

Every jíbaro household had its garden, and every garden had its red 

mint (yerba buena), marjoram (mejorana), rosemary (romero), peppermint 

(menta), lemon grass (limoncillo), rue (ruda), fragrant geranium 

(geranio oloroso), paletaria. They were an important part of the household. 

In what looked like an ornamental flower garden, you could find 

medicine for just about everything. 21

114 


Isabel and elder Feliciano also began talking about the benefits 

and cures of using medicinal plants. He said aspirin only “blocks” 

your headache but plants heal you. She added, “When the cuanderos 

give you plants, you get better.” They were both critical of Western 

medicine, especially how the industry makes a profit off of patients. 

He named plants that cure strokes, while she talked about preventing 

cancer. Once, when Isabel was having her breasts examined, some 

nodules were found. She healed herself. She made a prescription using 

the plants anamú and yantén from her book on natural medicine. 

When she went back to be checked, the nodules were shrinking, and 

they disappeared in a year. Regarding her own experiences, Hajosy- 

Benedetti writes, “Personally, I can attest to the efficacy of many of 

the remedies described in this work: aloe (sábila) for bronchial complaints, 

burns and constipation, wild balsam apple (cundeamor) for 

skin problems, chicken bone broth for chronic fatigue, rue (ruda) and 

broadleaf coriander (recao) for menstrual irregularity, and herbal baths 

for physical and spiritual renewal are among them.” 22 

Elder Shachira is an espiritista. She was born in San Sebastián de 

Pepino and partly grew up there. When I met her she was wearing a 

cotona, or a dress like a tunic. Her grandmother wore one and older 

women still do today. It was traditionally made from the native maguey 

and sarobei (algodón or cotton) plants. 23 Contrary to popular utopian 

belief of the people “running around naked,” native peoples made 

their own clothing and married women in ancient Caribbean times 

would always cover themselves, especially in colder climates. Though 

most of the cloth is imported today, Shachira told me that the use of 

the cotona is an unbroken indigenous tradition that has been passed 

down by our ancestors. 24 According to Uahtibili and his wife, Huana, 

the cotonas of the past were dyed of two basic colors from the seeds 

of certain plants. The woman’s color was yellow and the man’s blue, 

and when mixed, the two produce green representing mother earth. 25 

Shachira then gave another example of an indigenous custom still 

practiced today. She said that if people think it might rain, they automatically 

look up and smell for water, rather than turn on the news, 

and if they smell “wet earth,” it means it is going to pour. 26 

Both Shachira’s grandmother and godmother strongly influenced 

her childhood and development. Her godmother was an espiritista, 

who began teaching her at the age of four. She said her godmother took 

her into a closer connection with the spiritual world, or the spirituality 

of the indigenous peoples. When I asked about the syncretizing of the 

various traditions in Puerto Rico, she first said the Indian, African, and 

Spanish traditions all used spirituality. For instance if the Christians say


that Christ is the spirit, then they are spiritualists. She then expressed 

that “in this time” the three traditions have been syncretized. She 

knows this to be true because, for better or worse, she is influenced 

by all three herself. 27 As to the African tradition of espiritismo, it was 

substantial and survived mainly on the coasts, particularly in the area 

of Loíza where many African people settled. Espiritsta Doña Bolina 

of Loíza told Hajosy-Benedetti that she practices the “palo monte— 

palo mayombé” tradition of the Congolese Bantu-speaking people. 28 

She has statues of saints and busts on her altar representing the three 

traditions of the island. Describing Afro-Christian syncretism, Hajosy- 

Benedetti writes, “During slavery, African people were forced to 

worship Christian saints. Thus their own pantheon of spiritual beings 

was syncretized with Christian saints according to the symbolism 

accrued to those saints in devotional works of art. Thus, for instance, 

Changó—a male deity associated with lightning—became Saint Barbara, 

whose visual representations always included a bolt of lightning, 

and so on.” 29 Shachira stressed that espiritismo is not a “religion,” or a 

“way of the doctrine” as she put it, but a form of spirituality. She said 

that since people today are so influenced by the doctrine of Christianity, 

and in order for them to not be afraid and be able to understand 

the native concepts, she guides them in a way they understand, for 

example, by using the terms “father,” “son” and “holy spirit,” or by 

drawing a parallel between the Christian “father” and indigenous “sky 

father” in terms of creation and the celestial world. 30 In other words, 

she is often compelled to help people learn about the Indian way in a 

sort of Christian context. 

Shachira’s grandmother taught her how to love the earth and 

defend the land. She was rebellious and very patriotic because, as 

Shachira noted, “They had taken everything from her.” Her grandmother 

told her, “You are not going to sell this land,” and she’d tap 

the ground three times, saying, “This is your land.” She showed her 

how to connect with the energy of the land through the tapping of 

the earth. She’d tell her the land is going to feed you, loves you, and, 

when you feel sad, speak to her. Her grandmother also taught her how 

to understand the vibrations of the stones—how to speak to them, 

which is an Indian tradition. Shachira said that the ancestors used the 

stones to send messages. Now, in this time, we can read the stones 

to learn about the messages they sent. She said the most important 

things to the ancestors were the ceremonial objects and stones they 

were using. The cemí was the most sacred of these. It’s the contact 

with the stones that shows us how the indigenous peoples of the past 

had a connection with everything that was celestial. She is sure this is

116 


the message the ancestors left for her grandmother and her, that is, to 

prepare her for the times to defend the land and to use the stones as a 

means of communication to the most sacred. 31 

Shachira was one of the leaders of the occupation of the Caguana 

ceremonial grounds a few years ago. This was to call attention to the 

desecration of sacred sites and excavation of ancestral remains around 

the island. In reference to the recent excavation of the Jacana site 

near Ponce, she asked, “Why do we have to take out the remains of 

the ancestors?” In 2007, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers uncovered 

a major indigenous site while in the process of building a dam. 

After they unearthed a good portion of the area, “Some 75 boxes of 

skeletons, ceramics, small petroglyphs and rocks were sent via Federal 

Express in two double-boxed shipments for analysis” to the state of 

Georgia. 32 In speaking on this issue, Shachira was very passionate and 

forthright. She exclaimed that if Christ came down at this moment 

and saw how they were profaning the tombs, there would be a great 

problem because these are his children, too. She added that if she 

went to a Christian cemetery and took someone out, she would go to 

jail. The authorities have told the people the “biggest lie” in saying 

they did not previously know about the location of the site. In planning 

for the route of the dam, they knew of the location through their 

aerial photographs and infrared technology, according to her. The 

Army Corps had already made some initial findings some time before 

the main excavation. The plundering of the site was only exposed after 

workers on the project started to sell artifacts to stores in the area! 33 

That is how the community figured out that the Jacana site had been 

dug up. 

Uahtibili is also an espiritista. He was one of the leaders arrested 

at the end of the occupation at Caguana. His father used to be both 

an espiritista and cuandero, who passed the teachings and traditions 

down to him. When he was five years old, he started to dream about 

things that were going to happen. He told his mother, and she told 

him he had “the gift.” His father, in time, began to teach him how to 

evoke the spirits, or to give and offer things to the spirits in a reciprocal 

relationship. He doesn’t go out looking to help people. People 

come to him asking for help. At that time, he will feel nausea or have 

a negative feeling inside himself as a way to identify if there’s a bad 

energy and if someone needs assistance. This is reminiscent of how the 

behike of the past would purge themselves, by fasting or with a vomiting 

stick, before embarking upon their work. Uahtibili said people 

still go to “espiritista centers” today. When I asked what percentage 

of the population believes in the practice, he replied, “mucho, mucho.”


People from the different Christian faiths go there, too. He noted that 

he has a lot of anecdotes to tell. Once, a political candidate from a 

major political party came to him seeking help. Uahtibili saw him and 

felt very bad physically. He told the man he would have problems and 

would not win the upcoming election. Later on, the candidate was 

arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for a federal offense. In 

this case, Uahtibili obviously could not help the man but could make 

a prediction about his future. 34 

When I asked him if the Rosario Cantar (the singing of the rosary) 

was a Catholic tradition, he answered, “No.” I asked this because I had 

learned from others who believe the ceremony is actually grounded in 

the indigenous tradition. While he also believes it is the continuation 

of a native tradition, Uahtibili added that it can be seen in a different 

way depending on one’s perspective. For example, a Catholic may 

see it exclusively as a way of giving thanks to the virgin mother, while 

Uahtibili’s father, who rejected everything Christian, liked the Rosario 

Cantar very much and used to sing it. Uahtibili said the Jíbaro in 

the mountains would do the ceremony after a harvest, giving thanks 

to the earth mother as an ancestral tradition. He said the Rosario Cantar 

is “the stone,” or “made for all of those things that people tell.” 

Those things include asking for nature to heal children, or for a good 

harvest or weather, so they do the ceremony every year to give thanks 

for these “promises.” A member of his family still guides the celebration 

where they are from. 35 When I followed up later asking why his 

father “rejected everything Christian,” Uahtibili explained that he 

believed “those people” were not telling the truth and were trying to 

trick them into doing something they did not want to do using fear 

tactics. His father resented that the Catholic Church rejected other 

people who believed something different from them. 36 

Uahtibili reiterated that the Rosario Cantar is not Catholic. It is not 

celebrated in the church because they do not want it. It is celebrated 

in the houses of the people or in the plazas. While the native aspect of 

the tradition is not apparent on the surface, perhaps giving the church 

the impression they had tamed the flock, the belief is deeply embedded 

in the Jíbaro soul. Lamourt-Valentín draws an analogy between 

a contemporary game played in the countryside with the native tradition 

of the ceremony. During a critical moment in the game, “the 

light goes out!” while the Rosario Cantar “must end at the point of 

sunrise when the victorious Sun drives away the cold darkness of the 

night and conquers the sky . . . for otherwise the world would end if it 

did not do that.” 37 There is a direct reference here to the native story 

of people emerging from caves during sunlight and being turned into

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stone or trees by the Sun if they were not careful. Below the surface, 

the ceremony of asking for promises appears to be the continuation of 

a traditional Indian areíto. As Lamourt-Valentín explains, 

The ceremonies called “Rosario Cantao”, correspond at present as the 

nearest tradition to the “areyto” ceremonies. The last of the older ceremonies 

to have taken place occurred in the indieras region of Lares, 

the 23 of September 1868, accompanied by a human sacrifice . . . the 

local town priest who was immolated at the head-waters of a river called 

“The river of the departure of the Twin” (“Guaribinjá” or “Culebrinas”) 

which happened to be the place where the last titled Cacique 

of the Ban Dynasty was sacrificed . . . in 1511 . . . the Lord Ah Uaay 

Ban-ah Cacique, whose family continued to reside in that region after 

the abandonment of the old cacical capital “Guanica”. The [S]panish 

Chroniclers occasionally mention the celebration of these “areyto” preceding 

war expeditions or other great enterprises. The Spanish Regime 

came to occupy the indieras regions in question after that date [1868], 

which is why these things are remembered from that time by the members 

of the families participating in them and who are native to that 

region. 38 

He further elaborates on the significance of the “santo de palo” 

statue, or the “guest of honor” during the ceremony: “‘Santo de palo’ 

is a direct translation of the term ‘ceminche’ or also termed ‘cemi’ . . . 

but after the introduction of [C]hristianity they were conventionalized 

as representations in polychromed wood sculptures (triangular in 

form) of ‘saints’ but with a particular native iconography in rebus.” 39 

Here we see again the significance of the native cemí and how it 

comes to be represented through Christian saints and statues. Thus, 

the Jíbaro have been actually using the Rosario Cantar as a sort of 

“camouflage” to uphold their own tradition. Their expression of native 

spirituality has continued through the celebration of the ceremony. 

Huana, who was with Uahtibili and me, clarified that the Rosario 

Cantar was a way of perpetuating an areíto, but the words of the songs 

they sing are in the Catholic tradition. The traditional areíto could not 

be done because of the imposition of Christianity. So it’s like a “masquerade,” 

she stressed. People started doing the Rosario “using their 

words” so that the Catholic Church and priests would think, “Oh, 

those are Catholics.” 40 When I noted that I thought most Puertorriqueños 

believed the Rosario Cantar was Catholic, Uahtibili said he 

had something important to say. There is something in the subconscious, 

he explained, where we say, “Oh, that’s a Catholic thing.” But


in reality “what we practice is not a Catholic way.” The reality of the 

ceremony carries a native meaning in the subconsciousness. 41 

Finally, Uahtibili and Huana went on to give another example of a 

tradition that may “seem” to be Catholic but is, once more, the apparent 

perpetuation of an indigenous tradition. It is called “Noche de 

San Juan” (“The Night of St. John the Baptist”), which is celebrated 

on the night of the twenty-third of June until the next day. They 

said it was originally observed during the summer solstice around the 

twenty-first of June, but, because the Catholics “run the time,” the 

date was moved back. The name of the ceremony was adopted from 

the native name “Xuan,” which in the Indian tradition refers to the 

“gran lagarto” (great lizard), or the first ancestor of the island. The 

tradition is to go to any place where there is water, whether a beach, 

river, or swimming pool. They wait until midnight and then jump into 

the water backward, seven or nine times. It is a way of cleansing themselves 

of negative things and to bring them good luck or a new life. 

It is a big celebration they do every year. There is obviously a parallel 

here to the Christian significance of the work of John the Baptist. This 

is how the name and practice of using water became associated with or 

incorporated into the native tradition. But the origin of the ceremony 

is a tribute to the first ancestor, Xuan, who is the one that came from 

the waters to the earth. So the Noche de San Juan is really to honor 

the great lizard. Huana concluded saying, “This is an espiritista ritual.” 

Jumping backward into the water “is not a Catholic thing.” The 

ceremony had been performed long before the Spanish arrival. 42 We 

can see clearer now how the incorporation of these Catholic traditions 

were used by the indigenous peoples as survival strategies in order to 

maintain their own cultural identity and traditions. 

Linguistic Survival 

Language is a vital element in the transmission of culture. Over a 

century after Antonio de Nebrija published his Gramática de la lengua 

castellana (1492), when he claimed that “language is the perfect 

instrument of empire,” native linguistic survival in the Antilles was 

still apparent. An important thesis of a work by Spanish scholar José 

Bernardo de Aldrete, called Origenes de la lengua castellana, concerned 

how conquerors throughout history inflicted their language 

on those they conquered. 43 One of his chapters, titled, “The Vanquished 

Receive the Language of the Vanquishers, Surrendering Their 

Own with Their Land and People,” elaborated on this argument as 

applied to the Iberian Peninsula and the Antilles. However, Aldrete’s

120 


arguments did not always hold up as Walter Mignolo revealed certain 

contradictions in his thesis, such as how the Visigoths as vanquishers 

actually “adopted the language and culture” of the Iberian Peninsula 

during their conquest there in the fifth to seventh centuries. 44 

Aldrete was primarily concerned with spreading the Castilian language 

over newly organized territories. Territorial organization to him 

was not only tied to geographic boundaries but also intimately linked 

with language, which “comes with memories shared and stored in a 

common language,” as Mignolo writes. 45 Yet Aldrete observed that 

“los Indios,” other than some of the nobles (Indios principales), did 

not speak much Spanish as they preferred speaking in their own language. 

He is critical of his Spanish peers for their lack of interest and 

not being efficient enough in the teaching of Castilian in the “Indies,” 

though he is confident that God and the Crown would in short order 

succeed in the task. 46 What is important to note here is that Aldrete 

was writing in 1606. Not only was there still an indigenous presence, 

but the indigenous Caribbean population also preferred speaking in 

their native tongue. This is a strong sign of resistance to the Spanish 

occupation and contradicts Aldrete’s thesis. From the aforementioned 

description, the “vanquished” had yet to receive the language of the 

vanquisher, although the Indian people did acquire the Spanish language 

when circumstances necessitated it and when it was to their 

advantage, like when Columbus left his men behind at La Navidad on 

his first voyage. 

