Additional notes on the survival
of Indigenous Peoples in Borikén
By Roberto “Múkaro” Borrero (January 2, 2012)

In the mid-1500s a historic debate took place in the Spanish City of Valladolid that highlighted the opposing attitudes toward Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. In summary, Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas, Bartolome de Las Casas, argued that Indigenous Peoples (Indians/Indios) were human beings and “free men” while Juan Gines de Sepulveda argued that, in accordance with the philosophy of Aristotle, Indigenous Peoples were not human. Sepulveda also suggested that “the natural condition of the Indians deemed them fit for slavery, and it was the responsibility of the Spaniards to act as masters.” In essence, Sepulveda sought to denigrate and de-humanize Indian Peoples in an effort to deny their basic human rights.

Indeed, the tactics Sepulveda employed to elevate his position included misrepresenting and generalizing cultural expressions as well as fear mongering to incite hatred and justify violence against Indian Peoples. An example of this strategy is the allegation that Indigenous Peoples generally practiced cannibalism.

It should be no surprise that Sepulveda’s arguments were supported by agents of the “New World” colonial power structure who directly benefited from the then, recently institutionalized, oppressive regime. [1]

Centuries after the debate at Valladolid, it does not take a degree in Sociology to confirm that Selpulveda’s racist, anti-indigenous philosophy continues to find modern-day proponents. While terminologies are a bit more polished for public consumption, the strategy remains the same — denigrate and de-humanize to justify the violation of basic human rights.

Recent articles written by Dr. Gabriel Haslip-Viera provide a significant example of this trend. [2]

Haslip-Viera promotes the position that the affirmation of indigenous identity in the “Spanish-speaking Caribbean” is illegitimate because Governments and academics deem it to be so. To bolster this perspective he champions racists’ ideologies such as determining indigenous biological and cultural affiliation by “degree of blood.” He also manipulates and misrepresents historic and contemporary data.

Most recently, Dr. Haslip-Viera publicly misrepresented indigenous affirmation in the 2010 U.S. Census asserting that a total of 19,510 individuals in Puerto Rico claimed an “American Indian” ancestry. His claim is false as a total 35,753 individuals in Puerto Rico identified as “American Indian” alone or in combination with “some other race”. [3] The fact that Haslip-Viera personally feels the U.S. Census is “controversial” or “based on bogus U.S. concepts and categories” does not invalidate the conscious efforts by Puerto Ricans to identify with their ancestral heritage.

In further evidence of Haslip-Viera’s manipulative presentation style, the 2010 U.S. Census curiously becomes a valid tool for him to hypocritically note, however, that more Puerto Ricans identified themselves as “Black” than “Indian.”

Haslip-Viera also blatantly generalizes the aspirations of thousands of contemporary Taíno People by stating that, as a whole, “Neo-Tainos” claim a “pure indigenous pedigree.” To highlight his generalization, I, as President of the United Confederation of Taíno People (UCTP), challenged him to produce any material issued by the UCTP that makes such a claim. As he could not produce such documentation, Haslip-Viera instead chose to maliciously highlight divisions among a few Taíno entities as if no other community, group or nationality in the Caribbean, Latin America or anywhere else suffers divisions.

While Haslip-Viera smugly implies otherwise, the United Confederation of Taíno People respects the autonomy of all Taíno People and has never claimed to be the sole representative entity for contemporary Taíno concerns. It should be further noted that Haslip-Viera conveniently ignores the fact that contemporary Taíno People — regardless of divergent spiritual or political philosophies or particular group affiliation — are unified throughout the Caribbean and the Diaspora in their affirmation of Taíno identity and heritage.

True to the spirit of the 16th century conquistadors, Haslip-Viera attempts to employ the “divide and conquer” strategy by seeking to isolate Boricua Taíno People in particular. He alleges that there are no similarities between the historic situations of Indigenous Peoples of Borikén (Puerto Rico) with those of “North America.” He cites a “no forced migrations, a lack of treaties,” etc. but his incredible claim is not only false but to use his own words “patently absurd.”

In Borikén, historians confirm these similarities in various accounts from the 16th through the 20th century. These are not “rumors,” as Haslip-Viera cynically suggests, but part of the historical record that he and others deliberately chose to ignore. For example, it is well-known that as a result of the abuses of Spanish colonists, many (but not all) Borikén Taíno People were “forced” to migrate to other islands in the 16th century.

Puerto Rican historian Fray Íñigo Abbad y Lasierra affirms at least one treaty entered into between indigenous Boricua People and the colonial “Europeans”.[4] Local tradition holds that the remnants of this treaty land is located in the island’s western region and known today as “Las Indieras” (The Indian Lands).

During the last half of the 18th century “Indios” were recorded in the island’s official census until the category was removed in the early 1800s in favor of an all-encompassing “free colored” classification.

There is also the case of over 60 Boricua children who were sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the United States beginning in 1899 through the early 1900s. These children were categorized in the school’s records as “Porto Rican Indians”.[5] Even beyond the “indigenous issue” the continued colonial status of the Puerto Rico can in reality be compared to the current quasi-sovereign state of American Indians under the plenary power of the United States.

In addition to verifiable historic data, there is the compelling oral tradition of Indian descendant persons and families throughout the island. While Haslip-Viera views this tradition as insignificant and “weak,” a respected island scholar, Professor Juan Manuel Delgado Colon of the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe feels differently.

Dr. Delgado Colón began recording testimony of Indian descendant families in Borikén in the 1970s. At this point, readers might ask themselves if it is possible that Dr. Haslip-Viera, an academic who prides himself on his research expertise, has not had the pleasure to read any of Professor Delgado’s selected works?

Readers might also ask why they themselves have perhaps not heard of Dr. Delgado Colón considering Haslip-Viera claims serious research is not ignored by “professional social scientists.” In any case, this research is available and following the results of DNA studies on the island, many in the academy are beginning to look at Dr. Delgado Colón’s work more seriously. In my opinion, the oral tradition research of Dr. Juan Manuel Delgado Colón should be declared a national treasure in Puerto Rico.

It is important to also clarify that while Haslip-Viera claims that it is an “exaggeration” to suggest that oral tradition in Borikén is not ridiculed or ignored, the facts on the ground reveal otherwise. For instance, local tradition holds that during the 19th century many Indian descendants took part in “el Grito de Lares” along with other “Jibaros.” One local hero mentioned during these times is a Jibaro woman known as “la India Maria.”[6] Currently, the academy ignores this particular aspect of the island’s history.

There is also ample testimony by contemporary Taíno People who stress that they themselves or their family elders have been ridiculed by school teachers and other professionals when attempting to affirm their indigenous heritage in Puerto Rico. This discrimination has occurred so often that many elder family members have urged younger members simply not to discuss their aboriginal heritage in public. Haslip-Viera and his supporters would have readers believe this is all an elaborate fantasy “invented” by a few socially challenged New Yorkers desperately “craving” to somehow “fit in”.[7]

The debate concerning the survival of Indigenous Peoples in Borikén beyond 1550 is not new. Haslip-Viera knows this yet he would like readers to assume that historically Puerto Rican scholars have promoted the “Taíno extinction” theory in lock-step formation. Sober research reveals that the actual scenario is far more complex as many well-respected scholars actually have acknowledged indigenous survival in Boriken beyond 1550.

Curiously however, those who vehemently promote “Taíno extinction” have controlled the discourse and academic standard-setting since the time of the establishment of the Free-Associated State of Puerto Rico. The record shows that these scholars, working under the auspices of the government, consciously decided to officially confine the national discourse on Indigenous Peoples of Borikén to the archeological record. [8] In other words, keep the “Indios” in the past.

Considering this connection between academics and government in Puerto Rico, it should be no surprise that there is an aggressive and well-resourced opposition to indigenous affirmation on the island.

Like Sepulveda in the 16th century, it is clear that those expressing anti-Taíno sentiment are not opposed to manipulating data or using malicious tactics to denigrate and dehumanize contemporary Taíno People individually or as a whole. During the 2005 peaceful occupation of the Caguana Indigenous Ceremonial Center in Utuado the then Director of Puerto Rico’s Institute of Culture, Lola Rodriguez de Tio, attempted to denigrate the goals of local Taíno activists in the local media by suggesting that the group wanted to conduct “ritual sacrifice” there.
In a further example of Sepulveda-like “fear-mongering”, Haslip-Viera is now ominously calling for the public to “prepare” themselves for “increased controversy, racial polarization and conflict if the [Taíno] get their way.” This rhetoric is coming from a scholar who continues to attempt to polarize the discussion on “ethnic” identity in Puerto Rico to a “Black and White” only issue.

One is only left to ponder if Haslip-Viera considers Puerto Ricans of Asian or Pacific Island descent “myths” as well.

Endnotes

1. “Great Debates: When politics gets gladiatorial”. Stable URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/great-debates-when-politics-gets-gladiatorial-1929773.html?action=Gallery&ino=5
2. “Myth of Taíno Survival in the Spanish Speaking Caribbean” and “Rejoinder to Roberto “Mukaro” Borrero’s A Taíno Response to “The Myth of Taíno Survival in the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean” ” by Dr. Gabriel Haslip-Viera.