There is then a question as to how far Spanish imperialism really 

spread in the Antilles if the colonial language had yet to be acquired 

by the seventeenth century. As we have seen, Spain was not as powerful 

in the Antilles as commonly thought. This certainly applied to 

the mountain regions and many isolated areas of Borikén. An analogy 

could be drawn here from the Moorish occupation of the Iberian 

Peninsula. While the Moors imposed their language and religion in 

some territories, they left alone “significant portions of the peninsula 

in which people were able to preserve their sense of territoriality by 

preserving their religion, Christianity, and their language, Castilian.” 47 

The Spaniards were simply not present in many areas of Puerto Rico 

to impose their cultural will. The imposition did not begin to take 

effect on the island as a whole until the nineteenth century. As language 

is a transmitter of religion, that did not happen to a large extent 

either as previously discussed. 

When they were working in the haciendas in the late nineteenth 

century, Cuko’s grandfather, who had also been a tiznado fighting 

against the Spaniards and Americans, used to tell him how they would


plan to create problems for the “bastard Spaniards” right in front of 

them. The Spaniards would not know what they were talking about 

because they were speaking in their native tongue. The way Cuko 

explained the acquisition of the Spanish language into indigenous 

communities made a lot of sense. In essence, the more the Spaniards 

encroached upon them, the more they would learn the language. In 

the same way someone might learn a second language, they acquired 

Spanish. But he emphasized that they also continued to speak their 

native language. That’s how they were able to plan their actions in 

front of the colonizer. Uahtibili explained the acquisition process 

similarly. Because his parents and grandparents did not go to school, 

they did not have much of an opportunity to learn Spanish. Thus, 

they spoke more of the native language back then, which was a mixture 

of Spanish and Indian. He said they still speak a mixed dialect 

today, especially in the mountains. 48 Cuko sincerely believes that the 

indigenous language was the spoken language of communication at 

the time of the Grito de Lares, and certainly the language spoken by 

the elders. He thinks that half of the native population never came 

into contact with the Spaniards until “recently,” or toward the end 

of their presence in Puerto Rico. He asked, “Why are there indios in 

the mountains? Los indios or los Jíbaros were not extinguished. We 

changed. We evolved.” 49 

Lamourt-Valentín helped to explain the process of how the Spanish 

language became naturalized into the indigenous tongue. The Indian 

language spoken was “an ‘original’ native discourse in a ‘naturalized’ 

language . . . which happens to be Spanish, but with a native frame of 

reference which does not qualify Spanish as a pre-American language, 

nor the native language with a colonial identity.” 50 So over time, 

Spanish words became adopted into the Indian language, but kept 

in a “native frame of reference.” He said the commercial language in 

Borikén was never Spanish. Spanish was a secondary language. The 

first social language of the masses at the time of the Grito de Lares 

and 40 years before then was a regional dialect or the native vernacular. 

51 Accordingly, many years later the Commissioner of Education in 

Puerto Rico, in making a contradictory statement that Puerto Ricans 

were not very devoted to their native language, reported to the U.S. 

Congress that a “majority of the people . . . do not speak pure Spanish. 

Their language is a patois, almost unintelligible to the natives 

of Barcelona and Madrid.” 52 “Patois” is defined in Webster’s as, for 

one, “A regional dialect.” 53 Further, the ethnological methodology 

employed by Fewkes at the turn of the twentieth century dealt with 

“survivals of language in names of places, animals, plants, and objects,

122 


including all aboriginal and many dialectic names peculiar to the modern 

islanders.” 54 

Pepe told me his grandmother spoke a strong Jíbaro dialect. 

In those days, most people in their community spoke the way she 

spoke. This was in Vega Baja, where his grandmother was from. He 

emphasized she would use names for different items of clothing with 

words that are not used today (e.g., she would call skirts, “saya.”) 

Pepe recalled that when he was in school, he was not supposed to 

speak like her. Otherwise, he would be scolded and would have failed. 

So like his mother, he had to change the way he spoke. 55 His sister 

confirmed that the words their grandmother used were not understandable 

and added that she still hears people using those kinds of 

words today. 56 Through my interviews and the people I have met, I 

have also found the tradition of indigenous name giving to be common 

today. The scholarship and oral history revealed by Delgado and 

Lamourt-Valentín show how native names continued to be used over 

time, often as a sign of resistance to the Spanish imposition of names. 

Uahtibili began to run off a list of Indian apodos commonly used: 

Cuki, Cuko, Cano, Cana, Chan, Chico, Chino, Yuyo, Yayi, Yayo. All 

of the members of his family have an apodo. Huana said it is typical 

today for parents to give their children non-native names at birth but 

then start calling them by a native apodo when they are young. So the 

birth name of one of Uahtibili’s sons, Francisco, is transformed to 

“Chico.” Another son’s given name is “Yumac,” who was the principal 

cacike of Camuy. He was the commander of the Boricua naval 

forces and helped to win the war of Daguao against the Spaniards. 

Uahtibili then went on to list a number of native apellidos (surnames) 

still used: Caban, Cuba, Camuy, Abey, Ejin, and so on. He said there 

are “muchos.” Some of them can be found by browsing through the 

local phone book. 

Lastly, many Jíbaro people still utilize a lot of Indian words in common 

speech. There are at least two hundred words in use in Puerto 

Rico. 57 The Jíbaro also speak with a kind of mixed “Spanish-Indian” 

accent. For example, since there is no “s” sound in the native language 

equivalent to the Spanish, a word like “tostones” (flat plantain) 

is commonly pronounced as “totone,” and the town of “Lares” sounds 

like “Lare,” 58 or sometimes “Lari.” When I was speaking to Güiya, 

she distinctly pronounced the town of “Morovis” as “Morovi.” Pluma 

recalled that when she left Lares to live in Mayagüez and other places, 

her accent changed. She had been gone for eight years and when she 

returned, she couldn’t understand many things her sister, brothers, 

and grandmother were saying. Her grandmother would get upset at


her because Pluma kept asking her, “What?” “What?” She remembered 

her friends in the city used to tease her, saying, “Oh, you are from 

‘Lare?’” making fun of her for not pronouncing the “s.” 59 Likewise, 

since there is no distinct “r” sound in the Indian language, “carro” 

(car) comes to sound like “cao” or “caho,” and “arroz” (rice) is pronounced 

like “aho,” as there is no “z” sound in the language either. 

The “r” sound at the end of words sounds like an “l,” so “doctor” 

comes to be “dotól.” And words with an “e” at the end are commonly 

pronounced as “i,” so “leche de pote” (a jug of milk) becomes “lechi 

di poti,” and “¿De donde tu eres?” (Where are you from?) sounds like 

“¿Di dondi tu eri?” 60 Thus, the added “s,” “r,” “z,” and “e” sounds 

are Hispanicized versions of words. So as exemplified in this section, 

the use of indigenous words, sounds, and language still continue to be 

used in one form or another, and particularly in the mountain regions 

of the island. 

The Jíbaro and Independence 

You will not find a more extreme case of colonialism in these past 

500 years than that of Puerto Rico. 

—Ramsey Clark, 1989 

“Jíbaro, Sí! Yankee, No!” “Jíbaro, Sí! Yankee, No!” Those were the 

cries coming from the independence crowd gathered at Guanica during 

the event observing the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico a century 

before. This refrain has been a common one over the years and speaks 

to a resistance that has now lasted five centuries. It was July 25, 1998. 

I had made the drive down from Utuado with some friends to witness 

this history. Cars and cars from miles away converged on the port city. 

The traffic jam became so bad that many people simply parked their 

cars on the side of the road and walked. The three main political entities 

on the island—statehood, commonwealth, and independence— 

were highly visible and had their staging areas to air their political 

views. It was both a festive and somber occasion revolving around a 

date in history long remembered. 

I have previously shown that the Jíbaro or Boricua have been primarily 

independence supporters, and many are still fighting for the 

independence of their homeland. Most of my interviewees favor this 

political option for the future of the island. As during the Spanish 

colonial era, the twentieth century independence struggle was adamant 

in its demand for freedom. Many Boricua have unjustly spent

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years in U.S. prisons fighting for the cause of independence. A 60-year 

battle to halt the American military bombing of Bieke finally ended 

in 2003. Because the United States has consistently kept a firm grip 

on Puerto Rico, violent and nonviolent action has been wielded by 

Puerto Rican nationalists as tools of liberation and self-defense. This 

final part of the chapter will elaborate on the indigenous meaning of 

the movement for independence in Borikén and its potential future. 

I attempted a similar analysis in a chapter of my dissertation, titled, 

“The Borikén Indigenous Movement,” so this is an update or revision 

of that writing. I have importantly found that the indigenous movement 

is inclusive of the larger Puerto Rican population and is, indeed, 

made up of this group. It seems as though most of the Jíbaro angst 

is directed against the approximately 1 percent criollo or blanquito 

elite, who control the island under the American wing. As a long-held 

colony, albeit with a degree of self-governance as a “Commonwealth” 

of the United States, there are no “quick fixes” to resolving the colonial 

dilemma for independence advocates. However, for many, Puerto 

Rico undoubtedly has an international right of self-determination to 

be a free and independent nation like any other on the planet. 

I see the plight of Jíbaro Indian communities in Borikén today 

along similar lines as indigenous communities in other parts of Latin 

America. These are often disempowered, impoverished, and unrecognized 

places. For example, centuries of injustice and poverty in Mayan 

communities in Chiapas boiled over in 1994 when the North American 

Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. NAFTA and the 

thirst for profits by corporations in both the United States and México 

were at the heart of the Chiapas uprising. It is widely believed that 

NAFTA was the impetus for the Mexican government to amend laws 

that now allow foreigners and foreign corporations to buy up communal 

land holdings and exploit resources where indigenous peoples 

live. 61 At the time Evo Morales became the first indigenous president 

of Bolivia in 2006, he referred to how the indigenous population of 

his country had been subjugated and disrespected for hundreds of 

years. He also said, at least for Bolivia, that five centuries of resistance 

had ended and Amerindian people of the hemisphere ought to be 

ready to “take power for the next 500.” 62 In adding to those words, 

he insisted that indigenous peoples were “not rancorous,” implying in 

part that vindictive “cut throat” politics would no longer be the norm. 

Interestingly, as a majority of the population in Bolivia is made up 

of indigenous peoples, this is also the case in Borikén. Many eyes will 

widen by the audacity of such a statement, but this is only because the 

Jíbaro have never been considered as an indigenous group. To have


admitted otherwise would have squashed the idea of extinction, and 

exposed this history and its meaning. But a majority of the population 

is mestizo Indian as elaborated on in this work, and many have 

maintained an indigenous cultural consciousness. Cuko noted that if 

the native people of Puerto Rico were to unite, they would make up 

about 65 percent of the total population. When I asked him how 

many people on the island think like him, or are culturally conscious as 

he is, he replied, “thousands,” even though he doesn’t know them. 63 

Pepe said a native consciousness has been transmitted from one generation 

to another. It has always been there, although people today 

are more positive about their identity. He explained that when the 

Boricua and Jíbaro people speak, what they say has a deeper meaning 

beyond the words they use. “When we say ‘indio,’ immediately 

people think fight for resistance or independence, or a lifestyle of selfsufficiency, 

not adoring foreign things.” Every time the topic of the 

native or nativeness is brought up, people relate this to “living a good 

life, of being good and sharing with others, or of being self-sufficient, 

of being skilled . . . making your cultivation, producing food, being 

happy and independent.” 64 

Naniki pointed out that many Boricua are “silently independent” 

because of the intense repression against independentistas 

and nationalists in the past. Being vocal about independence can 

mean losing employment or being jailed. 65 Isolina Rondón, a former 

secretary of Albizu-Campos, said a number of years ago that 

she believed “seven-eights of the Puerto Ricans are for independence, 

but are afraid to express themselves openly.” 66 With this 

kind of support, it is amazing that Borikén has not thrown off 

the yoke. These narratives certainly do not reflect the substantial 

“poll numbers” among Statehood and Commonwealth supporters 

in past elections, or the dim support of one of the most prominent 

independence organizations. In the early 1990s, the Puerto Rican 

Independence Party (PIP) maintained only 5 to 7 percent of electoral 

support on the island. 67 During the twentieth century, the 

independence movement was strongest in the 1930s under nationalist 

leader Albizu-Campos and in the 1970s when nationalist and 

socialist ideologies merged. According to Pepe, the PIP does not 

represent the masses because they do not understand and take into 

consideration the native aspect of the movement. The values of the 

PIP leadership, which he says are Eurocentric and based on pleasing 

the current system of power politics, are not the values of the 

native people, as he has referred to. 68 Pepe told me he does not 

belong to any political organization but strives to assist everyday

126 


people struggling to make ends meet. Still, while politically waning, 

cultural nationalism remains strong in Puerto Rico. 69 J. Benjamín 

Torres is paraphrased as having said, “Learning of Puerto Rican 

cultural values will help develop a national consciousness necessary 

in the struggle for emancipation from colonial domination.” 70 For 

many, this has been the belief for a long time as the Jíbaro culture 

is the heart and soul of Puerto Rico. The cultural importance of 

the movement is looked at closer shortly. 

Now that the myth of indigenous extinction has been dismantled, it 

is clear that an indigenous cultural identity and the fight for independence 

have gone hand in hand in Borikén and cannot be separated. A 

similar impetus has driven the various social and liberation movements 

in Bolivia, México, Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. In Bolivia, the battle 

against neoliberal economic policies is what brought Morales to 

power. Issues such as the privatization of resources, like water, and 

land redistribution are what sparked “the consciousness of the Bolivian 

people.” 71 This was the climax of a long struggle. I keep hearing 

similar complaints in Puerto Rico about privatization, unsustainable 

development projects, and land claim issues. How do resolving these 

types of concerns relate to the Borikén movement? Berman-Santana is 

correct to point out how indigenous identity and culture “hold more 

than merely academic significance, for they may speak to ownership, 

not only of identity but also of legitimate control over land and other 

resources—which are the material foundations of ‘sovereignty’ and 

self-determination.” 72 While Berman-Santana pretty much sees the 

indigenous movement or “revival” in Borikén on the fringe of society, 

her article is significant because it is an academic piece written by a 

scholar that at least acknowledges and takes somewhat seriously the 

indigenous presence as an entity or movement. She asks some important 

questions: “how might recovery of indigenous, non-Eurocentric 

perspectives and practices not only help break Puerto Rico’s colonial 

dependence upon the United States but also form a basis for a 

noncapitalist and sustainable Puerto Rico? More broadly, how might 

recovering indigenous values help rescue a people from destructive 

Western values such as separation from nature, individualism, 

and pursuit of profit? How might indigenous revival help reconnect 

people with nature and with one another and promote meaningful 

self-determination?” 73


The Borikén Indigenous Movement 

Though not well documented, I was fortunate to have addressed these 

types of questions and issues in my dissertation. Many indigenous 

groups and organizations have formed over the years in Borikén and 

have attempted to build an awareness and sense of solidarity among 

the general population. One of the first and most important organizations 

inspiring the more recent “formal” indigenous movement is the 

Consejo General de Tainos Borincanos, founded in 1979. According 

to Elba Anaca Lugo, one of the group’s founders and current director, 

the organization’s central purposes have been to recover indigenous 

cultural values and to unify other groups in Borikén and the 

diaspora. 74 The organization comprises three circles. The nucleus of 

the First Circle is the Council of Arocoels (Elders) and those who first 

started the movement. They established the bylaws and fundamental 

principles of the organization, and provide spiritual and cultural guidance 

and knowledge to members. The Second Circle is made up of 

professional resource people like writers, historians, anthropologists 

(“humanistic archeologists”), and businesspeople who work to promote 

the culture in areas such as research, economics, and resource 

management. This circle also comprises professional artisans, poets, 

and musicians. The Third Circle primarily consists of the people, or 

those who are interested in learning about the culture and in recovering 

their indigenous heritage. The elder’s council oversees all three 

circles. “We have elders representing every part of the Antilles,” said 

Anaca Lugo, who “as grandfathers [and] grandmothers are the ones 

who through experience can give us the guidance and the orientation” 

to make the proper decisions in our future quest. 75 Another significant 

organization established in Borikén around 1993 is Caney Quito 

Mundo. Founded by Naniki, Nogueras-Vidal, and others, the Caney 

seeks to unify and maintain indigenous cultural traditions through 

spiritual gatherings and community work. The recovery and reinterment 

of human ancestral remains and cultural artifacts have been one 

of their most important tasks. 76 A more recent group to form is called 

Otu-kan. Founded in 2003 by Nogueras-Vidal, Christina Arce, and 

Nelson Monge, Otu-kan is a nonprofit organization dedicated to traditional, 

spiritual, and ancestral native education. Its purpose is to 

practice and teach spiritual and ancestral wisdom of the Native American 

people of Borikén. According to Nogueras-Vidal, those who came 

together are artisans and people grounded in spiritual teachings and 

dedicated to living an Amerindian way of life. 77

128 


Nogueras-Vidal has also remarked to me that the indigenous 

resurgence on the island is a political movement. She “see[s] this 

as an embodiment of a political force” that has to do with all facets 

of the movement whether it concerns identity, recognition, cultural 

protocol, or political activism. She says the movement is about the 

restoration of political independence, which means ending colonialism 

and dependency on the United States. Nogueras-Vidal added, 

“It just so happens that one hundred years of colonization by the 

North American government is in alignment with the awakening of 

the people of this land . . . The people who are grassroots and awakened 

and know that the North American government has exploited 

this land know that this whole mentality that we cannot live if they 

are not here is totally untrue.” 78 She says the people have always 

been knowledgeable about their Indian identity and traditional 

ways. Yet, while the sense of being was always there, the past two or 

three generations did not openly express their identity and remained 

very silent because societal forces of the time did not allow for it. 79 

The people “who are conscious of the fact that we are a people, 

we are a nation . . . are planting our seeds. We are planting the 

seeds for this generation and all generations to come.” The main 

objectives of the artisans, for instance, are to perpetuate the cultural 

traditions and to educate. Sharing and teaching the children are also 

an important part of the process. In keeping with the mandate that 

the “Puerto Rican Indian” be honored on August 12, which was 

passed by the state legislature in 1970, cultural practitioners opened 

a batey in Jayuya in 1997 and performed a ceremony in honor of the 

ancestors. This is now an annual event. 80 

Nogueras-Vidal stressed that the movement is really about a change 

in lifestyle or consciousness—for example, by becoming more selfsufficient 

as Puerto Rico imports 90 percent of its food products. 81 

One strategy then is an attempt to break the cycle of dependency 

on particularly the United States through more localized economic 

self-sufficiency models. Elaborating on the dependency model, Naniki 

noted how Boricua need to economically take matters into their own 

hands. She points to the work of Wilma Mankiller (Cherokee) in helping 

her people break the cycle of dependency on the United States. 

In constructing a needed well system, for instance, Mankiller hired 

outside expertise to train her people to acquire the skills needed to 

construct and maintain the system. This allowed them not to have to 

lease help from an outside entity after the system was completed. 82 

Naniki said,


They [the Unites States] have created for us so many dependencies that 

we as people feel that we can’t do it. We feel that we need to hire them, 

and we need to lease land to them to do for us because we are unable 

to. Wilma decided somewhere along the line that she wanted to break 

with dependent models, and she wanted to create self-sufficient models 

so that her people could once again take pride in themselves, not just 

as human beings, but as being able to sustain themselves, being able to 

provide for their own people . . . The model must be that the arrogant 

North American technocrats need to let go. They need to come in, provide 

our training and go back home. And allow us to maintain and keep 

our own systems going. Often times what we see is that they come and 

they want to do the training, but then they want to stay as the teachers 

and the keepers. And so Wilma said “no way.” That’s just not going to 

be what happens here. 83 

For Naniki, economic self-reliance through the education and 

training of businesspeople and technicians is a key to breaking the 

cycle of colonialism. One important area where Boricua can become 

more self-sufficient is through agriculture, she said. The ancestors, 

who passed down their knowledge, were expert agriculturalists highly 

knowledgeable of the symbiotic relationship among plants. But doing 

agriculture alone is not enough in today’s world. Naniki pointed out 

that in selling these products and meeting consumer demands, you 

need to set up a system in order to market, transport, and eventually 

export these goods. Many Boricua are already knowledgeable and 

skilled in these areas, so the question is how to pull the people and 

resources together. A chain of self-reliance can be created “when we 

begin to look within to see the skills that each of us have that comprise 

the totality of that particular venture.” 84 This is a model of self-suffiency 

and a “steppingstone for independence . . . breaking colonialism 

must come from within us. We must begin to break and shatter that 

illusion of dependency and reliance upon others . . . and if we can do 

this we can break with that colonial mentality and therefore break 

with colonialism,” she expressed. 85 Therefore, we can see from the 

discussion thus far that the indigenous movement in Borikén concerns 

cultural, spiritual, political, and economic dimensions. 

Cuko expanded on the “gringo system” of dependency by saying 

it is designed to keep the people “quiet.” He said the government 

gives poor people food stamps, subsidies, and leaves them watching 

television. If the food stamps and subsidies were removed and the 

people given land to work on, they would become independent and 

have their money. But this is what the government and Puerto Rican 

elite do not want because they would lose control. This is what they

130 


are worried about, he noted. Everybody would be independent, not 

needing to receive little bits of subsidies. 86 When I followed up later 

asking him what percentage of the population he thinks falls within 

the aforementioned category, Cuko replied that 70 to 75 percent of 

the overall population on the island are “poor” and dependent on 

“aid.” 87 This figure matches Liliana Cotto’s analysis of the results of 

the industrialization process of the mid-twentieth century and “paternalistic 

political system based on social welfare and patron-client 

relations.” She wrote, “Around 70 percent of the island’s families 

remained under poverty level.” 88 Pepe added that the American government 

is set up to give the Puerto Rican people subsidies so that 

U.S. businesses and corporations can export their products to the 

island at cheap prices. Local businesses suffer in the process. 89 This 

is a classic example of the function of globalization in relation to the 

dependency model, akin to how intergovernmental organizations like 

the International Monetary Fund and World Bank often function with 

their “structural adjustment policies” putting small or “developing” 

nations deeper into debt and poverty. 

Regarding land, Cuko said the Department of Natural and Environmental 

Resources took his family’s land and declared it a “wildlife 

zone.” He cannot build a home on his land. He can farm there but 

if you do not have a home, how can you watch over your crops? He 

staunchly replied, “My land is mine, and I control my land. That’s the 

way it should be.” 90 He pointed out that only about 15 percent of 

Jíbaros control their own land today, though many live on lands they 

consider to be theirs through inheritance. This harkens back to the 

nineteenth-century theft of lands in that most Jíbaro do not have the 

“documents” “to prove” what they believe to be rightfully theirs as 

passed down over time. They are thus sometimes called “squatters.” 

Cuko said that while Muñoz-Marín’s “land reform” of the 1940s 

gave back “a little bit” of land to the people, his overall reforms did 

“more damage” in the long run. He was referring to the industrialization 

process and subsequent urban migration for jobs that ended up 

removing people from their land. 91 In support, Morris Morley writes 

that the abolition of the “corporate latifundio,” or large land estates, 

“had not taken place, and was not about to occur.” He indicated that 

as a result of the 1941 Land Law, “government aid to the agricultural 

sector was being directed toward the landowner rather than toward 

the landless agricultural laborer.” 92 

Cuko said his goal is to take back what belonged to “our ancestors.” 

He proposes a community-based indigenous model for the future not 

unlike the means of governance being proposed and implemented in


places like Latin America. This model of indigenous sustainability is 

being resurrected and is partly in response to the negative effects of 

neoliberal capitalist policies. He said the schools, hospitals, and justice 

system would be directed by the communities. Government leaders 

would be from their respected communities and selected by the 

people who live there. Foreigners or outsides who do not know the 

community and the oppression of the people would not be allowed 

to run for office. The leaders must be intimately tied to the life of the 

community. Regarding agriculture, the people would produce what 

they consume and sell it right here in Borikén. Ownership of the production 

system and control of factories would be by the community 

so they would directly benefit and improve their standard of living. 

International trade would be done “product for product,” or at a fair 

exchange where one is not taken advantage of. When I asked Cuko 

how many people would support what he is saying, he provided this 

explanation. He said if he, or someone who thinks like him, went into 

a store in a community and talked about these ideas, a good number 

of people would agree with him. He then magnified that number 

by saying that this support would be the same in hundreds or thousands 

of stores around the island. He therefore calculated that there 

would be a great amount of people who would support these ideas 

and model. This is not a hypothetical assessment as he concluded that 

these types of issues are often discussed in stores and that the leadership 

is already there. 93 

Pepe said the people need to unite because many communities are 

under assault and being destroyed by big costly development projects 

being promoted by the rich. The people in these communities are 

aware of this and very worried about their futures. Part of his work 

entails going into communities to talk to people, especially the elders, 

to find the native leadership that is in every community, or those who 

are the most conscious of the indigenous plight. He said he finds that 

people in these communities are often waiting for the help of activists 

like him. Pepe emphasized that the people have a right to choose the 

forms of development they feel is best for them, not foreigners. The 

communities should be able to control their schools and what their 

children are taught and how to deal with the social problems that 

plague them, like high crime rates, drug use, and unemployment. His 

aim is to help the people take back control of their lives. 94 

Finally, Cuko gave me an example of how “people power” can have 

a tremendous effect on the Borikén movement. He said there were 

some people under great oppression and when they got fed up, they 

rose up and expelled the most powerful military in the world. He was

132 


of course referring to Bieke. After the killing of civilian worker David 

Sanes by an errant bomb, he expressed that a few revolutionary leaders 

were soon after able to arouse thousands of people from around 

Borikén to support the cause against the U.S. Navy. Cuko noted that 

these thousands were “quiet” beforehand. The community of Bieke 

is an analogy for communities across Puerto Rico in that the Boricua 

are ready to rise up when the circumstances warrant it. 95 There is also 

a strong and longtime native cultural attachment to the land of Bieke 

by the people who live there. This connection combined with its 

political activism, which for Viequenses has also been a five-hundredyear 

resistance, has indeed been seen as a model on a larger scale. As 

Berman-Santana writes, “In dozens of support groups throughout 

Puerto Rico, people discussed how to use Vieques as a model for 

recovering their sense of connection to their own home territories 

and communities and for throwing off the yoke of dependence. The 

realization is growing that the struggle against navy occupation was 

only one chapter in the much longer story and greater challenge of 

truly liberating Vieques—and Puerto Rico.” 96 

Conclusion 

This chapter has shown a prevalent Jíbaro cultural continuum through 

customary, spiritual, medicinal, and linguistic practices. These practices 

and the stories surrounding them relate back to ancient times 

and traditions. Christian traditions were most prominently adopted 

or syncretized into the indigenous belief structure and practices as 

survival strategies or in adapting to the times. The Indian cultural element 

has survived in Jíbaro families and the subconscious because this 

is what the people know and are most familiar with in growing up on 

the island. The Jíbaro-Boricua has also continued to be the impetus 

in the political struggle for independence. Since the initial uprising 

against the Spaniards in 1511, they have consistently put their lives on 

the line in valiantly protecting their freedom. The indigenous voice 

speaks out today in everyday lives and through the contemporary 

movement of attempting to provide a more viable and just future for 

Borikén.

Chapter 7 

Conclusion 

I have attempted in this book to give voice to the voiceless by providing 

a platform for the Jíbaro to educate and tell their story. I have most 

importantly done this by drawing on alternative sources of oral and 

written information to shatter a deeply embedded illusion. The story 

told is largely unknown because it has been suppressed for centuries 

by dominant Spanish and Puerto Rican institutions. The most important 

things to say in concluding are that the indigenous peoples of 

Borikén are still there and still struggling under a two-tiered colonial 

and neocolonial system. The fact that Puerto Rico has not exercised 

its international right of self-determination speaks to this point. Thus, 

this narrative is not one of a “romanticized” past but of an immediate 

history and presence. The Jíbaro man painfully said that this nation 

does not have self-control. It is controlled by others who dominate 

and impose their will. In reference to the Jíbaro, he asked, “Where’s 

the power for us to challenge?” When the politicians speak out, they 

tend to be believed because they are the “professionals.” But they do 

not believe “us,” the people. Whatever the Jíbaro do for themselves 

the ruling class smashes because they have the power. 1 

The intense resistance to Spanish imperialism is a testament to 

indigenous Caribbean cultural survival and continuity today. This 

was not merely a political fight but a social, cultural, economic, and 

spiritual clash of civilizations. The European consistently demonized 

and dehumanized Amerindian people in order to justify their 

reprehensible and genocidal ways. The resistance began at the time 

the Roman Catholic Church promulgated a series of papal decrees in 

1493 authorizing war against infidels. The 39 Spaniards at La Navidad 

were killed for their crimes. Both active and passive forms of

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resistance were undertaken in Borikén. The early war dealt the Spaniards 

a severe blow, and, besides a robust presence in the vicinity of 

San Juan, they had only established a few settlements on the island. 

The Carib attacked and harassed the colonizer throughout the sixteenth 

century, limiting their ability to trade, and were a main reason 

for the issuance of the requerimiento. Many Indian people also fled 

the initial Spanish incursion and the encomienda system they had set 

up. Aside from the many already living throughout the island, escape, 

hiding, and avoiding census takers were among the most prominent 

forms of passive resistance exhibited in the post-European contact era. 

There are many many isolated places where one could live, especially 

on the “side side side” roads of the mountain regions. 

While there is no denying that a significant number of native 

people perished through the colonial process in Borikén, the dominant 

institutions keep saying the people were “conquered” so they 

can keep their claim to the lands and history. 2 They have done this 

by consistently deflating native population counts and then finally 

eliminating the category “Indios” in the early nineteenth century. At 

the time, however, tens of thousands of Jíbaro Indians were present 

on the island living as free and independent people. They and those 

who came before them lived good lives, and their descendents are 

there today. The official history of Puerto Rico minimizes or does not 

tell of this history, information or events that would contradict the 

manufactured account of this people’s “extinction.” For example, the 

subject of the “año de las guácaras,” the nineteenth-century period 

when many Jíbaro lived in caves to escape the advancement of the 

Spaniards, is not taught in the schools. It was only after the attempted 

revolution of 1868 when the Spaniards fully took over Borikén. The 

Jíbaro were, in part, trying to prevent the intruders from taking the 

native stronghold of Lares. Spanish success in the long run was not 

so strong because, as Cuko explained, you find many native communities 

still practicing their cultural traditions. 3 Resistance to the 

occupation continued throughout the el componte torture era until 

Spain’s control of the island ended in 1898. American rule has also 

been particularly harsh. Native resistance was strong in the first half of 

the twentieth century and remains today as witnessed by the continuing 

struggle against the U.S. military in Bieke to clean up their toxic 

mess and address the concerns of cancer victims. 

In terms of the myth of extinction, the idea of rationalizing “pure” 

identities as a basis of indigenous extinction came to be solidified and 

used in the nineteenth century in relation to Darwinian social theory 

and the “survival of the fittest.” The fact that this idea in this day and

Conclusion 135 

age is still promoted and used as a primary basis of Indian extinction 

in Puerto Rico seems incredible. Scholars cling to the biological or 

genetic notion of extinction despite DNA results revealing a strong 

contemporary Amerindian presence on the island. In response to the 

findings by Martínez-Cruzado and his researchers, one scholar has 

even written that “[in] order to make the case against extinction,” 

they would now have “to locate individual Puerto Ricans who are 

‘Amerindian’ and demonstrably pure from a biological standpoint.” 4 

First of all, the notion of “purity” is an abstraction. Who in the world 

is really racially “pure”? Indigenous Caribbean peoples were exogamous, 

so acceptance of outside groups was a norm that enhanced 

their culture and increased their chances of survival particularly in 

the post-fifteenth century, as Indian women routinely intermixed 

with foreigners. This proposition would logically infer that the large 

majority of American Indian people in the Americas today are also 

“extinct,” since most are mestizo. This is absurd, and the type of thinking 

indigenous peoples have been attempting to counter for decades. 

This argument appears to be a desperate effort by the Puerto Rican 

academy to fend off the increasing evidence of both indigenous physical 

and cultural survival in Borikén. 