3. “Census Data Continues to Shed Light on Boricua Identity”, The Voice of the Taíno People, Vol. 14., Issue 3, July – Sept. 2011, p.1.: http://www.uctp.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=46&&Itemid=38
4. See “Historia geográfica, civil y natural de la Isla de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico” by Íñigo Abbad y Lasierra and José Julián Acosta.
5. This case is not without controversy because a few of these students were from families that could pay the tuition indicating they were from “well-off” families. As an adult, one of the former students described himself as a Puerto Rican of Spanish descent.

This should not imply however that all the children saw themselves as Spaniards and it does not invalidate how the school officials categorized them. See “Porto Rican” Indian History Discovered at Carlisle Indian School” by Rick Kearns. http://home.epix.net/~landis/kearns.html
6. “Sobrevivencia de los apellidos indígenas según la historia oral de Puerto Rico” by Juan Manuel Delgado, Revista de Genealogía Puertorriqueña, 2001

7. Haslip-Viera’s “Introduction” to “Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics”, Marcus Wiener Publishing, 2001
8. “EL Debate Histórico sobre el tema de la Sobrevivencia indígena” by Dr. Juan Manuel Delgado as well as Arlene Davila in her essay “Local/Diaporic Tainos: Towards a Cultural Politics of Memory, Reality and Imagery” in Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics (2001).

Roberto “Múkaro” Borrero is the current President of the United Confederation of Taíno People, the Chairman of the NGO Committee on the United Nations International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples and an alternative Board Member of the International Indian Treaty Council. He is a contributing author to Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics, edited by Gabriel Haslip-Viera (2001). He can be contacted at mukaro@uctp.org.

Contemporary Taínos
as a Social Construction
In Response to Mr. Borrero’s Latest Commentary
by Gabriel Haslip-Viera (January 2, 2012)

Four paragraphs are totally wasted by Mr. Borrero at the beginning of his most recent posting. This is where he outlines the already outdated political position of mid-sixteenth century Spanish theologian, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, in his debate with Dominican friar, Bartolomé de Las Casas, over the treatment and governance of indigenous peoples in Spain’s American colonies. He then ludicrously and falsely equates the positions that I have taken in our debate in The NiLP Network with the dehumanizing and anti-indigenous ideas articulated by Ginés de Sepúlveda in the sixteenth century. [1]

Otherwise, the following comments are in order:

(1) The 2010 Census: Mr. Borrero accuses me of “publically” misrepresenting “indigenous affirmation” in the 2010 enumeration for Puerto Rico by stating that I should have included an additional 16,243 individual islanders who marked “American Indian” in combination with “some other race” (my emphasis) for a total of 35,753.

This is still slightly less than one percent of the total island population of 3.7 million, and it’s not clear how many of these people actually identify as “Taíno.” However, and much more importantly, we also have (again) the public confirmation by Mr. Borrero that contemporary “Taínos” are people of mixed background. He is therefore confirming what I have been saying all along, which can briefly be summarized as follows:

Modern day “Taínos” are a socially constructed people of mixed ethnic background who privilege an exclusive Amerindian identity and culture at the expense of their European and African background, which in all probability is the larger component of their genetic make-up (80-90% on average), and whose contributions to their biology and culture are ignored, minimized or rejected in favor of the “Taíno” for ideological and personal reasons.

In addition to the above, Mr. Borrero claims that the Census “hypocritically” becomes “a valid tool” for me because I make reference to the fact that more Puerto Ricans identified themselves as ‘Black’ than ‘Indian,'” This comment is a blatant lie. I have never argued that the race question in the Census and the data that results is “a valid tool.”

In fact, I argued the opposite in my December 14th statement, which also noted that some Puerto Ricans saw the re-introduction of the race question and its categories in the year 2000 “as a negative and divisive intrusion,” but that “some islanders who identified as Black (a larger group at 12.3 percent in the 2010 census)” also “saw it positively as an instrument that would highlight and support the struggle against prejudice and the real discrimination experienced by persons perceived to be of sub-Saharan African appearance.”

(2) Claiming pure Taíno pedigree: Mr. Borrero was clearly not pleased that I did not limit myself (and why should I?) to the postings of the United Confederation of Taíno People when he challenged me “to produce a single document” that showed that later day Taínos claimed a pure pedigree and, instead, cited a posting by the Aymaco Turabo Tribe that made such a claim. The fact of the matter is that later day Taínos have not been inclined to deny suggestions or claims of racial purity unless they have been challenged on this issue. The public assertion of mixed origins by increasing numbers of later day Taínos should also be seen as being of recent vintage.

(3) Divisions within the Taíno revival movement: Mr. Borrero was also not pleased that I pointed to divisions within the revival movement; however, people in The NILP Network and elsewhere should know about these divisions and be aware of the different and conflicting political agendas that may arise within the movement.

(4) “Indians” in Puerto Rico, 1500-1900: In a confused narrative about Taíno decline and survival in the period from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, Mr. Borrero distorts the consensus position that yours truly and most historians and social scientists have taken with regard to this issue.

Soon after the Spaniards established their first settlements in Santo Domingo, Cuba and Puerto Rico (1492-1511), the Taíno population began to decline precipitously as a result of war, exploitation and the introduction of “Old World” diseases for which they had no immunity (among other factors). Some of the Taínos migrated into the interior regions of the islands to join other survivors who were already there, or they fled to other islands in the eastern Caribbean where they joined the so-called “Caribs” (etc.); however the evidence also tells us that the following continues to be accurate despite any claims to the contrary by contemporary “Taínos” and their supporters:

(a) In all probability, “pure blooded” Taínos became extinct on all three islands by the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries on all three islands.

(b) There is no evidence that large or very large numbers of Taínos were able to subsist in the interior regions of the three islands as a “pure blooded” population in the centuries after 1600, despite claims to the contrary.

(c) Those Taínos who survived in the interior of the islands were very soon joined by poor disaffected Spaniards, other Europeans and escaped African slaves. The intermingling of these groups facilitated the emergence of the hybrid, ethnically mixed populations and cultures we are familiar with today.

(d) It is still believed that the 1600 to 2300 “Indians” counted in Puerto Rico in the years 1776-1797 (after a two century hiatus) were individuals or groups brought to the island from other parts of the Caribbean.[2] There also is no real historical or other corroborating evidence to support oral testimonies and the arithmetical gymnastics made by Tony Castanha in his new book that generate an extremely speculative claim of an enormous (for the late 1700s) indigenous population of “well over two hundred thousand Indian inhabitants” in the interior regions of Puerto Rico. [3]

(e) There also is no evidence to suggest that Spaniards , Africans and others were “assimilated” by a large and dominant Taíno population claimed for the interior of the islands in the period 1500-1800, or that they were “assimilated” into a mostly Taíno culture during the same period. It’s also not the case that this kind of assimilation might have taken place during the period of Spanish induced economic development and growth in Puerto Rico’s interior regions in the nineteenth century.

(f) Mr. Borrero states that “many Indian descendants took part” in the famous “Grito de Lares” rebellion against the Spaniards in 1868 “along with other ‘Jibaros,'” and that one local hero was known as “la India Maria.” However, this individual (as presented by Borrero) may have been called “la India” because she probably conformed to the “Indian” physical stereotype-not that she was an actual Indian, or that she identified as such. As most of us know, this moniker is still used today throughout the Spanish speaking Caribbean when describing persons who appear to fit the physical stereotypes for Amerindians and South Asians.

(g) Mr. Borrero makes reference to the work of historian/oral historian, Juan Manuel Delgado. It is true that his work in not easily accessible and the question is – why? He finished his Ph.D. dissertation, titled El debate histórico sobre el tema de la sobrevivencia indígena in 2006, but this work has not been published as a book (although he may be working on it), and the dissertation is not accessible through Pro-Quest/UMI Dissertions, which is strange. But I also don’t accept Mr. Borrero’s claim or suggestion that there is some sort of conspiracy to suppress this work.

(5) Puerto Rican students in the Carlisle School for Indians, 1898-1918: Mr. Borrero and other later day Taínos try to use the experience of Puerto Rican students in this school as proof that there were still Indians on the island at the beginning of the twentieth century; however these claims have not been supported in recent research.

The admission of Puerto Ricans into the Carlisle School (and other mainland U.S. institutions) was primarily based on the desire by U.S. officials to “civilize” an “inferior colored people” in the years after the U.S. takeover of the island in 1898. It was also based on the racist assumptions of U.S. officials and educators who were mystified by the very real “racial” diversity they saw in the Puerto Rican population (even within families) but which was largely absent in U.S. society. With their attitudes and their “tintometers” (to measure skin tones), they came to the conclusion that some Puerto Ricans looked like, or were in fact, “Indians” even though the individuals might have been defined as “white,” “pardo,” or “mulato” in Spanish records.

Juan José Osuna, a Puerto Rican commissioner of education in the early 20th century, commented in an article titled “An Indian In Spite of Myself” (1932) that he was admitted to the Carlisle School as a Native American, but that his parents considered the family to be “white.” Nevertheless, they sent him to the school anyway because it was considered affordable and a good opportunity to learn English and modern U.S. culture. The other Puerto Rican students, whose comments are recorded on this issue, also seem to have shared Osuna’s view that they were not “Indians.”

The most important and complete research on the Carlisle Indian School was published five years ago by Pablo Navarro-Rivera and should be consulted by anyone who feels that the Puerto Ricans at the school thought they were Indians (see Pablo Navarro-Rivera, “Acculturation Under Duress: The Puerto Rican Experience at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School 1898-1918,” Centro Journal, vol.XVIII, no.1(2006): 222-259.

Key comments from Navarro-Rivera’s article are as follows:

(a) “Puerto Rican students invariably crossed off the terms “Indian” and “Tribe,” replacing them with “Puerto Rico” or “Puerto Rican.”

(b) “Some students, such as Providencia Martínez, of Ponce, are said to have been unaware that Carlisle was a school for Indians.”

(c) Providencia Martínez is quoted as saying that: “we did not know that the school was a regular school for Indians when we went there, because Miss. Weekly never told us the real truth. We thought that there were Americans as well as Puerto Ricans.” “…I learnt to like the Indians very much. That is some of the refined ones. They were very nice to the Porto Ricans, although at first they hated us.”

(d) A student at the school by the name of Vincente Figueroa was said to be “mostly negro.” (GHV comment: Puerto Ricans regardless of appearance were also sent to Black institutions, such as Tuskeegee and the Hampton Institute, where they were defined as Black or “colored” even if they seemed to look “Indian” or whatever.)

(e) “neither the young people nor their parents or guardians had much information at all about the institution to which the government was sending them. In their view, Carlisle was simply one of the schools in the United States for which the colonial government had approved scholarships.”

(f) “the authorities in Puerto Rico who were administering the legislatively established scholarships for study in the United States had not been truthful about the nature of Carlisle. As a result, five Puerto Ricans ran away from the school and at least 11 students returned to Puerto Rico on the orders of their parents.”

(6) Oral Testimonies and Oral Histories: Mr. Borrero just can’t seem to understand or accept the fact that recent or contemporary oral testimonies are of limited value when applied historically. As I said in my December 14th NiLP Network Guest Commentary, oral testimonies should be “corroborated by other evidence.” They’re “not necessarily accurate from a historical standpoint” and may in fact be riddled with self-servingly convenient “myths, inventions, wishful thinking and denial about ethnic and racial origins and past events.” It also needs to be made clear despite Mr. Borrero’s claim, that oral testimonies in Puerto Rico are not generally supported by the DNA evidence which shows that the islanders on average have Native American DNA of about 10-20%.

(7) Mr. Borrero’s blatant falsehoods and his rhetoric: Mr. Borrero gets much more personal in his second NiLP Guest Commentary than he did in the first – hurling gratuitous invective as he tries to distort the positions I have taken for self-serving purposes. This suggests a level of insecurity in self and the positions he takes. Mr. Borrero also has a serious problem with academics and academic discourse that reflects a disturbing degree of anti-intellectualism on his part. He doesn’t tolerate real debate. Like his colleagues in the revival movement, he craves academic support, but only wants to consider or accept those positions that support his own and those of contemporary Taínos in general. It’s the “my way or the highway” approach to the issues.

This will be my last posting on this particular issue in the NiLP Network. I end the discussion with a list of Mr. Borrero’s blatant falsehoods and accusations. (see below)

(a) Mr. Borrero claims that I champion “racists’ ideologies such as determining indigenous biological and cultural affiliation by “degree of blood.” This is a blatant lie at all levels. I rarely mention blood or the “degree of blood” in my writings and never in any kind of supportive way. I do indeed question the use of DNA research and its racialist application to our crude racial categories and the racialist ideologies behind them. I don’t “champion” these ideologies. Mr. Borrero might also be quite confused in this regard. He needs to clarify in his own head that DNA is not the same as blood.

(b) Mr. Borrero claims that I also manipulate and misrepresent historic and contemporary data. This is another blatant lie. Mr. Borrero and the other later day Taínos are in fact not interested in real historical discourse. They are only interested in a history that supports their claims.

(c) Mr. Borrero claims that I attempt to employ the “divide and conquer” strategy, by seeking to isolate Boricua Taíno People from other indigenous groups in the spirit of “16th century conquistadors.” Wow!

The fact of the matter is that the later day Taínos cannot claim a historical tradition similar to those of North American Indians. As noted in my December 14th NiLP Guest Commentary – there is no “Trail of Tears,” no Geronimo, no Little Big Horn (etc.), and more importantly, no history of official recognition from the U.S. government and no U.S. style reservation experience. In this regard, I focus on the years 1600 to circa 1930 – not on the period of the initial holocaust that was visited on the Taínos by the Spaniards in the 1500s, as Borrero would have you believe.

(d) Mr. Borrero claims that I am attempting “to polarize the discussion on “ethnic” identity in Puerto Rico to a “Black and White” only issue. This is another blatant lie and a popular one that is used against critics of the Taíno revival movement.

As stated in my December 14th NiLP Gust Commentary, it is the later day Taínos who are the potential polarizers with their stated goals of demanding “reparations,” “compensation,” “a sovereign homeland,” and “full sovereignty” as an exclusive, officially recognized tribe within Puerto Rican society.

It is true that Afro-Boricuas have been asking for recognition as a racially discriminated population, but they’re not asking for reparations, compensation or a sovereign homeland, etc. They are simply trying to end or minimize the real prejudice and discrimination that they have experienced historically.

There also is no evidence that later day Taínos suffer this kind of prejudice and discrimination unless they forcefully assert their exclusive Taíno identity in a society that idealizes the concept of ethnic mixture and hybridity. Contemporary Taínos who do not flaunt their identity, and who dress and speak “properly” (etc.), should not experience ridicule, prejudice and discrimination in the job market, housing (etc.) unless they are weird in some other way.

Endnotes

1. The Spanish crown had already taken a position contrary to the one supported by Ginés de Sepúlveda with the passage of the “Laws of Burgos” in 1512 and the “New Laws” in 1544, which granted the native peoples of the Americas “free” legal status and certain benefits that were eventually developed further in the “Laws of the Indies.” Of course, the problem with this legislation was that it was poorly implement, had loopholes, and was frequently ignored by colonial officials in the Americas to the detriment of the native peoples.

2. See Silvestrini and Luque de Sánchez (Historia de Puerto Rico: trayectoria de un pueblo.1988) who state that these Amerindians probably came from other localities (p.202). This is an assertion that is also supported by geneticist Juan Carlos Martínez-Cruzado, who says that the “Indians” came from Mona Island (Orlando Sentinel, October 6, 2003). Anthropologist Jalil Sued Badillo, in a chapter titled “The Theme of the Indigenous in the National Projects of the Hispanic Caribbean” states that Indians from Mona Island were brought to Puerto Rico earlier and resettled in the hills of Añasco and San German before 1685. In the same chapter he also states that the late eighteenth century “Indians” may have come from Venezuela and/or Mexico. See Sued Badillo’s chapter in Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings, Peter R. Schmidt and Thomas C. Patterson, eds. (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1995), and see Sued Badillo’s specific remarks on this issue on pages 39,40.

3. Castanha develops his speculative totals on the basis of interviews that he had with historian, Juan Manuel Delgado Colón and archaeologist Roberto Martínez Torres. See Castanha, The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction. (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2011), pp.77,78,80.

Gabriel Haslip-Viera is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at City College and past Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. A specialist in the social history of colonial Mexico and the evolution of Latino communities in New York City, Dr. Haslip-Viera has lectured extensively on these subjects and on the relationship between invented racial identities and pseudo-scholarship. He is the editor of Taino Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics (2001) and author of “Amerindian mtDNA does not matter: A reply to Jorge Estevez and the privileging of Taíno identity in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean,” Centro: The Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Fall 2008). He can be contacted at haslip-viera@ccny.cuny.edu.

FROM BUSINESSWEEK
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

A lush region along Puerto Rico’s north coast will be off-limits to developers until a lawsuit filed by conservationists is resolved, an appeals court ruled on Wednesday.

The ruling temporarily bars any Puerto Rican agency from issuing construction permits for the so-called Northeast Ecological Corridor located just north of El Yunque rainforest.

At least five major developments have been proposed for the area, including three resorts and one mall.

In June 2011, a group of conservationists filed a lawsuit to protect the region, which is considered one of the last remaining nesting sites of the U.S. leatherback turtle. Joining the cause were celebrities such as actors Benicio Del Toro and Edward James Olmos and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The government earlier had proposed to change the region’s zoning to allow for development in a plan that conservationists say would leave nearly 700 acres (280 hectares) of the roughly 3,200-acre (1,300-hectare) area without protection.

A proposed bill that designates the Northeast Ecological Corridor as a natural reserve is still awaiting debate in the Puerto Rico Senate.

by Elyssa Pachico
In Sight (December 14, 2011)

With over 1,000 murders in Puerto Rico this year, some commentators have warned that the US territory is on the verge of becoming a “narco-state” that has been infiltrated by the drug trade.

Amid this record high in homicides and lagging police reform, a recent op-ed in Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Dia said that the US territory is on the verge of becoming a “narco-state.” The article lists 15 characteristics of narco-states, as defined by the United Nations, and concludes that 12 of them apply to Puerto Rico.

There is good reason for concern about Puerto Rico. The island is set to record the highest murder rate on record, beating the previous highest, which was 1994. In September, a top official at the US Justice Department called Puerto Rico’s police force “one of the worst I’ve seen.”

But not only is El Nuevo Dia playing fast and loose with the definition of a narco-state, it is blowing Puerto Rico’s crime problem out of proportion. It’s true that police suffer widespread corruption in their ranks, but not that drug traffickers have infiltrated state forces so deeply that they are dictating policy and openly backing politicians. Suriname is a good example of such a scenario, as is Colombia in the early 1990s. State institutions in Guatemala and Honduras, for example, have been supplanted by drug cartels to a far more serious degree than Puerto Rico.