As Hörmann has shown, “mixed blooded” native survival as a 

result of intercultural colonial contact is most viable and is frankly an 

understatement. This is the way most indigenous peoples today have 

been able to maintain or recover their identities and traditions. This 

is the way people are making sense of their lives! As the late Cherokee 

writer Louis Owens creatively summed it up, “the mixedblood is 

not a cultural broker but a cultural breaker, break-dancing tricksterfashion 

through all signs, fracturing the self-reflexive mirror of the 

dominant center, deconstructing rigid borders, slipping between the 

seams, embodying contradictions, and contradancing across every 

boundary. The Indian has appropriated and occupied the frontier, reimagining 

it against all odds.” 5 “Against all odds” in the Caribbean 

Indian paradigm means telling the world we are still here. As biology is 

largely static, culture, or “cultural breaker” in terms of transcendence, 

is mutable and vibrant and adapts over time in relation to human 

survival. It is the process of change and cultural adaptation that has 

transcended the antiquated biological concept of indigenous extinction, 

where the faces have often changed but the identity and spirit 

have continued on. 

This book has debunked the deeply held belief of indigenous 

Caribbean extinction by primarily showing that cultural survival and 

affiliation are the bases of the contemporary indigenous presence in

136 


Puerto Rico. This is what has really allowed for the Jíbaro or Boricua 

to continue to speak, cry out to be heard, and move forward. The 

synthesist and syncretist processes described in this work are similar to 

José Arguedas’s concept of “cultural mestizaje” in Peru, or the Inca 

capacity to change and assimilate foreign elements, yet remain culturally 

distinct in the process. Outside cultural influences have been 

often synthesized into modern ways of doing things in Borikén. For 

instance, in the making or use of the fogón, bohío, cotona, and numerous 

musical instruments, Western and African influences and materials 

have been incorporated into older indigenous customs and traditions. 

The Jíbaro music still played strongly exemplifies this. Likewise, the 

Indian words and accent still spoken produce a kind of mixed Spanish-Indian 

dialect, which carries linguistic and cultural meaning. The 

meaning is sometimes political as Pepe spoke of a flat handheld native 

drum called a pandero that is often used to convey a message through 

plena music played at strikes, protests, and other social conflicts. 6 

The syncretism of primarily Christian traditional beliefs and representations 

into the native belief structure is apparent contemporarily 

through the practices of espiritismo, the Rosario Cantar, and Noche 

de San Juan. Christian names, saints, and statues have been symbolically 

utilized to re-represent and uphold indigenous traditions in 

conforming to the times and as a sort of camouflage to please the 

Catholic Church and authorities. Espiritismo has been passed down 

since ancient times and still spiritually assists people in various ways. 

There are many espiritistas in Borikén, and, according to Uahtibili and 

others, lots of people believe in the practice. The cultural root of the 

Rosario Cantar is indigenous and apparently a way of perpetuating an 

areíto. While the ceremony may appear to be Catholic on the surface, 

the annual tradition of asking for “promises” carries a native meaning 

in reality. And Noche de San Juan is a pagan festival, whose deep 

meaning in Borikén is to honor the first ancestor, or the one that came 

from the waters to the earth. 7 

Through teachings that have been passed down for generations, 

other cultural customs and traditions have essentially remained unbroken 

over time such as Jíbaro planting by the moon, conuco and erone 

farming techniques, use of the same plants for herbal and medicinal 

purposes, use of stones and the cemí as means of communication, 

use of dita from the higüera tree, smelling for water to know if it 

may rain, the many foods the people still eat, and the native names 

people call themselves for various reasons. The character and values 

of the Jíbaro are also uniquely theirs. They have always been generous, 

humble, and wished to be left alone. They work hard, strive to

Conclusion 137 

be self-sufficient, and love the land; their attitude and love of freedom 

and independence are legendary. And as Pepe added, their values provide 

them with a healthy spirit and make them happy. “The values that 

the people express constantly are more of a spiritual thing . . . We have 

happiness.” 8 While there are whole communities of Indian people in 

Borikén who know who they are, what the elders always tell him they 

lost is the ancient system of “social respect,” or respect for the community 

as a whole. This is what the Jíbaro seeks to recapture and what 

would really make them happy.


Notes 

Preface 

1. See Anthony Castanha, “Adventures in Caribbean Indigeneity 

Centering on Resistance, Survival and Presence in Borikén (Puerto 

Rico)” (PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2004). 

2. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and 

Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books; and Dunedin, New Zealand: 

University of Otago Press, 1999), 35. 

3. Although most indigenous groups prefer to be called by their own 

names in their own languages, I think “indigenous,” “native,” 

“aboriginal,” or “first” peoples are succinctly defined collectively by 

Julian Burger in terms of the right of self-identification, inclusivity, 

and the ability to adapt and survive, when he writes, “First peoples 

have a strong sense of their own identity as unique peoples, with 

their own lands, languages, and cultures. They claim the right to 

define what is meant by indigenous, and to be recognized as such by 

others. Some now live in cities, earning their living as, for example, 

lawyers and community workers—or in many cases struggling to 

make ends meet; others retain a traditional way of life. But they are 

united in their desire to maintain their identity and yet be able to 

adapt and survive,” in Julian Burger, The Gaia Atlas of First Peoples: 

A Future for the Indigenous World (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 

16–17. 

4. The term “Indio,” or “Indian,” was of course an imaginary creation 

of Christopher Columbus who believed, or refused to accept otherwise 

(Hulme 1986), that he had reached Asia or the Indies of 

the east up until his death in 1506. In other words, Columbus was 

virtually lost throughout his four voyages to the Americas. It is with 

this understanding and for the sake of clarity that I use the word 

in this book. I will also utilize indigenous words as appropriate as 

the Indian language in Borikén has survived in different forms and 

efforts to revitalize and perpetuate the language are under way. For 

an extensive listing of native words, see Luis Hernández Aquino, 

Diccionario De Voces Indígenas De Puerto Rico (San Juan: Editorial 

Cultural, 1993).

140 

Notes 

5. Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Minneapolis: 

University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 36–37. 

6. Ibid., 54. 

7. Ronald D. Arroyo, “Da Borinkees: The Puerto Ricans of Hawaii” 

(PhD diss., Union Graduate School, 1977), 2. 

8. Ibid., 2–3. 

9. Salvador Brau, Historia de Puerto Rico (1904; San Juan: Editorial 

Coquí, 1966), 181. 

10. Arroyo, “Da Borinkees,” 3. 

11. Oscar Lamourt-Valentín, Cannibal Recipes, A sociolinguistic account 

of Carib-Jíbaro culture and response to the work of Ramón Pané, 

Unpublished manuscript (Ames: Iowa State University, 1979), 4. 

12. The name “Boricua” basically means “sacred place where the people 

come from,” referring to both place and people. Bo—“big” or 

“great”; Ri—“humanity” or “people”; and Cua—“sacred.” Interview 

with elder and indigenous cultural practitioner Naniki Reyes- 

Ocasio, July 12, 1999. 

13. María Teresa Babín, The Puerto Ricans’ Spirit: Their History, Life, 

and Culture, translated by Barry Luby (New York: Collier Books, 

1971), 1–2. 

14. Samuel M. Wilson, ed., The Indigenous People of the Caribbean 

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 177. 

15. José Barreiro, “Carib Gallery,” Northeast Indian Quarterly 7, no. 3 

(Fall 1990): 47. 

16. See Bartolomé de Las Casas, in Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelly, 

Jr., eds., trans., The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage 

to America, 1492–1493, abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas 

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 284–87. 

17. See Jesse Walter Fewkes, The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring 

Islands, 25th Annual Report, B. A. E. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian 

Institution, 1907). 

18. Eugenio Fernández Méndez, Art and Mythology of the Taino Indians 

of the Greater West Indies (México City: Editorial Libros de México, 

1972), 17. 

19. See also Hernández-Aquino’s definition of “Carib” in relation to 

Borikén, in Aquino, Diccionario De Voces Indígenas De Puerto Rico, 

124. 

20. Interview with Carib-Jíbaro linguist and scholar Oki Lamourt- 

Valentín, July 27, 1998; Uahtibili Báez Santiago and Huana Naboli 

Martínez Prieto, “Puerto Rico”: la gran mentira, Ilustraciones y arte 

gráfico por Luis Roberto Domínguez (Camuy, Puerto Rico: Edición 

Revisada, 2008), 45. 

21. Lamourt-Valentín, Cannibal Recipes, 36. 

22. Luis O. Zayas Micheli, in Manuel A. Alonso, El Jibaro (Rio Piedras, 

Puerto Rico: Editorial Edil, Inc., 1992), 6.

Notes 141 

23. Interview with Lamourt-Valentín, July 27, 1998. 

24. Correspondence with artisan and indigenous cultural practitioner 

Margarita Nogueras-Vidal. 

Chapter 1 

1. Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the native Caribbean, 

1492–1797, (London: Methuen & Co., 1986), 8. 

2. George Lamming, “The Occasion for Speaking,” in The Post-Colonial 

Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen 

Tiffins (New York: Routledge, 1995), 15. 

3. Interview with Jíbaro campesino Cuko, August 22, 2008. 

4. Interview with the Jíbaro man, August 23, 2008. 

5. The main islands of the northern Antilles are known today as Cuba, 

Jamaica, Haití and the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. 

6. In a chapter titled “Columbus: Cannibal and Hero of Genocide,” 

Jack Forbes provides a poignant explanation of Columbus’s mission 

to the Americas. He writes, “Colón had had experience along the 

coasts of west Africa, helping to carry Africans to Portugal. He was 

apparently very familiar with the slave trade and with the philosophy 

of imperialism. As we shall see, he implemented a process of 

genocide probably without parallel until the days of Adolf Hitler. 

Moreover, it was his intention to commit ethnocide and to ruthlessly 

exploit the people he found in America.” See Jack Forbes, 

Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, 

Imperialism and Terrorism (New York: Autonomedia, 1992), 

35–42. Accordingly, Luis Rivera chides certain scholars’ dismissal 

of genocide in favor of a “sanitary disaster” as the result of epidemics 

when noting, “In this view, it was a matter of mosquitoes, 

lice, fleas, bacteria, viruses, and germs! Missing is a critical and 

concrete analysis of the social context of the epidemics, their relation 

to the breakdown of the social order, the disaster in agricultural 

production, the degradation of autochthonous values, and the 

use of natives as instruments for the avaricious search for precious 

metals. The strange thing is that such factors are overwhelmingly 

present in innumerable testimonies from contemporaries,” in Luis 

N. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest 

of the Americas, translated by Westminster/John Knox Press 

(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 178–79. 

7. Loida Figueroa Mercado, History of Puerto Rico: From the Beginning 

to 1892 (New York: L. A. Publishing Company, 1978), 74. 

8. Adalberto López, “Birth of a Nation: Puerto Rico in the Nineteenth 

Century,” in The Puerto Ricans: Their History, Culture, and Society, 

ed. Adalberto López (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing 

Company, 1980), 40, 53.

142 

Notes 

9. Arlene Dávila, “Local/Diasporic Taínos: Towards a Cultural Politics 

of Memory, Reality and Imagery,” in Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives 

on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics, ed. Gabriel 

Haslip-Viera (New York: Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, 

Hunter College, City University of New York, 1999), 14. 

10. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its 

Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 11. 

11. Richard A. Grounds, “Yuchi Travels: Up and Down the Academic 

‘Road to Disappearance,’” in Native Voices: American Indian Identity 

and Resistance, ed. Richard A. Grounds, George E. Tinker, and 

David E. Wilkins (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 291. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford, 

CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 40. 

14. Franke Wilmer, The Indigenous Voice in World Politics: Since Time 

Immemorial (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993), 42. 

15. United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Human Rights 

Council, “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous 

Peoples,” September 7, 2007. 

16. Maximilian C. Forte, “Introduction: The Dual Absences of Extinction 

and Marginality—What Difference Does an Indigenous Presence 

Make?” in Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: 

Amerindian Survival and Revival, ed. Maximilian C. Forte (New 

York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006), 3. 

17. Ricardo Alegría, quoted in Stan Steiner, The Islands: The Worlds of the 

Puerto Ricans (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 15. 

18. Grounds, “Yuchi Travels,” in Native Voices, ed. Grounds, Tinker, 

and Wilkins, 302. 


Valentín, July 28, 1998. 

20. Samuel M. Wilson, “The Legacy of the Indigenous People of the 

Caribbean,” in The Indigenous People of the Caribbean, ed. Samuel 

M. Wilson (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 206. 

21. Interview with Cuko, August 21, 2008. 

22. Ibid. 


24. Ibid. 

25. Amaryll Chanady, “Identity, politics and mestizaje,” in Contemporary 

Latin American Cultural Studies, ed. Stephen Hart and Richard 

Young (London: Arnold, 2003), 197. 

26. José María Arguedas, Formación de una Cultura National Indoamericana 

(México City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1975), 2. 

27. For a more detailed description and illustration of a burén, see Nelsonrafael 

Collazo, Imágenes del Indio Puertorriqueño (Jayuya, Puerto 

Rico: Nelsonrafael Collazo Grau, 1999), 33.

Notes 143 

28. Interview with elder and espiritista Shachira, August 18, 2008. 


30. Arguedas, Formación de Una Cultura National Indoamericana, 2. 


32. Chanady, “Identity, politics and mestizaje,” in Contemporary Latin 

American Cultural Studies, ed. Hart and Young, 197. 

33. Lilikalā Kame‘eleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires: Pehea Lā E 

Pono Ai? (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1992), 3. 

34. Vine Deloria, Jr., Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the 

Myth of Scientific Fact (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1997), 

167. 

35. The storyteller, quoted in Steiner, The Islands, 15. 

36. Francisco Moscoso, “Chiefdom and Encomienda in Puerto Rico: 

The Development of Tribal Society and the Spanish Colonization to 

1530,” in The Puerto Ricans, ed. López, 14. 

37. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin 

Press, 1985), 27–28. 

38. Some of the stories were importantly recorded in script by the early 

Spanish chroniclers. For example, Ramón Pané notes how the people 

and particularly the leaders he associated with in Kiskeya believed in 

ancient songs or areítos as an important form of communication: 

“In fact, just as the Moors, they have their laws gathered in ancient 

songs, by which they govern themselves, as do the Moors by their 

scripture,” in Fray Ramón Pané, An Account of the Antiquities of the 

Indians (c. 1498), trans. Susan C. Griswold (Durham, NC: Duke 

University Press, 1999), 20. Pietro Martire d’Anghiera (Peter Martyr) 

writes that when the indigenous peoples were asked about the 

origins of their traditions, “they answer[ed] that they have inherited 

them from their ancestors; they say those things have been transmitted 

in that way in songs from time immemorial.” Quoted in Pané, 

An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, 50. 

39. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, xi. 

40. Juan Manuel Delgado, “Sobrevivencia de los apellidos indígenas 

según la historia oral de Puerto Rico,” Revista de Genealogía Puertorriqueña 

2 no. 1 (April 2001): 41–80. 

41. Ibid., 53. 

42. Interview with activist and indigenous cultural practitioner Baracutey, 

July 24, 1998. 

43. Interview with activist and Jíbaro campesino Pepe, August 24, 2008. 

44. Milton Takei, “Collective Memory as the Key to National and Ethnic 

Identity: The Case of Cambodia,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 

4, no. 3 (1998): 62. 

45. Irving Rouse, The Tainos: Rise & Decline of the People Who Greeted 

Columbus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 30.

144 

Notes 

46. Jesse Walter Fewkes, The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring 


Institution, 1907), 20. 

47. Interview with artisan and indigenous cultural practitioner Margarita 

Nogueras-Vidal, July 30, 1998. 

48. Margarita Nogueras-Vidal, “Taíno Indian Symbolism . . . To Feel is 

to Perceive,” Pamphlet, Jayuya, Boriké, 1996, 1998, 1. 

49. Ibid., 2. 

50. Interview with elder and indigenous cultural practitioner Naniki 

Reyes-Ocasio, August 9, 2006. 

51. Jorge Duany, “Making Indians Out of Blacks: The Revitalization of 

Taíno Identity in Contemporary Puerto Rico,” in Taíno Revival, ed. 

Haslip-Viera, 46. 