It is a mistake to think that this recent surge of homicides in Puerto Rico came out of nowhere. Murder rates, which held steady at about 19 per 100,000 inhabitants since 1980, began to climb steadily after 2005. The third most violent year on record came in 2009, prompting Governor Luis Fortuno to deploy the National Guard on the streets. The current murder rate hovers at about 26 per 100,000, more than five times that of the US.

Puerto Rico’s high homicide rate is typically blamed on the fact that it has 270 miles of coastline and is nestled strategically between the US and the drug producing countries of South America. But there is little evidence that 2011’s record wave of violence is because more drugs are passing through Puerto Rico northwards. Even the US Justice Department says that the “overall drug threat” to the island has “remained relatively consistent” in recent years.

The big change has to do with the island’s domestic drug trade. Since two of Puerto Rico’s most powerful drug traffickers, Angel Ayala Vasquez and Jose Figueroa Agosoto, were arrested in 2009 and 2010 respectively, their organizations have splintered. The instability means that it has become more important to control domestic distribution spots. As most of those places, known as “puntos,” are based in the country’s 332 public housing projects, this means the local gangs dedicated to protecting their punto have more incentive to respond aggressively to threats.

According to one Justice Department report, not only does this mean more retail-level drug dealers are fighting to regain control of more puntos, but they are more willing to use indiscriminate violence to do so. Instead of picking their targets carefully, gang members are more willing to enter with guns blazing. Massacres which kill innocent bystanders, frequently children, have become more deadly. Police have also said it is more common for distributors to pay their employees with weapons instead of cash.

One of the most intense gang wars involves fugitive gang leader Jaime Davila Reyes, alias “Peluche,” and his rival Carlos Morales Davila, alias “Cano Navarro,” who was trumpeted as Puerto Rico’s “most dangerous drug trafficker” when security forces arrested him in November. The feud allegedly started when Davila stole several of Morales’ distribution points in the eastern municipality of Humacao. Morales responded by moving in on Davila’s territory in Caguas, 20 miles south of the capital, where one of the nation’s largest housing projects is located. The wave of homicides unleashed by this move is partly responsible for the spike of murders in 2011.

But a plague of turf wars over other, smaller housing projects also caused the body count to rise. In Manati municipality, the gang leaders responsible for overseeing three puntos have decided to join together and fight a rival group, based in the Campo Alegre housing project. In Bayamon municipality, the former stronghold of drug trafficker Angel Ayala Vasquez, alias “Angelo Millones,” another fight has broken out over control of the 22 housing projects found here. These kinds of highly localized conflicts, complete with their own intricate histories of shifting alliances and betrayals, are found all over Puerto Rico.

Often, those who control Puerto Rico’s puntos do much more than oversee retail drug distribution. They control the sale of contraband goods or stolen car parts. They host concerts and back nightclubs. In some projects, gang leaders even decide who is allowed to sell pirated DVDs and CDs in the neighborhood. Those who go against the local gang may find themselves targeted in a retribution killing.

Puerto Rico’s geographic importance as a transhipment point between the Caribbean and the US is not going to change. And judging from the patterns of violence on the island in the past 20 years, with most of the killings caused by drug trafficking turf wars, the fundamental cause of these homicide outbreaks hasn’t changed much either. As the US Justice Department pointed out this year, Puerto Rico’s police force have a long way to go before they are capable of meeting these challenges. Until there are sweeping changes in the island’s security policy, the murder rate in the projects may keep on climbing.

by Roberto “Múkaro” Borrero (December 11, 2011)

Dr. Gabriel Haslip-Viera has a problem with Taíno people. Could it be that our increasing presence forces the uncomfortable exposure of not only the “myth of Taíno extinction” but of the deliberate, multi-generational misrepresentation of Caribbean history by the “academy” he so vehemently defends?

In his latest anti-Taíno diatribe entitled “The Myth of Taíno Survival in the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean,” Haslip-Viera reveals that contemporary Taíno continue to strike a nerve in his “status quo” vision of who and what a “Puerto Rican, Dominican, or Cuban” should be. As the 2010 U.S. Census data reveals, however, his conservative view is jarringly contrasted to how a significant number Caribbean people,, particularly “Puerto Ricans,” see themselves. [1]

Haslip-Viera’s article promotes the position that Taíno advocates are using DNA studies to claim “a pure indigenous pedigree.” As the current President of the United Confederation of Taíno People (UCTP), I submit that his assessment of Taíno affirmation is, to use his own words, “patently absurd.” I challenge Haslip-Viera to produce a single document issued by the UCTP that makes such a claim.

The UCTP is well-aware of the interactions between Caribbean communities before and after 1492. However, like our ancestors, the Confederation does not subscribe to the racist “blood quantum” ideology Haslip-Viera is attempting to impose on the Taíno. The concept of a “degree of Indian blood” was set in place not by Indigenous Peoples but by those whose ultimate goal was to terminate “Tribes.” [2]

It is the position of the UCTP that the issue of self-identity should be discussed within the context of the universal right to self-determination. From this perspective, the question becomes “so what if contemporary Taíno are ‘mixed’?” Generally speaking, a majority of the citizens of U.S. federally recognized American Indian Tribal Nations, Native Alaskan communities, and Native Hawaiians are also of “mixed” ancestry. This does not stop them from affirming and promoting their ancestral heritage or speaking out for the recognition of their collective rights.

In the case of Puerto Rico, Haslip-Viera still seems surprised that the “media made a big deal” about “DNA studies” revealing that a significant portion of Puerto Rico’s population is descended from the region’s pre-Hispanic First Nations. Why this news continues to be a “big deal” is that the standard nationalistic and academic discourse holds that Puerto Ricans are a “cultural” mix of three “races” but that the island’s Indigenous Peoples were basically wiped out within the first 36 years of the conquest.[3]

What Haslip-Viera fails to accept or even acknowledge is that colonial history concerning the “Native issue” has often been misreported, misinterpreted, and or misrepresented.[4] Indeed, contemporary scholars who cite inconsistencies and errors in the interpretation of the historical record are ignored or ostracized. Corresponding oral tradition throughout the region is also ignored or ridiculed within the educational system and in the media. [5]

In the case of the Taíno, Haslip-Viera views oral tradition as an irrelevant form of community and national history. Fortunately, the world community does not share his view. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO), for example, notes that “[o]ral traditions and expressions are used to pass on knowledge, cultural and social values and collective memory. They play a crucial part in keeping cultures alive.” [6]

It should be further noted that Taíno descendants do not require the approval of Dr. Haslip-Viera or others to be Taíno. This position is also affirmed by the world community as per the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Taíno people across the islands and in the Diaspora recognize themselves, each other, and are being increasingly recognized by other Indigenous Peoples.[7] DNA science simply affirms what our elders have been saying all along — we are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the Caribbean islands and we are still here.

Endnotes

1. Over 35,000 Puerto Ricans identified themselves as “American Indian” in Puerto Rico in the U.S. Census. See “Census Sheds Light on Boricua Identity”, The Voice of the Taíno People, Vol. 14., Issue 3, July – Sept. 2011, p.1.

2.See Forbes, Jack D., The Blood Grows Thinner, 2000. Last visited 12/07/2011.

3. After Figueroa, Loida. History of Puerto Rico, 1974, p. 74

4. Figueroa, Loida, ibid.

5. See the scholarly works of Juan Manuel Delgado of the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe y de la Universidad Interamericana de Arecibo.

6. See Oral traditions and expressions including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage. Website last visited on 12/07/2011, click here.

7. See “UCTP Treaties, Recognition, and Awards.”

Roberto “Múkaro” Borrero is the current President of the United Confederation of Taíno People, the Chairman of the NGO Committee on the United Nations International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples and an alternative Board Member of the International Indian Treaty Council. He is a contributing author to Taíno Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics, edited by Gabriel Haslip- Viera(2001). He can be contacted at mukaro@uctp.org.

Eliván Martínez reports in Mi Puerto Rico Verde (miprv.com) about Monsanto’s experiments in Puerto Rico with crops including corn, sorghum, cotton and transgenic soy. The journalist points out that the paradox that, while agriculture is dying on the island, last year Puerto Rico was the fifth most important center for transgenic research of the entire United States, after Iowa, Illinois, Hawaii, and Nebraska. In the first article of a three-part series, Martínez writes:

Here there is a reality that the Government hides and sponsors: the island is an important center for eight companies, seven of them multinationals, which are developing the first generations of genetically modified seeds to be distributed to United States and around the world. The fields of control of these corporations are spreading to public and private estates, especially the best arable lands in the southern part of the island where, in the past century, her Majesty—the sugar cane—ruled, supported by landowners who sought to keep hold of the land.

Most of these seed producers occupy more than the limit of 500 acres that are allowed by Puerto Rico’s Constitution, while they receive juicy benefits from the Government as well as the Promotion and Development of Enterprises of Agricultural Biotechnology Act [in place since 2009 and promoted by Governor Luis Fortuño], which was tailor-made to favor these companies. Among these is the main seed producer in the planet, Monsanto, which holds a lease on 1,500 acres of land between Juana Díaz, Santa Isabel, Isabela, and Aguadilla. Of these acres, 500 belong to public property managed by the Land Authority, and the rest belongs mostly to Sucesión Serralles in several villages of the South, as confirmed by Juan Santiago, Chief of Operations in Puerto Rico for this multinational.

But to have more than 500 acres represents a clear violation the Constitution of Puerto Rico (which prohibits an agricultural corporation to possess more than 500 acres). Section 14 of Article VI was once aimed to keep U.S. landowners from establishing a monopoly and displacing small local farmers.

Are we facing a new colonization of agriculture? Is it the beginning of a new monopoly? [. . .] The events of agricultural history are repeating themselves. “As was the case with several sugar corporations over the past century, one of these companies, Monsanto, changes its name to access more land than is allowed under the law,” says a source at the Center for Investigative Journalism. [. . .] Monsanto Caribbean LLC had been incorporated in 2004 by Carlos Morales Figueroa, who was the vice-president of the company at that time. Two years later, he incorporated Monsanto AG Products LLC.]

[. . .] Among these corporations are the German company Bayer CropScience LP (Sabana Grande), the Swiss company Syngenta AG (in Juana Díaz and Salinas), and U.S. companies AgReliant Genetics LLC (headquartered in Santa Isabel), Dow Agrosciences LLC (in Santa Isabel), Illinois Crop Improvement Association Inc. (Juana Díaz), Rice Tec Inc (in Lajas), and the second largest seed producer of GM crops in the world, Pioneer Hi-Breed (in Salinas, Santa Isabel, Guayama, Juana Díaz). Joining this group is the Puerto Rican company 3rd Millennium Genetics Inc. (Santa Isabel).

Between them they produced about $70 million last year, according to Juan Carlos Justiniano, owner of 3rd Millennium Genetics Inc. Despite the profits they obtained on the island and the multi-million dollar business deals that they have around the world, the Government of Puerto Rico gives them the same tax exemptions that they give to a bona fide local farmer.

For the full article, see http://www.miprv.com/puerto-rico-el-experimento-caribeno-de-monsanto/

Rejoinder
to Roberto “Mukaro” Borrero’s
A Taíno Response to
“The Myth of Taíno Survival
in the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean”
by Gabriel Haslip-Viera (December 14, 2011)

Mr. Borrero is correct in pointing out that the number of people in Puerto Rico who self-identify as “Indian” has increased 49 percent from 13,336 in the year 2000 to 19,510 in 2010. But this is still only less than 1 percent of the total Island population of 3.7 million.

This Puerto Rico Census has, in addition, been seen as a controversial and extremely problematic exercise in racial construction based on bogus U.S. concepts and categories in which the overwhelming majority of Puerto Rican Islanders self-identify as White (76 percent). Many in Puerto Rico were confused and wondered why a U.S. style racial breakdown was re-introduced into the census enumeration in the year 2000 after a forty-year hiatus of not producing such data in conformance to the ideals of the “rainbow” model of race mixture promoted by officials of the Island government.

Some saw the re-introduction of this racial breakdown as a negative and divisive intrusion that would foster increased racial tension and polarization in Puerto Rico. Others, including some who identified as Black (a larger group at 12.3 percent in the 2010 census) saw it positively as an instrument that would highlight and support the struggle against prejudice and the real discrimination experienced by persons perceived to be of sub-Saharan African appearance. Needless to say, the questions and controversies surrounding this complex issue continue up to the present. [1]

Mr. Borrero also challenges me to produce a single document that shows that the Neo-Taínos have claimed a “pure indigenous pedigree.” However, he limits himself to the United Confederation of Taíno People (UCTP) when he issues this challenge. The fact of the matter is that the UCTP is not the only game in town and Mr. Borrero knows this.

There are other NeoTaíno organizations and subgroups that are sometimes in conflict with each other, such as the Jatibonicu Taíno Tribal Nation of Boriken, the Taíno Turabo Aymaco Tribe of Puerto Rico, and the Consejo General de Taínos Borincanos, with the issue of purity coming up in statements on occasion. [2] For example, the “Tribal Charter” of the Taíno Turabo Aymaco Tribe of Boriken states that their tribe “is made-up of: documented and non-documented, pure blood, and non-pure blood descendants of the Taíno Turabo and Aymaco Tribes,” and “pure and non-pure blood descendants of other various Taíno Tribes from the entire Caribbean.” [3]

You also have to be lucky even in the case of Borrero’s UCTP, to find a disclaimer about purity somewhere in the fine print of their elaborate website. Otherwise, the home page and the membership application form simply tells you that the Neo-Taínos are “the descendants of the first ‘American Indians’,” or that the applicant for membership must “solemnly swear” that he or she is “a direct descendant of the group of aboriginal people who are now known today as Taíno/Carib/rawak”-punto/period/finito!

It is also usually the case that the average reader or TV and internet viewer (Latino/a or otherwise) gets the impression that the Neo-Taínos are indeed claiming purity when they read headlines or hear statements or passages that simply state that “We are still here” or “We are the original people” with pictures or videos of dancing individuals wearing feathered headbands and other tribal paraphernalia. The average reader or viewer is normally not privy to the nuances of “blood quantum,” genetic percentages and other issues of significance to the discourses of U.S. based Native peoples. It is also generally the case that the Neo-Taínos do not make reference to their mixed origins unless they are pressed to explain themselves on this issue.

The Neo-Taínos also like to compare themselves to other indigenous groups who also lack purity, but these groups have well established historical traditions that the Neo-Taínos lack (with the exception of certain specific families in eastern Cuba). The Puerto Rican Neo-Taínos cannot point to anything like the broken treaties, the massacres, the forced migrations, the “Trail of Tears,” Geronimo, Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull, and the reservation experience of North American Amerindians from the16th to 20th centuries.

There also has been no recognition of the Puerto Rican Neo-Taínos as an official tribal group by the U.S. or Puerto Rican governments in the way that North American Amerindians have been officially recognized. [4] What we have are long periods of silence, especially in the 17th, 19th and 20th centuries, along with occasional rumors and claims that Indians or “Indian looking” people have been living in isolation in the interior of Puerto Rico.

Mr. Borrero raises the issue of errors, inconsistencies; misinterpretation and misrepresentation in historical writing, but these problems are predictably exaggerated by him and the Neo-Taínos as part of their propaganda. Mr. Borrero also states that “contemporary scholars who cite inconsistencies and errors in the interpretation of the historical record are ignored or ostracized.” This claim is ultimately false. Professional historians and other social scientists are trained to continuously search for new evidence that may result in historical re-interpretation.

It is true that there may be some resistance to the new interpretations from established scholars, but the discovery of important new evidence or the compelling reinterpretation of existing evidence is what often elevates the reputation and status of historians and other social scientists in their particular disciplines. Recent examples include (1) the revised history of early Christianity based on the discovery and re-discovery of suppressed gospels, (2) the revised earlier chronology for the arrival of the first humans in the Americas based on the important archaeological work of Tom Dillehay in Chile, and (3) the revised history of the ancient Maya based on the decipherment of their hieroglyphic writing system.

It’s also an exaggeration to say that oral traditions are “ignored or ridiculed.” The problem with oral traditions when applied historically is that they usually have to be corroborated by other evidence. Oral traditions and expressions may indeed be used to “pass on knowledge, cultural and social values and collective memory,” but these traditions and expressions are not necessarily accurate from a historical standpoint.

They may, in fact, be riddled with myths, inventions, wishful thinking and denial about ethnic and racial origins, past events and so-on. The stories about Aztec origins that have come down to us are a case in point. Peter Metcalf has discussed this problem for anthropologists doing field work in modern settings and how to deal with it in his book They Lie, We Lie: Getting Along with Anthropology (Routledge, 2001).

Mr. Borrero states at one point that, “It is the position of the UCTP that the issue of self-identity should be discussed within the context of the universal right to self-determination.” This sounds very positive, but one of his colleagues, Naniki Reyes Ocasio, a lawyer with a 400 acre farm in Puerto Rico, has other ideas.

It was reported in 2003 that Reyes was using her “legal experience” to obtain “reparations and compensation” for the Neo-Taínos and it’s clear that the key issue for Reyes is the attainment of official recognition for the Neo-Taínos from the U.S. government. She also makes reference to land, water, fishing, hunting, and “our sacred sites” at the end of a YouTube video that is then followed by the statement: “Once we have full sovereignty, right? What does that mean-full sovereignty? We decide…we have the right to protect, manage and caretake, because that’s our-that’s our original instructions.” [5]

These kinds of goals are also articulated by other Neo-Taínos, such as Chief Peter “Guanikeyu” Torres of the Jatibonicu Tribe, He calls for the re-establishment of “a sovereign Taíno Tribal Nation and our own sovereign homeland” (whatever that means).

However, these kinds of Neo Taíno objectives are best summarized by Maximilian Forte, one of the Anglo supporters of the revival movement. He notes that the Neo-Taínos have rejected hybridity or creolization as an ideal and will be able to pursue “indigenous entanglements within the wider societies they inhabit,” participate in the “competition for resources” and become involved in the “the struggle for rights within the politics of the nation state.” [6] In other words, prepare yourself for increased controversy, racial polarization and conflict if these folks get their way.

At another point, Mr. Borrero states that “DNA science simply affirms what our elders have been saying all along — we are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the Caribbean islands and we are still here.” This, of course, is false given the small 10-15 percent Amerindian DNA for the Puerto Ricans sampled recently by Carlos Bustamante and his team. But it’s also not clear who the referent is when he uses the term “we.” Is it Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean Latinos/as in general, or is it just those individuals who claim Taíno ancestry? In any case, the claim is problematic, to say the least – even for some of the NeoTaíno elders that he cites.