52. Ibid., 50–51. 

53. In a study funded by the National Science Foundation, Juan Martínez-Cruzado 

and colleagues at the University of Puerto Rico at 

Mayagüez appear to once and for all disprove the biological extinction 

myth of the indigenous peoples of Puerto Rico. They found 

that maternal ancestries (extracted mitochondrial DNA) revealed a 

“61.3% Amerindian, 27.2% sub-Saharan African, and 11.5% West 

Eurasian” breakdown of the overall Puerto Rican population. They 

write, “The combination of the high Amerindian mtDNA frequency 

found and the representativeness of the sample set leaves no doubts 

that the mtDNA pool of Puerto Ricans is predominantly Amerindian,” 

in Juan C. Martínez-Cruzado et al., “Reconstructing the 

Population History of Puerto Rico by Means of mtDNA Phylogeographic 

Analysis,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128 

(2005): 131, 146. As mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the 

female line only, the significance of the study shows in part how 

Indian women survived the Spanish colonial process in large numbers, 

and how this relates to today. Ironically, there may be a cultural 

element to this type of testing too, for there would seem to be a 

desire for it from mainly those who might be ethnically connected to 

the original people and culture to begin with. 

54. Dávila, “Local/Diasporic Taínos,” in Taíno Revival, ed. Haslip- 

Viera, 23–24. 

55. Duany, “Making Indians Out of Blacks,” in Taíno Revival, ed. 

Haslip-Viera, 37. 

56. Kenneth Ramchand, The West Indian Novel and its Background 

(London: Faber and Faber, 1970), 4–5; emphasis added. 

57. Homi K. Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders,” in The Post-Colonial 

Studies Reader, ed. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffins, 34. 

58. Sandra J. Kuilan Torres, “No hallan foro los indígenas?” El Nuevo 

Dia, July 30, 2005.

Notes 145 

59. Grounds, “Yuchi Travels,” in Native Voices, ed. Grounds, Tinker, 

and Wilkins, 292. 

60. Oscar Lamourt-Valentín, Cannibal Recipes, A sociolinguistic 

account of indigenous Carib-Jíbaro culture and response to the work 

of Ramón Pané, unpublished manuscript (Ames: Iowa State University, 

1979), 8–10. 


62. Bobby González, The Last Puerto Rican Indian: A Collection of 

Dangerous Poetry (New York: Cemi Press, 2006), 25. 

Chapter 2 

1. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin 

Press, 1985), 167. 

2. Linda Clarkson, Vern Morrissette, and Gabriela Regallet, “Our 

Responsibility to the Seventh Generation,” in The Post-Development 

Reader, ed. Majid Rahnema with Victoria Bawtree (Dhaka: University 

Press Ltd; Cape Town: David Philip; Halifax: Fernwood Publishing; 

and London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1997), 41. 

3. Eugenio Fernández Méndez, Art and Mythology of the Taino Indians 


1972), 19. 

4. Harry Levin, “Some Meanings of Myth,” in Myth and Mythmaking, 

ed. Henry A. Murray (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 106. 

5. Ibid., 105. 

6. Julian Burger, in Cultural Survival, State of the Peoples: A Global 

Human Rights Report on Societies in Danger (Boston: Beacon Press, 

1993), 6. 

7. James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America 

(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998), xxi. 

8. Vine Deloria, Jr., Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the 

Myth of Scientific Fact (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1997), 6. 

9. David Stannard points out that among scholars today it is undoubtedly 

recognized that “numerous complex human communities 

existed in South America at least 13,000 years ago and in North 

America at least 6,000 years before that. These are absolute minimums. 

Very recent and compelling archaeological evidence puts the 

date for earliest human habitation in Chile at 32,000 B.C. or earlier 

and North American habitation at around 40,000 B.C., while some 

highly respected scholars contend that the actual first date of human 

entry into the hemisphere may have been closer to 70,000 B.C.,” 

in David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New 

World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 10. 

10. Deloria, Jr., Red Earth, White Lies, 81. 

11. Ibid., 31.

146 

Notes 

12. Gananath Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European 

Mythmaking in the Pacific (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University 

Press, 1992), 8. 

13. Ibid., 10. 

14. Ibid., 8. 

15. Ibid., 123. 

16. Christopher Columbus, in “The Letter of Columbus (1493),” Wild 

Majesty: Encounters with Caribs from Columbus to the Present Day, 

ed. Peter Hulme and Neil L. Whitehead (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 1992), 13. 

17. Christopher Columbus, quoted in Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelly, 

Jr., eds., trans., The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage 

to America, 1492–1493, abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas 




19. For example, see Fray Ramón Pané, An Account of the Antiquities of 

the Indians (c. 1498), trans. Susan C. Griswold (Durham, NC: Duke 

University Press, 1999), 31; and Jesse Walter Fewkes, The Aborigines 

of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands, 25th Annual Report, B. A. E. 

(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1907), 65–66. 

20. Hulme and Whitehead, eds., “The Letter of Columbus (1493),” 

Wild Majesty, 9. 

21. Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, 124. 

22. Ibid., 177. 

23. Ibid., 10. 

24. Ibid., 15. 

25. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the 

Other, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 

97. 


27. Ibid. 

28. Todorov, The Conquest of America, 111. 


30. Ibid. 

31. Ibid. 

32. See Todorov, The Conquest of America, 4. 



35. Ibid., 117–18. 

36. Ibid., 117. 

37. Gordon Brotherston, Book of the Fourth World: Reading the Native 

Americas through Their Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1992), 45. 

38. Ibid., 49.

Notes 147 

39. Vicente L. Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian 

Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule (Ithaca, 

NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 27. 

40. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, 

Territoriality, & Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan 

Press, 1995), 199. 


42. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, 195–96; emphasis 

added. 

43. Ibid., 194–95. 

44. Ibid., 194. 

45. Ibid., 199. 

46. Ibid. 


48. Deloria, Jr., Red Earth, White Lies, 167. 

49. Amos Kidder Fiske, The West Indies: A History of the Islands of the 

West Indian Archipelago, Together with an Account of Their Physical 

Characteristics, Natural Resources and Present Condition (New York: 

G. P. Putnam’s Sons; and London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899), 24. 

50. “The Bull Inter Caetera (Alexander VI), May 4, 1493,” in European 

Treaties bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies 

to 1648, ed. Frances Gardiner Davenport (Washington, DC: 

Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917), 75–78. 

51. Luis N. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious 

Conquest of the Americas, trans. by Westminster/John Knox Press 

(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 38. 

52. Ibid. 

53. Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race 

Prejudice in the Modern World (London: Hollis & Carter, 1959), x. 

54. Ibid., 72–73. 

55. Ibid., 40. 

56. Paul Gottschalk, ed., The Earliest Diplomatic Documents on America: 

The Papal Bulls of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas Reproduced 

and Translated (Berlin: Paul Gottschalk, 1927), 15. 

57. Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal 

Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 1990), 106–7. 

58. Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of 

America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949), 

151. 

59. Indian comment quoted in A. Garcia, History of the West Indies 

(London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1965), 23. 

60. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, 281. 

61. Martin Fernández de Enciso, quoted in Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, 

36.

148 

Notes 

62. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, 7. 

63. For an explanation of indigenous settlement in the Americas, see 

Stannard, American Holocaust, 261–66. 

64. Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus 

and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 69. 

65. Interview with elder Juan Antonio Castillo, August 20, 2008. 


67. Edmundo O’Gorman, The Invention of America: An Inquiry into the 

Historical Nature of the New World and the Meaning of Its History 

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), 17. 

68. Ibid., 9–10. 

69. Ibid., 4. 

70. Garcia, History of the West Indies, 15. 

71. Ibid. 

72. O’Gorman, The Invention of America, 165. 

73. Ibid., 111–12. 

74. Ibid., 18–19. 

75. Ibid., 26. 

76. Ibid., 35. 

77. Ibid. 

78. Edmundo O’Gorman, quoted in Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, 5. 

79. Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, 69. 

80. According to Manuel Giménez-Fernández, during “the whole 

unfolding of the political domination of the Indies by Spain, there 

is not one single ideological movement intended to reform Spain’s 

established legitimacy, nor the direction of the governance of the 

Indies by the State, that in various ways does not allege the historical 

fact of Alexander’s letters in respect to the Indies to support its 

thesis, interpreting them in the light of its own conceptions,” Nuevas 

consideraciones sobre la historia, sentido y valor de las bulas alejandrinas 

de 1493 referentes a las Indias (1944), quoted in Rivera, A 

Violent Evangelism, 31. 

81. Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, 60. 


to 1892 (New York: L. A. Publishing Company, 1978), 59–60. 

83. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, 65–66. 

84. Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, 134. 

85. Glenn T. Morris, “Vine Deloria, Jr., and the Development of a Decolonizing 

Critique of Indigenous Peoples and International Relations,” 

in Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance, ed. Richard 

A. Grounds, George E. Tinker, and David E. Wilkins (Lawrence: 

University Press of Kansas, 2003), 108. 

86. Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the native Caribbean, 

1492–1797 (London: Methuen, 1986), 47. 

87. Ibid., 22.

Notes 149 

88. Ibid., 26. 

89. Ibid., 31. 

90. W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology & Anthropophagy 

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 51. 

91. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, in S. Lyman Tyler, 

Two Worlds: The Indian Encounter with the European, 1492–1509 

(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), 124–25. 

92. José Barreiro, The Indian Chronicles (Houston: Arte Público Press, 

1993), 36. 



94. Bernal Diaz, in Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, 17. 


96. Bartolomé de Las Casas, “Historia de las Indias,” in Two Worlds: The 

Indian Encounter with the European, 1492–1509, ed. S. Lyman Tyler 

(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), 124–25. 

97. Interview with Lamourt-Valentín, June 28, 1999; see also Las Casas, 

Historia de las Indias, in Tyler, Two Worlds, 124. 

98. Interview with Lamourt-Valentín, June 28, 1999. 

99. Barreiro, The Indian Chronicles, 24. 

100. Ibid., 11. 

101. Interview with artesian and indigenous cultural practitioner Margarita 


102. Comment by Peter Hulme and Neil L. Whitehead, eds., “The 

Report of Dr Chanca (1494),” Wild Majesty, 29. 

103. Diego Álvarez Chanca, “The Report of Dr Chanca (1494),” in Wild 

Majesty, ed. Hulme and Whitehead, 32–34. 

104. See engravings and captions in Hulme and Whitehead, eds., Wild 

Majesty, 31. 

105. Irvince Auguiste, quoted in José Barreiro, “Carib Gallery,” Northeast 

Indian Quarterly 7, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 50–51. 

106. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth, 54. 

107. Roberto Fernández Retamar, Caliban and Other Essays, trans. 

Edward Baker (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 

1989), 7. 

108. Ibid. 

109. Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep, xxi–xxii. 

110. Bernhard Lothar Hörmann, “Extinction and Survival: A Study of 

the Reaction of Aboriginal Populations to European Expansion” 

(PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1949), 2–3. 

111. Ibid., 4. 

112. Ibid. 

113. Ibid., 8. 

114. Ibid., 55.

150 

Notes 

115. Carl Ortwin Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley: University of 

California Press, 1966), 39. 

116. Bartolomé de Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief 

Account (1552), trans. Herma Biffault (Baltimore: The John Hopkins 

University Press, 1992), 43. 

117. Ibid., 29. 

118. Sven Lovén, Origins of the Tainan Culture, West Indies (Göteborg, 

Sweden: Elanders Bokfryckeri Akfiebolag, 1935), 657. 

119. Manuel Maldonado-Denis, Puerto Rico: A Socio-Historic Interpretation, 

trans. Elena Vialo (New York: Random House, 1972), 15. 

120. Federico Ribes Tovar, A Chronological History of Puerto Rico (New 

York: Plus Ultra Educational Publishers, 1973), 16. 


Columbus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 30. 

122. Lynne Guitar, Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate, and Jorge Estevez, “Ocama- 

Daca Taíno (Hear Me, I Am Taíno): Taíno Survival on Hispaniola, 

Focusing on the Dominican Republic,” in Indigenous Resurgence in 

the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival and Revival, ed. 

Maximilian C. Forte (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006), 60. 

123. Fewkes, The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands, 31. 

124. Lynne A. Guitar, “Cultural Genesis: Relationships among Indians, 

Africans and Spaniards in Rural Hispaniola, First Half of the Sixteenth 

Century” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1998), xv. 

125. Ibid. 

126. Ibid., 411. 

127. Juan González de Mendoza, Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos 

y costumbres del gran Reyno de la China (1586), quoted in Guitar, 

Cultural Genesis, 411. 

128. Panchito Ramirez, quoted in Valerie Taliman, “Defying the Myth of 

Extinction,” American Indian 2, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 19. 

129. José Barreiro, “Taíno Survivals: Cacique Panchito, Caridad de los 

Indios, Cuba,” in Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean, 

ed. Forte, 25. 

130. Panchito Ramirez, quoted in Barreiro, “Taíno Survivals,” in Indigenous 

Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean, ed. Forte, 29. 

131. Sauer, The Early Spanish Main, 202. 

132. Ibid., 204. 

133. Ibid. 

134. Thomas King noted this comment that was once made to him in The 

Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Minneapolis: University of 

Minnesota Press, 2003), 48. 

135. See Charles Darwin, “On the Extinction of the Races of Man,” 

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: 

D. Appleton and Co., 1897), 181–92.

Notes 151 

136. George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, The Clash of Culture and the 

Contact of Races (1927), (New York: Negro Universities Press, 

1969), 18. 

137. Woodrow Borah, “The Historical Demography of Aboriginal and 

Colonial America: An Attempt at Perspective,” in The Native Population 

of the Americas in 1492, ed. William M. Denevan (Madison: 

University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 16. 

138. Rouse, The Tainos, 161. 

139. Hörmann, “Extinction and Survival,” 244. 

140. H. J. Spinden, “The Population of Ancient America,” The Geographical 

Review 18 (1928): 642–43. 

141. Stephen Cornell and Douglas Hartman, Ethnicity and Race: Making 

Identities in a Changing World (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge 

Press, 2007), 46–47. 

142. Ibid., 45. 

143. Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration in Co-operation with 

the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration, Puerto 

Rico: A Guide to the Island of Boriquén (New York: The University 

Society, Inc., 1940), 102. 

144. Bishop Diego de Salamanca, in Stan Steiner, The Islands: The Worlds 

of the Puerto Ricans (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 16. 

145. Figueroa Mercado, History of Puerto Rico, 31. 

146. Census data in Figueroa Mercado, History of Puerto Rico, 74. 

147. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, 8. 

Chapter 3 

1. The storyteller, quoted in Stan Steiner, The Islands: The Worlds of the 

Puerto Ricans, (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974), 19. 






5.Steiner, The Islands, 18. 

6. The storyteller, quoted in ibid., 11. 



8. Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, “The Aboriginal Population 

of Hispaniola,” in Essays in Population History: Mexico and the Caribbean, 

vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 376. 

9. Lynne A. Guitar, “Cultural Genesis: Relationships Among Indians, 

Africans and Spaniards in Rural Hispaniola, First Half of the 

Sixteenth Century” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1998), 

264–65.

152 

Notes 

10. Ibid., 271. 

11. Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Resistance and Caribbean Literature (Athens: 

Ohio University Press, 1980), 19. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Ibid., 7. 

14. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant 

Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), xvii. 



16. Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European 

Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell 




18. Guitar, “Cultural Genesis,” 335. 


The Development of Tribal Society and the Spanish Colonization 

to 1530,” in The Puerto Ricans: Their History, Culture, and Society, 


Company, 1980), 18. 

20. Ibid. 

21. Steiner, The Islands, 13. 



24. Ibid. 


26. Ibid., 59–60. 

27. Moscoso, “Chiefdom and Encomienda in Puerto Rico,” in López, 

ed., The Puerto Ricans, 21. 

28. Juan Angel Silén, We, the Puerto Rican People: A Story of Oppression 

and Resistance, trans. Cedric Belfrage (New York: Monthly Review 

Press, 1971), 22–23. 


30. Interview with human rights advocate Nilda Aponte-Lebron, July 

26, 1998. 

31. Juan Manuel Delgado Colón, “¿Dónde están nuestros indios?” El 

Nuevo Dia, November 19, 1977. 






35. Ibid.

Notes 153 

36. Luis N. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious 

Conquest of the Americas, trans. Westminster/John Knox Press 

(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 32–33. 

37. Ibid., 33. 

38. Ibid. 

39. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural 

de las Indias, islas y tierra firme del mar Océano (1851), quoted in 

Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, 34. 

40. Mark Davis and Robert Zannis, quoted in Ward Churchill, From a 

Native Son: Selected Essays in Indigenism, 1985–1995 (Boston: South 

End Press, 1996), 321. 