For example, “Elder” Jim Runningfox (aka James López) of the “Taíno Turabo Aymaco Tribe,” was shocked to learn that his DNA was 80 percent European, 13 percent Sub-Saharan African, 0 percent East Asian, and only 7 percent Native American, when he had his DNA tested in 2007. In a statement to tribal members, Mr. Runningfox described how he was particularly puzzled by the European and “South Sahara African results,” which he felt were “too high.” He also considered quitting the tribe because of the test results, but was dissuaded by respondents that included an individual identified as “Cacike Coquí” who used the old racist “one drop” (of blood) theory to justify continued membership in the tribe. [7]

Finally, there is the attempt to shut me up, along with other critics of the movement, when Mr. Borrero states that “Taíno descendants do not require the approval of Dr. Haslip-Viera or others to be Taíno,” which, of course, is true as they also crave the approval and official recognition of the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments at the same time. However, I have every right, along with thousands of other Caribbean Latinos/as, to criticize, reject and even oppose the agendas of the Neo-Taínos under the concept (remember?) of “self-determination,” whether they like it or not.

Endnotes

1. The Neo-Taínos may also see the racial breakdown positively because it may assist the group in their effort to attain official recognition as a tribe from the U.S. and Puerto Rican island governments, etc.

2. For example, there seems to be some sort of on-going conflict between the UCTP and the Consejo General de Taínos Borincanos. See http://naciontaino.blogspot.com/ .

3. Text of the charter in author’s possession. The charter does not appear in the Aymaco Tribal website at the present time-perhaps because of a personal crisis experienced by one of the “elders” in 2007 (see text above). The website now states that “We recognize and acknowledge that we are now the Taíno Rainbow people.” See http://www.indio.net/aymaco/index.html .

4. The Neo-Taínos tried to compel the government and governor of Puerto Rico to recognize them as an official group during their forced entry and takeover of the Caguana ceremonial center, museum and archaeological site in the summer of 2005. They have also apparently continued their efforts to obtain official recognition as an autonomous tribal group from the U.S. government through the Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs.

5. Matthew Hay Brown, “History of Native People Spurs Debate in Puerto Rico.” Orlando Sentinel (December 26, 2003): http://www.orlandosentinel.com/, and YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6yYyWJTjIg.

6. Maximilian C. Forte (ed.), Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival and Revival (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 4-5, 8, 14 and passim. For the comments by Chief Torres, see http://www.lasculturas.com/articles/14-culture-a-identity/22-the-taino-survival.

7. From to March 23-24, 2007
(messages in author’s possession). The “one drop” rule or theory refers to the idea prevalent in the United States and used against African Americans that one drop of Black blood makes a person Black regardless of skin complexion, etc.

Gabriel Haslip-Viera is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at City College and past Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. A specialist in the social history of colonial Mexico and the evolution of Latino communities in New York City, Dr. Haslip-Viera has lectured extensively on these subjects and on the relationship between invented racial identities and pseudo-scholarship. He is the editor of Taino Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics (2001) and author of “Amerindian mtDNA does not matter: A reply to Jorge Estevez and the privileging of Taíno identity in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean,” Centro: The Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Fall 2008). He can be contacted at haslip-viera@ccny.cuny.edu.

By Ed Morales / December 6, 2011/ For the Nation magazine

On June 30, 2010, as part of a lesson in democracy, Betty Peña Peña drove with her daughter, Eliza, from the town of Caguas to the Capitolio building in Old San Juan, which houses the island territory’s legislature. They had been to several demonstrations before, particularly those organized by Puerto Rico’s teachers union, of which Betty is a member. This time they intended to join a coalition of university students, community organizations and labor unions at the Neoclassical Revival structure overlooking the Caribbean.

It was the last day of the session, and on the agenda were final arguments on legislation to carry out budget cuts designed to address what right-wing Governor Luis Fortuño had proclaimed a fiscal crisis. The session had been plagued by controversy surrounding the decision by Senate president Thomas Rivera Schatz, who belongs to Fortuño’s pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP), to prevent the general public and independent media from entering the viewing galleries. The imposition of this unconstitutional restriction, coming after months of protest against the government’s harsh austerity policies, brought political tensions in Puerto Rico to a boil.

When Peña arrived with her daughter, the crowd, as many as a thousand or more, was singing and chanting slogans. As if sensing the wet gust of a wind that signals an impending tropical thunderstorm, Peña felt the atmosphere deteriorate quickly. “Suddenly a helicopter came over the ocean, really close to us, and we moved toward the students, who were by a row of parked cars, surrounded by a wall of police, the riot squad and mounted police,” she recalls.

Then a police officer, using a megaphone, ordered the crowd to disperse. In seconds the tactical operations unit—in actions that prefigured many of this fall’s evictions of Occupy Wall Street—began to viciously attack the demonstrators with batons and pepper spray. “They were just hitting people, and then my daughter, Eliza, was on the floor, and they hit me,” she says, beginning to sob. “But the blow didn’t hurt as much as when I saw her on the floor and I saw the police were on top of her.”

“The party in power wants Puerto Rico to be a state, but they don’t know the first thing about American democracy,” says William Ramirez, executive director of the Puerto Rico branch of the ACLU, which is suing the Puerto Rican police on behalf of the Peñas.

The brutality of police conduct that day was the culmination of a wave of violence that, while a problem for many years, has accelerated under the Fortuño administration. It drove Illinois Representative Luis Gutierrez, a Puerto Rican who attended the University of Puerto Rico, to rail against Fortuño on the floor of the House last February. “This year the people of Wisconsin took over the Capitol in Madison; they had 100,000 people there,” Gutierrez told me later. “But they didn’t send in the riot squad! They didn’t close down the Senate. Here, people march to the Senate and what did they do? They called the riot police and they pepper-sprayed, and I’m wondering, why isn’t anybody saying anything?”

In Washington the president and Congress remained silent, but in Puerto Rico people had been speaking up for quite a while. The efforts of Ramirez, along with those of another lawyer named Judith Berkan, helped to spur a three-year investigation of the Puerto Rican police by the Justice Department, the results of which were released this past September 8. Announced at a San Juan press conference hosted by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Pérez and Fortuño, the report found that the Puerto Rico Police Department—the second largest in the United States, with 17,000 officers—had engaged in a “pattern and practice of: excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment; unreasonable force…designed to suppress the exercise of protected First Amendment rights; and unlawful searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

The report details how these violations were systemic, “pervasive and plague all levels of PRPD”; and that there is a “staggering level of crime and corruption” among police officers. It also documented abuses of Dominicans, who tend to live in segregated neighborhoods, as well as a failure to investigate domestic crimes against women and violence against the LGBT community. And the ACLU has documented a decades-long history of abuses of poor Afro–Puerto Ricans. “The Puerto Rico police department is broken,” said Pérez, who promised to transform this report into “a comprehensive blueprint for sustainable reform” by continuing to work with and engage “stakeholders” like the Fortuño government, the police department and the larger community.

But the next step for the Puerto Rican people, its government and the police department is unclear. The DOJ has two choices: initiate a lawsuit and force the PRPD into a consent decree, which is a court-ordered settlement, or settle out of court and enter into a memorandum of agreement. How much cooperation the DOJ receives from the department—and the rest of Fortuño’s administration—in these early stages will determine which of these solutions will be implemented.

“This is the first time ever in our history that an investigatory body has said, ‘Not only do you have a corrupt police department but they engaged in criminal behavior, they violated human rights.’ If nothing else comes out of this report, just getting that is historic,” says Ramirez, a Bronx native who taught at the University of Puerto Rico and is now a permanent part of the island’s political fabric.

Like Ramirez and Luis Gutierrez, Judith Berkan has an intimate bond with the university, where she once taught in the law school. “The police department in Puerto Rico has had plenty of issues, which is at least partly due to their being a quasi-military unit to support US interests in Puerto Rico,” says Berkan, a Brooklyn native who has been litigating cases of police misconduct for thirty-five years. “If you look at the last eighteen years, in fourteen of those the police department has been run by someone from the FBI.”

In the mid-1980s Ramirez began working with residents of the poor San Juan neighborhood of La Perla, where everyone understands the pattern of police impunity. “If they go into my neighborhood to look for a drug dealer, they don’t knock my door down; they just go to the suspect’s house,” Ramirez says. “When they go to La Perla, they break down every door and wreck your house, and possibly beat you up.”

It was a barrage of lawsuits from Berkan’s office—most notably regarding the case of Miguel Cáceres, a father of three who was shot to death by an enraged officer and left to die on a street in a small town—that helped spur the four-year DOJ investigation in 2007. The killing of this unarmed man was a Rodney King moment for Puerto Rico; someone videotaped the shooting, showing it to be a clear case of police abuse.

The Cáceres killing was a textbook case of the systematic problems in the police department, as Berkan laid out in her lawsuit against PRPD officials. The lawsuit revealed that repeated violations of conduct are ignored, that protocols are ignored, that there is no systematic record-keeping or analysis of police shootings and that there are excessive delays in the disciplinary system and no redress for civilians who are victimized.

Enter Fortuño and the State of Emergency
?
Long before Fortuño’s rise to power, electoral politics in Puerto Rico had become a game of musical chairs, with ineffectual governance and corruption scandals. But when Fortuño took office in 2008, his PNP party took control of the legislative and judicial branches as well as the executive. And Fortuño used the recession—which had begun in 2006 on the island, at least a year before it hit the mainland—as an excuse to implement what he argued was a mandate for extreme change.

Previously the island’s resident commissioner, or nonvoting representative in Congress, Fortuño is a prominent member of the Republican National Committee and has extensive GOP connections. His former campaign consultant, Annie Mayol, currently his government affairs adviser, worked for Karl Rove during the early years of the George W. Bush presidency in the controversial Office of Political Affairs. Fortuño has been praised by Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich, who featured him on his website the Americano, and has been the subject of a glowing profile in the right-wing webzine Newsmax. While the PNP has usually been conservative, few Puerto Rican politicians have so stridently connected with the far right on the mainland as Fortuño. “Republicans are pointing to his extreme government-budget-slashing priorities as an example of what they’d like to do when and if they regain control in Washington,” says Puerto Rico Senator Eduardo Bhatia, a member of the rival Popular Democratic Party (PDP), which supports commonwealth status.

As soon as he entered office, Fortuño pushed through the infamous Law 7, whose full title is Special Law Declaring a Fiscal State of Emergency and Establishing an Integrated Plan of Fiscal Stabilization to Save Puerto Rico’s Credit Rating. The declaration of a state of emergency allowed the government to implement austerity measures, including the layoff of some 20,000 government employees. Less noticed was that because of the “emergency,” the government could take extraordinary measures to “protect the life, health and well-being of the people.”

“The layoffs start, so what begins to happen is that people begin to protest, and on May Day in 2009 we had 30,000 people marching,” says Ramirez. The first demos were peaceful, but Ramirez and others were concerned, because Fortuño had named José Figueroa Sancha as police chief. As deputy FBI chief in Puerto Rico, Figueroa Sancha had been involved in the 2005 extrajudicial killing of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, leader of the militant pro-independence group Los Macheteros. Ojeda Ríos’s killing was widely perceived by Puerto Ricans, regardless of their views on the Macheteros, as an improper FBI incursion into local governance. Months later, during a series of FBI raids designed to gather information about Machetero sympathizers, agents stormed a San Juan building. When a crowd of journalists showed up, the FBI pepper-sprayed them, and then hit them with batons while they were on the ground writhing from the effects of the spray. Figueroa Sancha was at the scene as deputy FBI special agent in charge.

Three months after the massive 2009 May Day strike, the police used batons to strike bystanders in the off-campus tavern area of the University of Puerto Rico, and one officer shot a female student with a tear-gas canister, causing a gaping wound. In 2010 a coalition of UPR students—alarmed by the intention of the board of trustees, which is packed with Fortuño acolytes, to increase tuition fees—decided to strike. On May 20 the police attacked a group of about 200 students, union leaders and public employees who were protesting Fortuño’s appearance at a fundraising event in a San Juan hotel. Videocameras caught the images of officers pepper-spraying directly into the faces of protesters, some of them middle-aged women. “The tear gas that they were using was a highly toxic form of CN gas,” says Ramirez. The gas is prohibited by many mainland police departments.

* * *

By the time of the Capitolio incident, there was mounting discontent over these incidents as well as the banning of the public from the legislature’s observer galleries. “You have to understand,” says journalist and lawyer Oscar Serrano, who is former president of the Puerto Rico Journalists’ Association, “the Puerto Rico Constitution was written after the International Human Rights Declaration of 1948, and it explicitly states that all legislative activities must be open to the public. And the people know this.”

The violence started inside the vestibule, where independent journalists were sitting in to demand access to the galleries. Connecticut native Rachel Hiskes, a UPR graduate student, was sprayed, violently pushed out the door and sent flying down the Capitolio steps after officers kicked an Amnesty International observer who was taking part in the sit-in.

Carmen Yulín, a PDP representative in the House, was also attacked. “I took my badge out, announcing that I was a legislator, and I was pepper-sprayed all over,” said Yulín. “I was thrown across a folding table and had ligaments torn in my rib cage. I was in a half-cast for six weeks.” What most frightened Yulín was that the attack was apparently not accidental. “When I was in the lobby, one of the security guys said, ‘This is for you, Carmen Yulín,’ and they started to hit me. Later I was told by a member of the administration that they weren’t going to rest until they cracked my head at the rally.”

The day after the rally, police superintendent Figueroa Sancha showed no remorse, insisting that he would do the same “today, tomorrow…and next month.” Fortuño accused students of bringing pepper spray and rocks to the demonstration and of not respecting the views of others. He also accused a group of “socialists” of planning to take the Capitolio by force. PNP leaders like Senator Roberto Arango and Fortuño’s chief of staff, Marcos Rodríguez Ema, strongly supported the riot squad’s actions at the Capitolio.

“The government clearly decided that they were going to make it very uncomfortable for you if you demonstrate against their policies,” says Ramirez. “If you show up at a march, you’re going to get beat up and pepper-sprayed. In constitutional law, we call that a chilling effect.”

Immediately after the Capitolio incident, Fortuño announced there would be an investigation, but the results were never made public. Two weeks after the incident the Puerto Rican Bar Association issued a 133-page document detailing police violations, testimonies of victims and its recommendations. This report predictably fell on deaf ears—a year earlier, when the bar association had accused the police of abusing their powers during the 2009 incident in the university off-campus bar area, it was met with open hostility by PNP officials and PNP law firms, which filed a flurry of suits designed to weaken the association.

Ever since membership became compulsory in 1932, the bar association has inspired frequent attacks because of its function as a forum for civic debate. But the attacks from right-wing Fortuño supporters intensified after he took office, even though its membership contains partisans from all three of Puerto Rico’s major parties. “In 2009, now that the PNP had taken control of both houses of Congress, along with the executive branch, the legislature passed two laws seeking to destroy the bar association,” says lawyer Berkan.

The association was accused by one dissident member of “violat[ing] the law and promot[ing] disobedience,” and the legislation eliminated compulsory membership and cut crucial government funding. “They also imposed a series of draconian restrictions on the Bar Association and prohibited it from engaging in expressive activity related to any political or religious ideas,” says Berkan. This legislation culminated many years of litigation initiated by rightist statehooders, who as “dissidents” within a compulsory bar had argued that they should not be compelled to buy its $80 annual life insurance. In 2006 the firm Indiano & Williams filed a class-action suit arguing that the mandatory insurance program was unconstitutional. Even though the association ended the program two months after the suit was filed, the court found in favor of the plaintiffs in 2008 and assessed more than $4 million in damages. Since the bar association has historically been a forum for political and legal debates in Puerto Rico and is perceived as a cultural institution, many considered this an attack on the cultural heritage of the island territory.

While the attack on the association has been orchestrated primarily by the rightist leadership of the PNP, it shows the unorthodox ties the party has occasionally had with US Democrats. Andrés López, a major fundraiser for the Obama campaign in Puerto Rico and among US Latinos, was a key participant in the class-action suit, and registered Democrat Pedro Pierluisi, the current resident commissioner, led a campaign to discredit Luis Gutierrez’s remarks in Congress.

The Future of Police Reform
?
In the aftermath of the DOJ report’s release, it’s clear that Puerto Rico faces a long, difficult road to achieve real reform, and that the efforts of the government appear inefficient, if not downright duplicitous. At the press conference announcing the report, Fortuño insisted that his government had begun taking steps toward reform soon after the 2010 Capitolio incident. While the ruling party produced no report on a par with the one produced by the bar association, in October 2010, after a new scandal involving the arrests of more than seventy officers on drug charges, the governor issued an executive order creating a monitor to oversee the police department and issue a report. Fortuño contracted a former PNP judge, Efraín Rivera Pérez, to compile the report, at a cost of $300,000. The result: a skeletal twenty-one-page missive with no statistics or historical data.

After filing it this past June 30, on the anniversary of Capitolio, Rivera Pérez left to become president of the Puerto Rico Lawyers Association, a new rival to the bar association. No new monitor has been named. “The police monitor’s office in Puerto Rico doesn’t exist right now,” says Ramirez.

On July 2 police chief Figueroa Sancha resigned, citing pressure arising from the island’s crime rate, which has skyrocketed over the past two years. In his place Fortuño named retired National Guard Maj. Gen. Emilio Díaz Colón. In August Díaz Colón made headlines when he denied at a press conference that there was a federal investigation. The next month, days after the DOJ report was issued, Díaz Colón said the PRPD was so fiscally strapped it would be hard to implement change. While this could be taken as an excuse to do nothing, New York–based ACLU researcher Jennifer Turner agrees. “They have very little money allocated outside of payroll, and it’s going to be difficult, for example, to create a computer system to track repetitive conduct by abusive officers.”

Ever since the DOJ report’s release, Fortuño has been on the defensive over the disclosure that his government spent $1.7 mil-?lion to hire former White House deputy drug czar Robert Warshaw, whose firm consults with and helps rehabilitate police departments in trouble.

Another disturbing development has been the police violence during a second strike carried out by University of Puerto Rico students, from December 2010 to March 2011—just after Fortuño said he was committed to reform. The government ordered the police and riot squad to occupy the campus, and “violence became like a daily event,” says student leader René Reyes Medina. When students engaged in civil disobedience, police, including high-ranking officers, dislodged them using pressure-point control tactics on the neck and eyeballs that in at least one case caused a student to pass out.