42. Silén, We, the Puerto Rican People, 19. 

43. Ibid; emphasis added. 

44. Pedro Albizu Campos, quoted in Steiner, The Islands, 238. 

45. Silén, We, the Puerto Rican People, 19–20. 

46. Oscar Lamourt-Valentín, Cannibal Recipes, A sociolinguistic 

account of Carib-Jíbaro culture and response to the work of Ramón 

Pané, unpublished manuscript (Ames: Iowa State University, 1979), 

13. 

47. Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, quoted in Fray Ramón Pané, An Account 

of the Antiquities of the Indians (c. 1498), trans. Susan C. Griswold 

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 50. 

48. For instance, see Samuel M. Wilson, “Introduction to the Study of 

the Indigenous People of the Caribbean,” in The Indigenous People of 

the Caribbean, ed. Samuel M. Wilson (Gainesville: University Press 

of Florida, 1997), 4. 

49. For an in-depth critique of Rouse’s first “repeoplying” theory, see 

Anthony Castanha, “Adventures in Caribbean Indigeneity Centering 

on Resistance, Survival and Presence in Borikén (Puerto Rico)” 

(PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2004), 94–104. 

50. Puerto Rican archeologist Roberto Martínez-Torres confirmed 

to me in an interview the similarity between Alegría and Rouse’s 

theories, July 14, 1999. Also, Eugenio Fernández-Méndez refers 

to Alegría’s refusal to acknowledge that the ceremonial grounds 

and ball game played among indigenous Caribbean peoples was 

influenced and primarily found in Mesoamerica: he “clings to the 

traditional but now discredited position that the possible route of 

diffusion was by way of the northern coast of South America,” in 

Eugenio Fernández Méndez, Art and Mythology of the Taino Indians 


1972), 49. One implication here may be that the “Archaics,” as a 

so-called “primitive” people, could not have developed such a game 

or ceremonial practice. However, as Fernández-Méndez points out,

154 

Notes 

the game was apparently played in “very remote times” and among 

the “ancient peoples” of México and Mesoamerica (61). 


Columbus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 73. 

52. Jalil Sued-Badillo, review of Irving Rouse’s The Tainos, The American 

Historical Review 99, no. 1 (February 1994): 333. 

53. Betty J. Meggers and Clifford Evans, “Lowland South America and 

the Antilles,” in Ancient South Americans, ed. Jesse D. Jennings (San 

Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1978), 308. 

54. See Castanha, “Adventures in Caribbean Indigeneity,” 105–16. 

55. Fernández-Méndez makes numerous references to the linguistic link 

to Mesoamerica and notes that “the arawak adscription of the Taino 

language rests on rather flimsy linguistic comparisons,” 16. See 

Fernández Méndez, Art and Mythology of the Taino Indians of the 

Greater West Indies. Lamourt-Valentín has most interestingly used 

the Mayan language to interpret the Pané text. He told me that 

through his Jíbaro background and knowledge of the many myths 

passed down to him through oral tradition, he was able to relate the 

myths back to the Indian language, subsequently breaking down the 

language from the transliteration to reveal the poetics of the narrative. 

By returning to the original Mayan language, he figured out 

that what the cacike Guarionex was telling Pané concerned “moral 

production,” social relations of exchange, explaining “exogamy,” 

and relationships of trade, distance, time, and economic productivity. 

Interviews with Lamourt-Valentín, July 27, 1998 and June 28, 

1999. A breakdown of some important elements of the language are 

contained in Lamourt-Valentín’s Cannibal Recipes. 

56. Fernández Méndez, Art and Mythology of the Taino Indians of the 

Greater West Indies, 19. 

57. Elder Doña Herminia (Monsita) Vargas, quoted in Kukuya, The Ku 

of the Cemi, Codex I (Jayuya, Puerto Rico, 2008), 8. 

58. Kukuya, The Ku of the Cemi, 5. 

59. Miguel Rodríguez, “Osamenta de 5 mil años de edad,” El Expresso, 

January 18, 1996, 24; interview with Martínez-Torres, July 14, 

1999. 

60. See Roberto Martínez-Torres, “El Yacimiento Aracaico De La Tembladera,” 

Tesis Presentada Como Uno De Los Requisitos Para El 

Grado De Maestro En Artes En Historia Con Concentacíon En 

Arqueología, Centro De Estudios Avanzados De Puerto Rico Y El 

Caribe, San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 1994. 

61. Interview with Martínez-Torres, July 14, 1999. 

62. Rouse, The Tainos, 70. 

63. Fernando Picó, History of Puerto Rico: A Panorama of Its People 

(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), 38.

Notes 155 




65. María Teresa Babín, “Introduction: The Path and the Voice,” in 

Borinquen: An Anthology of Puerto Rican Literature, ed. María Teresa 

Babín and Stan Steiner (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), xv. 


67. Ibid., 82. 

68. Ibid., 79–82. 

69. The storyteller, quoted in Steiner, The Islands, 10. 

70. Jesse Walter Fewkes, in ibid. 




73. Adalberto López, “The Evolution of a Colony: Puerto Rico in the 

16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries,” in López, ed., The Puerto Ricans, 

25. 

74. Delgado Colón, “¿Dónde están nuestros indios?” 


76. Regarding the partial abolition of slavery, Federico Ribes-Tovar writes, 

“On July 12, 1520, the King of Spain, in a letter to Lic. Antonio de la 

Gama, Governor and Resident Judge of Puerto Rico, stated categorically: 

‘After much study and discussion, it was agreed and decided that 

the said Indians (encomendados) are free men and should be considered 

and treated as such, that they should be granted full liberty, and 

that we cannot and should not impose forced labor on anyone,’” in 

Ribes Tovar, A Chronological History of Puerto Rico, 60. 

77. Adolfo Pérez-Comas, “Censo de Lando de 1530–1531,” Hereditas: 

Revista De Genealogía Puertorriqueña 5, no. 2 (2004): 66. 



79. Salvador Brau, Historia de Puerto Rico (1904; San Juan de Puerto 

Rico: Editorial Coquí, 1966), 70–71. 

80. See Pérez-Comas, “Censo de Lando de 1530–1531,” Hereditas, 

66–87. 






85. Brau, Historia de Puerto Rico, 80. 

86. Pérez-Comas, “Censo de Lando de 1530–1531,” Hereditas, 66. 

87. Census data in Figueroa Mercado, History of Puerto Rico, 83; 

emphasis added. 

88. Delgado Colón, “¿Dónde están nuestros indios?”

156 

Notes 

89. Pérez-Comas, “Censo de Lando de 1530–1531,” Hereditas, 66. 


91. Jerónimo de Aguero, quoted in Guitar, “Cultural Genesis,” 336–37. 




95. Marianna Morris, in Steiner, The Islands, 17. 


97. For a highly speculative article that relies on the same types of 

sources and census analyses critiqued in this book, and which presents 

contradictory evidence that unwittingly supports a substantial 

indigenous population, specifically the census category “pardos 

libres” as predominantly mestizo Indian as shown in the next chapter, 

see Gabriel Haslip-Viera, “The Politics of Taíno Revivalism: The 

Insignificance of Amerindian mtDNA in the Population History of 

Puerto Ricans. A Comment on Recent Research,” Centro Journal 

18 no. 1 (Spring 2006): 261–75. The author’s trump card reverts 

back, as so many do, to the racist and outdated Darwinian notion of 

“pure” identities as a basis of “extinction.” 

98. Juan Martínez-Cruzado, et al., “Reconstructing the Population History 

of Puerto Rico by Means of mtDNA Phylogeographic Analysis,” 

American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128 (2005): 131. 

99. Ibid., 147. 

Chapter 4 

1. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant 

Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 36. 

2. Maria Teresa Babín and Stan Steiner, eds., Borinquen: An Anthology 

of Puerto Rican Literature (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 38. 




The Development of Tribal Society and the Spanish Colonization 

to 1530,” in The Puerto Ricans: Their History, Culture, and Society, 


Company, 1980), 23. 



6. Census data in Salvador Brau, Historia de Puerto Rico (1904), San 

Juan de Puerto Rico: Editorial Coquí, (1966), 70–71. 

7. Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas: 

A History of the Black Diaspora (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 

1994), 76.

Notes 157 

8. Adalberto López, “The Evolution of a Colony: Puerto Rico in 

the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries,” in López, ed., The Puerto 

Ricans, 25. 

9. Ibid., 25–26. 

10. Ibid., 26. 

11. Stan Steiner, The Islands: The Worlds of the Puerto Ricans (New York: 

Harper & Row, 1974), 60. 

12. Conniff and Davis, Africans in the Americas, 76. 

13. Census data in Brau, Historia de Puerto Rico, 70–71. 

14. Conniff and Davis, Africans in the Americas, 76. 

15. Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Resistance and Caribbean Literature (Athens: 

Ohio University Press, 1980), 14. 

16. Ibid., 22. 

17. Arturo Santana and Rafael A. Torrech, Atlas De La Historia De 

Puerto Rico: Desde sus orígenes hasta finales del Siglo XIX (San Juan 

de Puerto Rico: Editorial Cordillera, 1988), 34. 

18. Census data in Figueroa Mercado, History of Puerto Rico, 74. 


20. Interview with Puerto Rican human rights advocate Nilda Aponte- 

Lebron, July 26, 1998. 

21. Ibid. 

22. Interview with elder and indigenous cultural practitioner Naniki 

Reyes-Ocasio, August 9, 2006. 

23. Ibid. 

24. For a breakdown of ancestral frequencies per municipality, see Juan 

C. Martínez-Cruzado et al., “Reconstructing the Population History 

of Puerto Rico by Means of mtDNA Phylogeographic Analysis,” 

American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128 (2005): 141. 

25. Interview with elder Juan Antonio Castillo, August 20, 2008. 

26. López, “The Evolution of a Colony,” in López, ed., The Puerto 

Ricans, 27. 

27. Lynne A. Guitar, “Cultural Genesis: Relationships Among Indians, 

Africans and Spaniards in Rural Hispaniola, First Half of the Sixteenth 

Century” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1998), 359. 

28. Ibid. 

29. Jíbaro Don Pedro Matos-Matos, quoted in Steiner, The Islands, 94. 

30. Ibid., 90–91. 

31. Interview with indigenous cultural practitioner Niña Raffaele- 

Aponte, July 26, 1998. 

32. Interview with Raffaele-Aponte, Aponte-Lebron, and Baracutey, 

July 26, 1998. 



and Resistance, trans. Cedric Belfrage (New York: Monthly Review 

Press, 1971), 18.

158 

Notes 

35. Fray Iñigo Abbad y Lasierra, in Silén, We, the Puerto Rican People, 

17. 

36. Matos-Matos, quoted in Steiner, The Islands, 94. 


Ricans, 33. 

38. Ibid. 

39. Ibid., 44. 

40. Ibid., 27. 

41. Epeli Hau‘ofa, “Our Sea of Islands,” The Contemporary Pacific 6, 

no. 1 (Spring 1994): 148. 


Ricans, 28. 

43. Ibid., 34. 





Ricans, 38. 

47. Ibid., 38–39. 


49. Ibid. 


Ricans, 44. 


52. Brau, Historia de Puerto Rico, 199–200. 

53. Ibid., 200. 

54. Juan Manuel Delgado Colón, “¿Dónde están nuestros indios?” El 

Nuevo Dia, November 19, 1977. 

55. Ibid. 

56. Brau, Historia de Puerto Rico, 199. 

57. Census data in Santana and Torrech, Atlas De La Historia De Puerto 

Rico, 37. 


59. Interview with Puerto Rican historian Juan Manuel Delgado, July 

15, 1999. 

60. Juan Manual Delgado, “Sobrevivencia de los apellidos indígenas 

según la historia oral de Puerto Rico,” Revista de Genealogía Puertorriqueña 

2, no. 1 (April 2001): 42–43. 

61. Ibid., 46. 

62. Ibid., 53. 

63. Census data in Santana and Torrech, Atlas De La Historia De Puerto 


64. Ibid., 37, 55. 

65. Ibid. 

66. Interview with Naniki, August 9, 2006.

Notes 159 

67. Interview with Puerto Rican archeologist Roberto Martínez-Torres, 

July 14, 1999. 


69. Delgado Colón, “¿Dónde están nuestros indios?”; Manuel Álvarez- 

Nazario confirms that in 1802 Governor Montes ordered all mestizos, 

mulattoes who were not slaves, and indios to be included as 

pardos libres, in Manuel Alvarez Nazario, El Elemento Afronegroide 

en el Español de Puerto Rico: Contribución al estudio del negro en 

América (San Juan de Puerto Rico: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 

1974), 353. 





(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), 50. 

73. Alvarez Nazario, El Elemento Afronegroide en el Español de Puerto 


74. Fray Íñigo Abbad y Lasierra, Historia Geográfica, Civil y Natural de 

la Isla de San Juan Bautista de Puerto-Rico (1788), (Ediciones Doce 

Calles e Historiador Oficial de Puerto Rico, 2002), 495. 

75. See Pablo Morales Cabrera, Puerto Rico Indigena: Prehistoria y Protohistoria 

de Puerto Rico (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Imprenta Venezuela, 

1932), 23–27. 


77. Ibid. 

78. Picó, History of Puerto Rico, 166. 


Nogueras-Vidal, August 12, 2008. 


81. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research, Writing 

and Indigenous Peoples (London and New York: Zed Books; and 

Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press, 1999), 72–73. 

82. For an excellent account refuting the extinction of the Yuchi, see 

Richard A. Grounds, “Yuchi Travels: Up and Down the Academic 

‘Road to Disappearance,’” in Native Voices: American Indian Identity 

and Resistance, ed. Richard A. Grounds, George E. Tinker, and 

David E. Wilkins (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 

290–317. 

83. Lenore A. Stiffarm with Phil Lane Jr., “The Demography of Native 

North America: A Question of American Indian Survival,” in The 

State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, ed. 

M. Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 37. 

84. Henry F. Dobyns, “Estimating Aboriginal American Population: An 

Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemispheric Estimate,” Current 

Anthropology 7, no. 4 (October 1966): 395.

160 

Notes 

85. William M. Denevan, “Estimating the Unknown,” in The Native 

Population of the Americas in 1492, ed. William M. Denevan (Madison: 

University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 1. 

86. Denevan, ed., “Epilogue,” The Native Population of the Americas in 

1492, 291. 

87. See Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, “The Aboriginal Population 

of Hispaniola,” Essays in Population History: Mexico and the 

Caribbean, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 

376–410. 

88. Denevan, “Estimating the Unknown,” in Denevan, ed., The Native 

Population of the Americas in 1492, 5–6. 

89. David E. Stannard, Before the Horror: The Population of Hawai‘i on 

the Eve of Western Contact (Honolulu: Social Science Research Institute, 

University of Hawai‘i, 1989), xv. 

90. Woodrow Borah, “The Historical Demography of Aboriginal and 

Colonial America: An Attempt at Perspective,” in Denevan, ed., The 

Native Population of the Americas in 1492, 20. 

91. Stiffarm with Lane, Jr., “The Demography of Native North America,” 

in Jaimes, ed., The State of Native America, 23. 

92. Borah, “The Historical Demography of Aboriginal and Colonial 

America,” in Denevan, ed., The Native Population of the Americas in 

1492, 19. 

93. Ibid. 

94. Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of 

America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949), 4. 

95. Borah, “The Historical Demography of Aboriginal and Colonial 

America,” in Denevan, ed., The Native Population of the Americas in 

1492, 19. 

96. Thomas Biolsi, “The Anthropological Construction of ‘Indians’: 

Haviland Scudder Mekeel and the Search for the Primitive in Lakota 

Country,” in Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr., and the 

Critique of Anthropology, ed. Thomas Biolsi and Larry J. Zimmerman 

(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), 135. 

97. Ashley Montagu, “Preface,” in Ashley Montagu, ed., The Concept 

of the Primitive (New York: The Free Press; and London: Collier- 

Macmillan Limited, 1968), vii–viii. 

98. Ashley Montagu, “The Fallacy of the ‘Primitive,’” in Montagu, ed., 

The Concept of the Primitive, 2. 

99. E. De Vattel, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law: 

Applied to the Conduct and to the Affairs of Nations and of Sovereigns, 

vol. 3, trans. Charles G. Fenwick (1758), (Washington, DC: Carnegie 

Institution of Washington, 1916), 84–85. 

100. Ibid., 85.

Notes 161 

101. M. Annette Jaimes, “The Stone Age Revisited: An Indigenist View 

of Primitivism, Industrialism and the Labor Process,” New Studies on 

the Left 14, no. 3 (Winter 1990–1991): 59. 

102. Vattel, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law, 84. 

103. See Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (98 Wheat), 543, 1823. 

104. Stiffarm with Lane Jr., “The Demography of Native North America,” 

in Jaimes, ed., The State of Native America, 28; emphasis added. 

105. See Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.), 1, 1831. 




107. Bartolomé de Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief 

Account, trans. Herma Biffault (1552; Baltimore: The John Hopkins 


108. Figueroa Mercado, History of Puerto Rico, 73–74. 


110. Ricardo E. Alegría, “An Introduction to Taíno Culture and History,” 

in Taíno: Pre-Columbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean, 

ed. Fatima Bercht, Estrellita Brodsky, John Alan Farmer and Dicey 

Taylor (New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc., and El Museo del Barrio, 

1997), 18. 


112. Alegría, “An Introduction to Taíno Culture and History,” in Bercht 

et al., eds., Taíno, 18. 

113. Ibid., 20; emphasis added. 

114. Denevan, “Estimating the Unknown,” in Denevan, ed., The Native 

Population of the Americas in 1492, 6. 

115. Cook and Borah, Essays in Population History, viii. 

116. Ibid., xiii. 

117. Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, “The Historical Demography 

of Interior Tribes of Columbia in the Studies of Juan Friede and 

German Colmenares,” in Essays in Population History, 429. 

118. Ibid. 

Chapter 5 

1. María Teresa Babín, “Introduction: The Path and the Voice,” in 

María Teresa Babín and Stan Steiner, eds., Borinquen: An Anthology 

of Puerto Rican Literature, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 

xii–xiii. 


3. Interview with the wife of Cuko, August 22, 2008. 

4. Franke Wilmer, The Indigenous Voice in World Politics: Since Time 

Immemorial (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993), 7.

162 

Notes 




Company, 1980), 59. 

6. José C. Rosario, The Development of the Puerto Rican Jibaro and His 

Present Attitude towards Society (San Juan: The University of Puerto 

Rico, 1935), 17. 

7. Ibid. 


9. Interview with elder William Feliciano, August 25, 2008. 

10. Interview with espiritista and indigenous cultural practitioner 

Uahtibili Báez-Santiago, August 26, 2008. 

11. Ibid. 


13. Ibid. 

14. Stan Steiner, The Islands: The Worlds of the Puerto Ricans (New York: 

Harper & Row, 1974), 97. 

15. Rosario, The Development of the Puerto Rican Jibaro and His Present 

Attitude towards Society, 8. 

16. Ibid., 9. 

17. Ibid., 18. 

18. Ibid., 17–18. 



20. Ibid. 


(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), 118–19. 

22. Interview with elder Feliciano, August 25, 2008. 





26. Interview with elder Lipio, August 21, 2008. 


28. López, “Birth of a Nation,” in López, ed., The Puerto Ricans, 62. 

29. Rosario, The Development of the Puerto Rican Jibaro and His Present 

Attitude towards Society, 63. 


31. Déborah Berman Santana, “Indigenous Identity and the Struggle 

for Independence in Puerto Rico,” in Sovereignty Matters: Locations 

of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination, 

ed. Joanne Barker (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 

2005), 213. 

32. Ibid. 

33. Steiner, The Islands, 90.

Notes 163 

34. Ibid., 238. 

35. López, “Birth of a Nation,” in López, ed., The Puerto Ricans, 70. 

36. Ibid. 

37. Ibid., 72. 



40. Ibid., 184–85. 




and Resistance, trans. Cedric Belfrage (New York and London: 

Monthly Review Press, 1971), 31. 


44. Interview with artisan and Jíbara cultural practitioner Pluma, December 

22, 2009. 

45. Manuel Maldonado-Denis, Puerto Rico: A Socio-Historic Interpretation, 

trans. Elena Vialo (New York: Random House, 1972), 46. 


47. Ibid., 216. 

48. Silén, We, the Puerto Rican People, 32. 

49. “Compontes,” according to Figueroa-Mercado, is a word of Cuban 

origin. “It means the act of submitting an individual to a third degree 

test to extract confessions,” in Figueroa Mercado, History of Puerto 



51. Interview with elder Domingo Guzman, August 21, 2008. 







58. Interview with Pepe, April 5, 2010. 

59. Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, eds., The Philippines 

Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, 

and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 16. 

60. Earl P. Hanson, quoted in Steiner, The Islands, 232. 

61. Interview with Uahtibili, August 26, 2008. 

62. Interview with Pepe, August 24, 2008. 

63. Carlos Feliciano, quoted in Steiner, The Islands, 238. 

64. Ibid., 241–42. 

65. Ibid., 239. 

66. Luis Muñoz-Marín, quoted in Steiner, The Islands, 241. 

67. Feliciano, in Steiner, The Islands, 239–40. 

68. Bolívar Marquez, in Steiner, The Islands, 226.

164 

Notes 


70. Ibid., 10–11; emphasis added. 



Institution, 1907), 24–26. 

72. Ibid., 41. 

73. Interview with Puerto Rican archeologist Roberto Martínez-Torres, 

July 14, 1999. 

74. Photos printed in Roberto Martínez Torres, “Nuestros Primeros 

Artistas,” in Revista Catey, ed. Roberto Martínez Torres (Morovis, 

Puerto Rico: Revista Arqueologica, Antropologica e Historica, 

1994), 11–14. 

75. Interview with Martínez-Torres, July 14, 1999. 

76. Ibid; emphasis added. 

77. Interview with elder Doña Varín Chéverez, August 2, 1998. 

78. Juan Manual Delgado, “Sobrevivencia de los apellidos indígenas 

según la historia oral de Puerto Rico,” Revista de Genealogía Puertorriqueña, 

2, no. 1 (April 2001): 77. 

79. Ibid. 

80. Interview with Boricua and president of the United Puerto Rican 

Association of Hawai‘i (UPRAH), Angel Santiago-Cruz, September 

19, 2004. 

81. Interview with Santiago-Cruz, November 11, 2004. 


Chapter 6 

1. See Ronald D. Arroyo, “Da Borinkees: The Puerto Ricans of Hawaii” 

(PhD diss. Union Graduate School, 1977), 101–11, 139–40. 



3. Fray Bartolomé Las Casas, in Fray Ramón Pané, An Account of the 

Antiquities of the Indians, trans. Susan C. Griswold (c. 1498; Durham, 

NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 62. 

4. Interview with Güiya, August 25, 2008. 

5. Expanding on the etymology of the word “dita,” Lamourt-Valentín 

writes, “The container made from the fruit of the calabash-tree 

(‘higüero’) is called a ‘dita’ from ‘ti’ (to, in, with) and ‘taab’ (to 

hang, to suspend) or = ti’-taab . . . and in some places people apply 

this native term to metal cooking pots.” in Oscar Lamourt-Valentín, 

Cannibal Recipes, A sociolinguistic account of indigenous Carib- 

Jíbaro culture and response to the work of Ramón Pané, unpublished 

manuscript (Ames: Iowa State University, 1979), 6. 

6. Interview with Güiya and Migui, August 25, 2008. 

7. Interview with Migui, August 25, 2008.

Notes 165 


9. Interview with Isabel Serrano, August 25, 2008. 

10. Interview with elder Celia Gonzales, August 25, 2008. 

11. Ibid. 

12. Interview with Isabel, August 25, 2008. 


Uahtibili Báez-Santiago, March 24, 2010. 

14. Ibid. 

15. Interview with elder William Feliciano, August 25, 2008. 

16. See Pané, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, 19–23. 

17. Interview with Isabel and elder Feliciano, August 25, 2008. 




Company, 1980), 61. 

19. See María Dolores Hajosy Benedetti, Earth & Spirit: Healing Lore 

and More from Puerto Rico (Maplewood, NJ: Waterfront Press, 

1989). 

20. Hajosy Benedetti, Earth & Spirit, xi. 

21. Bárbara Rodríguez, in Hajosy Benedetti, Earth & Spirit, 117. 

22. Hajosy Benedetti, Earth & Spirit, xv. 

23. Interview with elder and espiritista Shachira, August 21, 2008. 

24. Ibid. 

25. Uahtibili Báez Santiago and Huana Naboli Martínez Prieto, “Puerto 

Rico”: la gran mentira (Camuy, Puerto Rico: Edición Revisada, 

2008), 26. 

26. Interview with Shachira, August 21, 2008. 

27. Ibid. 

28. Doña Bolina, in Hajosy Benedetti, Earth & Spirit, 58. 

29. Hajosy Benedetti, Earth & Spirit, 58. 

30. Interview with elder Shachira, August 21, 2008. 

31. Ibid. 

32. Frances Robles, “Puerto Rico Archaeological Find Mired in Politics,” 

Miami Herald, July 1, 2008. 

33. Interview with elder Shachira, August 21, 2008. 


35. Ibid. 

36. Interview with Uahtibili, March 24, 2010. 

37. Lamourt-Valentín, Cannibal Recipes, 19–20. 

38. Ibid., 21. 

39. Ibid., 20. 

40. Interview with Huana Naboli Martínez-Prieto, August 26, 2008. 


42. Interview with Uahtibili and Huana, August 26, 2008.

166 

Notes 

43. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, 

Territoriality, & Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan 

Press, 1995), 30. 

44. Ibid. 

45. Ibid., 33. 

46. Ibid. 

47. Ibid., 30. 

48. Interview with Uahtibili, March 24, 2010. 


50. Lamourt-Valentín, Cannibal Recipes, 6–7. 



52. Quoted in Norma Carr, “The Puerto Ricans in Hawaii: 1900–1958” 

(PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 1989), 47. 

53. See Webster’s II New College Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 

Company, 1995, 1999), 806. 





56. Interview with Migui, August 25, 2008. 

57. See Nelsonrafael Collazo, Imágenes del Indio Puertorriqueño (Jayuya, 

Puerto Rico: Nelsonrafael Collazo Grau, 1999), 184–86. 

58. Interview with activist and indigenous cultural practitioner Baracutey, 

August 19, 2008. 

59. Interview with artisan and indigenous cultural practitioner Pluma, 

August 22, 2008. 

60. Interview with Baracutey, August 19, 2008; Interview with Pluma, 

August 22, 2008. 

61. José Luis Morín, “Chiapas Uprising: An Indigenous Peoples’ Struggle 

for Justice,” Covert Action Quarterly, no. 48 (Spring 1994): 39. 

62. Luis A. Gómez, “Evo Morales Turns the Tide of History,” in Dispatches 

from Latin America: On the Frontlines against Neoliberalism, 

ed. Teo Ballvé and Vijay Prashad (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 

2006), 141. 



65. Interview with elder and indigenous cultural practitioner Naniki, 

July 31, 2003. 

66. Isolina Rondón, quoted in Jean Wiley Zwickel, Voices for Independence: 

In the Spirit of Valor and Sacrifice (Pittsburg, CA: White Star 

Press, 1988, 1993), 24. 

67. Edwin Meléndez and Edgardo Meléndez, eds., “Introduction,” 

Colonial Dilemma: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Puerto 

Rico (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 5.

Notes 167 


69. Juan Manuel Carrión, “The National Question in Puerto Rico,” in 

Meléndez and Meléndez, eds., Colonial Dilemma, 71. 

70. J. Benjamín Torres, in Zwickel, Voices for Independence, 10. 

71. Gómez, “Evo Morales Turns the Tide of History,” in Ballvé and 

Prashad, eds., Dispatches from Latin America, 143. 

72. Déborah Berman Santana, “Indigenous Identity and the Struggle 

for Independence in Puerto Rico,” in Sovereignty Matters: Locations 

of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination, 

ed. Joanne Barker (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 

2005), 211. 

73. Ibid. 

74. Interview with activist and indigenous cultural practitioner Elba 

Anaca Lugo, July 17, 1999. 

75. Ibid. 

76. Interview with Anaca Lugo, November 2, 2004. 


Nogueras-Vidal, September 2, 2004. 

78. Interview with Nogueras-Vidal, July 30, 1998. 

79. Ibid., July 10, 1999. 

80. Ibid. 

81. Ibid., July 14, 2004. 

82. Interview with Naniki, July 12, 1999. 

83. Ibid. 

84. Ibid. 

85. Ibid. 


87. Ibid., April 13, 2010. 

88. Liliana Cotto, “The Rescate Movement: An Alternative Way of Doing 

Politics,” in Meléndez and Meléndez, eds., Colonial Dilemma, 120. 



91. Ibid., April 13, 2010. 

92. Morris Morley, “Dependence and Development in Puerto Rico,” in 

The Puerto Ricans: Their History, Culture, and Society, ed. Adalberto 

López (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1980), 

179. 




96. Berman Santana, “Indigenous Identity and the Struggle for Independence 

in Puerto Rico,” in Barker, ed., Sovereignty Matters, 220.

168 

Notes 

Chapter 7 


2. Interview with activist and Jíbaro campesino Pepe, April 5, 2010. 


4. Gabriel Haslip-Viera, “The Politics of Taíno Revivalism: The Insignificance 

of Amerindian mtDNA in the Population History of Puerto 

Ricans. A Comment on Recent Research,” Centro Journal 18, no. 1 

(Spring 2006): 267. 

5. Louis Owens, Mixedblood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place 




Uahtibili Báez-Santiago, August 26, 2008. 

8. Interview with Pepe, August 24, 2008.

Glossary 

(Selected Indian and Spanish Words) 

año de las guácaras : The “time we lived in caves.” 

areíto: A traditional ceremonial dance, recitation, or song. 

apodo: A nickname. 

batey: A ceremonial ground or ball court. 

behike: Similar to a shaman. 

bohío: An traditional Indian house. 

burén: Traditional Indian plate used for cooking. 

cacike/a: A regional leader or chieftain. 

campesino: A Jíbaro farmer in Puerto Rico. 

cemí: Personal or familial guardians representing various spiritual entities 

and a link between the physical and ancestral worlds. 

coca: A cup made from coconut that is African in origin. 

comadrona: A midwife. 

el componte: Documented period of torture in nineteenth-century 

Puerto Rico. 

conuco: Multicropping and subsistence farming. 

cotona: A dress like a tunic. 

criollo (or “blanquito”) elite: In Puerto Rico, mainly locally born descendants 

of Spaniards. 

cuandero/a: A medicinal healer. 

dita: A bowl-shaped calabash made from the native higüera tree. 

encomendado: Indian people held under the encomienda said to be 

“free persons.” 

encomendero: A landlord and slaveholder. 

encomienda: Institutionalized system of forced labor, akin to slavery, 

where native lands and people were apportioned to encomenderos. 

erone: Mound cultivation. 

espiritismo: Spiritualism. 

espiritista: Similar to a shaman, or one who works with spirits. 

fogón: Jíbaro way of cooking using a table with stones. 

guajiro: Cuban Indian, equivalent to Jíbaro in Puerto Rico.

170 

Glossary 

guatiao: A greeting, exchanging of names or “blood mixing” in order 

to establish kinship relations, peace, and friendship. 

Indios esclavos: Indian slaves. 

Kiskeya: Also Quisqueya; today Haití and the Dominican Republic. 

mestizo/a: “Mixed blooded” Indian as is commonly known in the 

Spanish Americas. 

“pardos libres ”: “Free Colored” people. 

repartimiento: Distribution of native people. 

requerimiento: Utilization of Spanish “just war” theory as a way of 

requiring native people to convert to Christianity. 

tiznado: A native warrior. 

yagua: The “boards” or tabla de palma from the native yagua palm 

tree. 

yucayeke: A village or province.

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176 

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Index 

Abbad y Lasierra, Fray Íñigo, 75, 79 

African Americans, 112 

Afro-Boricua, 112 

Agüeybana, cacike, 39, 51, 54–56, 

67, 118 

Albizu-Campos, Pedro, 59; and 

nationalist movement, 103–4, 

125 

Aldrete, Bernardo de, 119–20 

Alegría, Ricardo, xv, 60, 69, 86, 

153; on cultural extinction, 6 

Alexander VI, Pope, 30–31; 

Alexandrian bulls or letters, 31, 

148 

Alonso, Manuel, xvi 

Álvarez-Chanca, Diego, 39 

Álvarez-Nazario, Manuel, 79 

American westward expansion, 

85–86; atrocities, 102–3 

American Indian Movement, 5 

año de las guácaras, 106, 134 

“Archaics” and “Archaic sites,” 

60–61, 153 

areíto, the, 12, 54, 62, 118, 136, 

143 

Arens, W., 41 

Arguedas, José María, 8–10, 136 

Arroyo, Ronald, xiv, 12–13, 52, 

67–68, 94, 109 

Asociación Liberal Separatista de 

Utuado, 97, 101 

Atabei, 12, 21 

Atzantiha (Atlantis), 60 

Auguiste, Irvince, 41 

Aura Surey (Morning Star), 14 

autonomists, 100, 102 

Babín, María Teresa, 62 

Baneke, 51 

Barreiro, José, 37, 46 

Bayamo, cacike, 37 

behike, 110, 116 

Bering Strait theory, 23–24, 49 

Berman-Santana, Déborah, 96, 126, 

132 

Betances, Ramón Emeterio, 98, 102 

Bieke (Vieques), 57, 97, 124, 132 

biological extinction, 16, 47–48, 

134–35, 156 

Black Legend, 16, 83 

Boas, Franz, 48 

Borah, Woodrow, 52, 81–82, 86–87 

Boricua, meaning of, 140 

Bourdieu, Pierre, 5 

Braceti, Mariana, 98 

Brau, Salvador, 63, 75, 86 

Brotherston, Gordon, 28 

Burger, Julian, 139 

Caguana ceremonial grounds, 15, 

62, 92, 104, 116 

campesinos, xiv, 1–2, 7, 12–13, 67, 

72, 76, 95, 98 

Caniba, xvi, 51 

Canibaro (Kanjibaro), xvi 

cannibalism, xvi, 16, 22, 36–41, 50

180 

Index 

Caonabó, cacike, 38 

Caparra, 55, 57 

Carib, xiv–xvi, 2, 7, 14, 17–18, 22, 

35, 37–38, 41, 50–51, 57, 63, 

69, 80, 112, 134 

Carlos, King Juan, 101 

“Casimiroids,” 60–61 

Catholic Church: and baptism 

records, 76–79, 96; changing 

minds and, 79 

Catholicism, ideology of, 95–96 

“Caverns of Creation,” 60 

cemí, 110, 112, 115, 136 

census data and studies, 53, 63–65, 

68–69, 74–82, 87–88, 96–97, 

156 

Chanady, Amaryll, 10 

Charles V, King, 39 

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 85 

Chiapas uprising, 124 

Christian conversion and 

evangelization, 30–32, 35, 40, 

57–58 

Club Borinquen, 101 

cohoba, 110 

Collazo, Nelsonrafael, ix, 142 

collective memory, 13 

Coloma, General Don Francisco, 65 

Colón, Diego, 57 

Columbus, Bartolomé, 34; 

Ferdinand, 34 

Columbus, Christopher, xv– 

xvi; apotheosis of, 24–25; 

cannibalism and, 36–41; 

genocide and ethnocide, 2, 

141; the heathen and, 30; lies, 

33, 41; reaching Asia and, 

33–35, 139; resistance to, 54, 

104 

componte, el, xii, 100–101, 107, 134 

conuco (subsistence) farming: and 

diversified agriculture, 8, 72, 

84–85, 95, 97, 136; erone 

technique, 8, 136 

Cook, Captain James, apotheosis of, 

24–25 

Cook, Sherburne, 52, 81, 86–87 

Cordilleras, 77, 79 

corporate latifundio, 130 

Corretjer, Juan Antonio, xiv 

Cortés, Hernán, 26, 38; apotheosis 

of, 24, 27–28 

cotona, 114, 136 

Cotto, Liliana, 130 

Council of the Indies, 29 

criollo (Puerto Rican) elite, xii, 3, 

59, 90–93, 97, 99, 103, 124, 

129 

cuanderos, xi, 109, 113–14, 116 

Cuba, 34, 37, 46–47, 102 

Cudjoe, Selwyn, 53, 69 

cultural mestizaje, 8–10, 136 

cultural nationalist, 14–15 

cultural survival and continuity, xi, 

xiii, 2, 6–10, 19, 46–50, 53, 

66, 70–72, 80, 88, 90, 93–94, 

105–7, 109, 112–19, 132–36 

Darwinism, social, 6, 134–35; and 

species extinction of native 

peoples, 48, 156 

Dávila, Arlene, 15 

Delgado, Juan Manuel, 12, 63, 

75–77, 79, 106, 122 

Deloria, Vine, Jr., 23–24, 29, 49 

Denevan, William, 81 

dependency, 126, 128–30, 132; 

cycle of, 110, 128–29 

diaspora, xiv, 81 

Diaz, Bernal, and Mexica 

“cannibalism,” 37–38 

Diego, José de, 97 

“discovery” and Christian 

dominion, 30–31, 35–36, 

84–86 

DNA testing and results, 15, 66, 70, 

92, 135, 144, 156 

Duany, Jorge, 14–15

Index 181 

encomendados, 63, 155 

encomienda system, 10, 19, 55–56, 

58, 63–66, 69, 88, 134 

epidemics, 16, 53, 56, 81, 87–88, 

141 

espiritismo, 109–117, 136 

Estevez, Jorge, 45, 49 

Evans, Clifford, 17, 60 

exogamy, 7, 135, 154 

extinction, explanation of, 4, 6, 43 

Fabian, Johannes, 4 

Feliciano, Carlos, 104 

Fernández de Navarrete, Martín, 

34–35 

Fernández-Méndez, Eugenio, xvi, 

60–61, 153 

Fernández-Retamar, Roberto, 41 

Fewkes, Jesse Walter, xv, 13, 45–46, 

62–64, 66, 86, 121 

Figueroa-Mercado, Loida, 51, 64, 

68–69, 73, 75–76, 79–80, 86, 

98 

“Flight of the Jíbaro, The,” 63, 65, 

88 

fogón (and burén), use of, 9, 111, 

136 

folklore, 13, 23, 29 

Forbes, Jack, 141 

Garcia, A., 32 

Garifuna (Black Caribs), 70 

genocide, 2, 29, 32, 58, 85, 133, 

141; cultural genocide, xiii, 58; 

ethnocide, 2, 90, 141 

Giménez-Fernández, Manuel, 148 

González de Mendoza, Fray Juan, 

46 

Gottschalk, Paul, 31 

gran lagarto, 119 

Grito de Lares, 8, 19, 79, 94, 

97–99, 121, 134 

Grotius, Hugo, 31 

Grounds, Richard, 4, 6, 16 

Guajiro, xvi, 46–47 

Guarionex, cacike, 17, 56, 154 

Guarocuya (Enriquillo), cacike, 39, 

45 

guatiao, the, 39, 54–55, 67 

Guitar, Lynne, 46, 52–53, 64, 70 

hacienda system, 7, 98, 120 

Haití, 73, 91 

Hajosy-Benedetti, María Delores, 

113–15 

Hanke, Lewis, 31, 83 

Harrington, M. R., xv 

Haslip-Viera, Gabriel, 156 

Hatuey, cacike, 46 

Hau‘ofa, Epeli, 73 

Hawai‘i, xii, xiv, 7, 11, 28, 72, 81, 

94–95, 102, 109 

Hernández-Aquino, Luis, 139 

Herodotian tradition of savagery, 

36–37, 41 

Hörmann, Bernard, 43–44; on 

“mixed blood” survival, 43, 

48, 135 

Hulme, Peter, 36–37 

Inca, 8, 35 

independence movement, 19, 109, 

123–25, 128, 132 

indigenous movement, Borikén, 

126–32 

indigenous sustainability, model of, 

131 

Insulae canibalium (The Islands of 

the Cannibals), 39–40 

Inter Caetera papal bull or grant, 

30–32, 35, 133; native 

resistance to, 32, 57 

Iroquois, 54 

Isabella, Queen, 34; and subjugation 

and enslavement, 57 

Jacana Indian site, excavation of, 116 

Jaimes, M. Annette, 84–85, 87

182 

Index 

Jamaica, 44, 47, 69, 86 

Jayuya, cacike, 14 

Jíbaro, origin of, xiv–xvi, 91–92 

Jíbaro music, xiv, 71–72 

Johnson v. McIntosh, 85 

“just war” theory, 30–32, 85 

Kame‘eleihiwa, Lilikalā, 11 

Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), 

xiv, 7, 24–25, 28, 48, 81 

Kiskeya (Española or Hispañola), 

37–40, 44–47, 52–55, 57, 61, 

64, 69–70, 73, 86–87, 143 

Lamourt-Valentín, Oscar (Oki), 

xiv–xvi, 12, 17–18, 37–38, 

51–52, 55, 73–74, 94, 117–18, 

121–22 

Lando, Francisco Manuel de, 18, 

63–65, 68–69 

Las Casas, Fray Bartolomé de, 16, 

31, 38, 44, 47, 82, 86, 100, 

110 

Law of Nations, 31, 85–86 

Ledru, André Pierre, 74 

linguistic survival, 109, 119–23 

López, Adalberto, 3, 68, 72, 74, 80, 

91, 96–97 

Lovén, Sven, xv, 44 

Lugo, Elba (Anaca), 127 

Macheteros, Los, 94, 97 

Maldonado-Denis, Manuel, 44, 99 

Mankiller, Wilma, 128 

Marquez, Bolívar, 104 

Marshall, Chief Justice John, 85 

Martí, José, 101 

Martínez-Cruzado, Juan, and 

mitochondrial DNA, 66, 135, 

144 

Martínez-Torres, Roberto, 12, 61, 

78, 105, 153 

Martire d’Anghiera, Pietro (Peter 

Martyr), 110, 143 

Matos-Matos, Don Pedro, 71–72 

matriarchal society, Caribbean, 21, 

66 

Maya and Mayan, 35, 60–61, 124; 

Mesoamerican origins and 

influence, 21, 60–61, 153–54 

medicinal plants, 8, 106, 129; and 

healing, 109, 113–14 

Meggers, Betty, 60 

mestizo Indian (or “mixed 

blooded”), 6, 8–10, 15, 22, 

46, 48–49, 67–68, 70, 75, 80, 

92–93, 125, 135, 156 

Mexica (Aztec), 26–29, 37–38 

Mignolo, Walter, 28–29, 120 

Montagu, Ashley, 83–84 

Montes, Governor Toribio, 78–79 

Moors, the, 120, 143 

Morales, Evo, 124, 126 

Morales-Cabrera, Pablo, 79 

More, Thomas, 41 

Morison, Samuel, 35 

Morris, Marianna, 65 

Morris, Morley, 130 

Moscoso, Francisco, 56–57, 63–65, 

68 

Muñoz-Marín, Luis, 104, 130 

Muñoz-Rivera, Luis, 102 

myth models, 18, 24–27, 29 

myths and mythmaking, 18, 21–25, 

29–30, 36, 41–42, 49–50, 80 

Nahuatl, 28–29 

names (naming): apodos, xvi, 12, 76, 

110, 122; survival of, 12; use 

of, xv–xvi, 38–39, 76, 101 

Napoleonic wars, 94 

Navidad, La, 38 

Nebrija, Antonio de, 119 

Noche de San Juan, 119, 136 

Nogueras-Vidal, Margarita, 14, 39, 

54, 127–28 

North American Free Trade 

Agreement (NAFTA), 124

Index 183 

Obeyesekere, Gananath, 24–27, 38 

O’Gorman, Edmundo, 33–35 

oral tradition and history, 11–14, 

51–52, 61–62, 66, 76, 89, 

98–99, 102, 107, 122–23, 

132–33, 154 

Orbis Terrarum (Island of the 

Earth), 21 

O’Reilly, Alejandro, 69 

Ovando, Fray Juan de, 29 

Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo 

Fernández, 55, 57 

Owens, Louis, 135 

palo monte-palo mayombe tradition, 

115 

Pané, Fray Ramón, 17, 110, 112, 

143, 154 

Papacy, 30, 32 

“pardos libres” (“Free Colored” 

people), 49, 74–76, 78–79, 90, 

94, 156 

“people power,” 131 

Pérez-Comas, Adolfo, 63–64 

Philippine-American War, 103 

Picó, Fernando, 62, 78, 80, 94, 98 

Pitt-Rivers, George, 48 

Polo, Marco, 34; and the Grand 

Khan, 36–37 

Ponce de Leon, Juan, 39, 54–56, 67 

Ponce Massacre, 104 

“primitivism,” 83, 86, 88 

proletariat, the, 74 

Puerto Rican Independence Party 

(PIP), 125 

Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, 

15, 105 

Quetzalcoatl and Montezuma, 27–28 

Rafinesque, Cornelius, xv 

Ramirez, Panchito, cacike, 46–47, 71 

rape, 8, 100, 102; and forced 

marriages, 70 

religious rites, survival of, 104–5 

repartimiento, 62, 66 

requerimiento, 30–32, 57–58, 134 

resistance, active and passive forms 

of, xvi, 10, 18, 36–39, 41, 46, 

53–59, 63–65, 67–73, 76, 

90, 94, 97, 99, 109, 115–16, 

120–26, 131–34 

“revisionist,” 17, 30 

Reyes-Ocasio, Naniki, 14, 70, 78, 

125, 127–29, 140 

Ribes-Tovar, Federico, 44, 78, 155 

Rivera, Luis, 33, 36, 58, 141 

Rondón, Isolina, 125 

Rosario Cantar, 117–18, 136 

Rosario, José, 91–93 

Rosenblat, Ángel, 48 

Rouse, Irving, xv, 13, 44–45, 153; 

on extinction, 48; and first 

“repeoplying” theory, 60–61 

Ruiz-Belvis, Segundo, 98 

Sahagún, Bernardino de, 27–29; 

and Florentine Codex, 28–29 

Sahlins, Marshall, 24 

“Saladoid,” 60 

Sale, Kirkpatrick, 35–36 

San Ciriaco, hurricane, xiv 

Sanes, David, 132 

San Juan Bautista, 54, 57 

Santana, Arturo, 75 

santo de palo statue, 118 

Sauer, Carl, 44, 47 

Scott, James, 67 

self-determination, right of, 35–36, 

124, 126, 133 

self-identification, right to, 5, 48 

self-sufficiency, 128; breaking 

colonialism and, 129; model 

of, 129 

separatist societies, 100–101 

Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 35; and 

Aristotelian doctrine of natural 

slavery, 31

184 

Index 

Sierra de Luquillo, 77–78 

Silén, Juan Angel, 56, 98, 100; on 

Puerto Rican “docility,” 59 

slaves and slavery, xiii, 7, 10, 18, 

36–37, 41, 52, 58, 63–64, 

66–70, 91, 94, 155 

“social respect,” 137 

Spanish American war, 101 

Spanish Crown, 25, 30, 32, 37, 39, 

53–54, 63–64, 69, 83, 155 

Spanish exodus, 68 

Spanish foreign policy, resistance to, 

57–59 

Spinden, H. J., on “mixed bloods,” 48 

Stannard, David, 145, 148, 160 

Steiner, Stan, 11–13, 51–52, 56, 63, 

69, 93, 95, 97, 99, 104–5 

syncretized traditions, 114–15, 

118–19, 136 

terra nullius (“vacant lands”), 16, 

32, 84–85 

Thomas, King, xiii 

tiznado, 98–99, 102, 120 

Todorov, Tzvetan, 26–29, 38 

Torrech, Rafael, 75 

Torres, J. Benjamín, 126 

Toscanelli, Paolo dal Pozzo, 34 

treaties, broken, 39 

United Nations Declaration on the 

Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 5 

Urayoan, cacike, 56 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 116 

U.S. Navy, 132 

Vansina, Jan, 12 

Vattel, Emmerich de, 84–85 

Vespucci, Amerigo, 33 

Vitoria, Francisco de, 31 

voodoo, 109 

Weisskoff, Richard, 17 

West Indian, history of the, 1; novel, 

15 

Williams, Robert, Jr., 32, 50 

Wilmer, Franke, 90 

Wilson, James, 42 

“work books” (libretas 

reglamentarias), 98 

Yaya and Yayahel, creation myth of 

the sea and, 110 

Yúcahu Bagua Maórocoti, 21

The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Borikén (Puerto Rico)

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