Adriana Mulero, another student leader, was sitting in on campus when the police used these techniques on her. “The policeman who tried to move me applied pressure on my neck, and I felt an intense pain I didn’t expect, and I began to have difficulty breathing,” she says. “Afterwards I was handed off between officers, and they grabbed me by my breasts and thighs. I made a public statement denouncing that as an attack on women. During my second arrest, several of them attacked me by squeezing my neck, saying, ‘This is the one who complained about grabbing her breast!’ and they called me a whore. That hurt even more than when they hit me.”

While the release of the DOJ report would seem to put the police under a microscope for the foreseeable future, the ACLU’s Ramirez is still concerned about violence. “I have no doubt it’s going to happen again,” he says. “The governor uses code words to justify violence against certain groups.”

“In the spring we had a meeting with government officials there,” says ACLU researcher Turner. “And [Fortuño’s chief of staff] Marcos Rodríguez Ema kept stressing that we needed to include the violation of the right of students to study by other students. The attorney general, Roberto Sánchez Ramos, actually said they were allowed to arrest someone who cursed at one of the officers. He said it was a felony! That’s constitutionally protected speech. You can imagine what the police officers think.”

Rodríguez Ema is widely recognized as the member of the administration most prone to violent and provocative statements. Five months after the governor claimed he’d begun the process of change, Rodríguez Ema was quoted in the press as saying the police should remove student protesters from university grounds by force—a patadas—“and those bandit professors who are inciting them, too!” The day after the DOJ report was released, Governor Fortuño offered this assurance to Puerto Ricans that he was working on reforming his broken policing system: he named Rodríguez Ema as the point man to monitor the overhaul of the police department.

“It’s not my role to tell the governor who is on his team,” said Assistant Attorney General Pérez. “Our role is going to be to attempt to translate our findings into an accountability document. I hope we’ll be successful, and I’d rather fix the problem than fix the blame. If you can’t fix the problem in a sustainable way, we will not hesitate to take appropriate legal action in court.” Those sound like comforting words, but the ACLU’s Turner is concerned. “Because police abuses are continuing in PR, we feel it is important for DOJ to take action as quickly as possible,” she says. “We feel that any agreement between the DOJ and the PRPD needs to be court-monitored…. If it is not subject to court enforcement, the PRPD would fail to deliver on promised reforms.”

by Gabriel Haslip-Viera (December 6, 2011)

In recent years, a small but growing number of Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Dominicans have adopted an exclusive indigenous or Taíno ethnicity. They have done so despite evidence showing that pure blooded Native Americans became extinct in the western Caribbean by the early decades of the seventeenth century, if not earlier.

These individuals have also played fast and loose with concepts of race and ethnicity. They have done so with words and phrases such as “extinction” and “indigenous survival” to justify their claims.

In the early part of the last decade, Puerto Rico’s news media made a big deal of studies that showed that 61% of Puerto Ricans had a trace or a small amount of indigenous DNA dating back to the sixteenth century, passed exclusively through a single female line of ancestry in an individual’s family tree (the mother’s line). This finding was used and abused in an exaggerated, self-serving manner by would-be later day Taínos and their advocates as evidence supporting their claims for an exclusive indigenous pedigree.

However, another study was largely ignored at the time (and since). It that showed that 70% of Puerto Ricans had European DNA, along with 20% who had African DNA and only 10% who had Amerindian DA – this time passed through a single male line in the individual’s family tree (the father’s line).

As it turned out, these studies, when considered together in a sober manner, provide actual evidence for what had been concluded all along by scientists, social scientists and historians – Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Cubans have been and are persons of genetically mixed backgrounds. Eventually, these studies were also criticized for their very limited utility because of two characteristics. First is their focus on distant ancestry. Second, their focus on single male and female lineages that ignore thousands of other males and females who contributed genetic material to an individual’s family tree during the past 500 years.

Ongoing research since the last decade undercuts claims for an exclusive indigenous pedigree by would-be later day Taínos and their supporters. So called “autosomal” or “admixture tests” show that Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Cubans are persons of mixed ethnic background – mostly European and African. with significantly smaller percentages of the indigenous and others. These studies have also been criticized for their limited utility, but they have also been judged to be more reliable than studies that focus on distant ancestry and on single male and female lines of ancestry (See table and sources below).

Claims have been made by would-be Taínos and their supporters that substantial numbers of Taínos fled into the mountainous interior regions of Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo and Cuba in the sixteenth century and remained biologically pure in isolation of Spanish colonial society in the centuries that followed. These claims have not been demonstrated. On the contrary, the genetic and historical evidence shows that surviving Taínos were joined by impoverished Europeans, runaway African slaves and others to form the mixed Jibaro, Guajiro, and Cibaeño peasant populations of rural interior Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo and Cuba in the centuries after 1550 or 1600. The claim by Anthony Castanha (as reported in a previous NiLP Network posting) that the Puerto Rican Jibaro is Native American is, therefore, patently absurd.

It also needs to be said that the genetic make-up of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans has little or no connection to the way race and ethnicity are socially constructed at the present time in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and its Diaspora. The traditionally crude and simplistic Eurocentric concepts of race and ethnicity and their connected patterns of prejudice and discrimination, aimed mostly at persons defined as black or mulatto, continue to prevail among Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Dominicans. This has occurred despite efforts to promote a “rainbow” model of race mixture.

These concepts have also been adopted by the later day Taínos to justify their claims for a pure indigenous pedigree. This is, in part, an attempt to separate them from persons of African background and from Europeans – especially Spaniards – who they see as colonial oppressors whose contributions to society and culture is to be ignored or rejected in the articulation of their identity.

Table Sources

Bonilla, Carolina, Mark D. Shriver, Esteban J. Parra, Alfredo Jones, José R. Fernández, “Ancestral proportions and their association with skin pigmentation and bone mineral density in Puerto Rican women from New York city,” Human Genetics (2004) 115: 57-68. (Data: = 35 genetic markers (AIMS*), 64 Puerto Rican women age 60-75 from New York City in Manhattan hospitals.)

Chao-Qiang Lai, Katherine L. Tucker, Shweta Choudhry, Laurence D. Parnell, Josiemer Mattei, Bibiana García-Bailo, Kenny Beckman, Esteban González Burchard, José M. Ordovás, “Population admixture associated with disease prevalence in the Boston Puerto Rican health study,” Human Genetics (2009) 125: 199-209. (Data = 100 genetic markers (AIMS*), 1129 individuals-337 males, 792 females from the cited health study in the Boston area.)

Choudhry, Shweta, Esteban González Burchard, Luisa N. Borrell, Hua Tang, Ivan Gomez, Mariam Naqvi, Sylvette Nazario, Alphonso Torres, Jesus Casal, Juan Carlos Martinez-Cruzado, Elad Ziv, Pedro C. Avila, William Rodriguez-Cintron, and Neil J. Risch, “Ancestry-Environment Interactions and Asthma Risk among Puerto Ricans,” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (2006)a 174: 1088-1093. (Data: 44 genetic markers (AIMS*), 135 individuals (cases) with asthma from “six primary care clinics”-in Barceloneta, Bayamón, Carolina,
Cataño, Mayaguez, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.)

Choudhry, Shweta, Margaret Taub, Rui Mei, José Rodriguez-Santana, William Rodriguez-Cintrón, Mark D. Shriver, Elad Ziv, Neil J. Risch, and Esteban, González Burchard, “Genome-wide Screen for Asthma in Puerto Ricans: Evidence for Association with 5q23 Region,” Human Genetics (2008) 123: 455-468. (Data = 2,730 genetic markers (AIMS*), 380 individuals (cases), 96 with asthma.)

Choudhry, Shweta, Natasha E. Coyle, Hua Tang, Keyan Salari, Denise Lind, Suzanne L. Clark, Hui-Ju Tsai, Mariam Naqvi, Angie Phong, Ngim Ung, Henry Matallana, Pedro C. Avila, Jesus Casal, Alfonso Torres, Sylvette Nazario, Richard Castro, Natalie C. Battle, Eliseo J. Perez-Stable, Pui-Yan Kwok, Dean Sheppard, Mark D. Shriver, William Rodriguez-Cintron, Neil Risch, Elad Ziv, Esteban Gonzaález Burchard, “Population stratification confounds genetic association studies among Latinos,” Human Genetics (2006)b 118: 652-664. (Data: 44 genetic markers (AIMS*), 181 individuals (cases) from “primary care clinics” on the island.)

González Burchard, E., Avila, P.C., Nazario, S., Casal, J., Torres, A., Rodríguez-Santana, J.R., Sylvia, J.S., Fagan, J.K., Salas, J., Lilly, C.M., et al., “Lower Bronchodilator Responsiveness in Puerto Ricans than in Mexican Asthmatic Subjects,” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (2004), 169: 386-392. (Data: Not specified, figures cited in Tang, et al (2007: 627)

K.Bryc, C. Velez, M. Hammer, R. Hernandez, A. Reynolds, A. Auton, T. Karafet, H. Ostrer, C. D.Bustamante, “Genome-wide patterns of population structure and admixture among Hispanic/Latino populations,” Presentation at the meeting of The American Society of Human Genetics. Oct 21, 2009. (Data = Specific breakdown not stated in available summary.)

Risch, Neil, Shweta Choudhry, Marc Via, Analabha Basu, Ronnie Sebro, Celeste Eng, Kenneth Beckman, Shannon Thyne, Rocio Chapela, Jose R Rodriguez-Santana, William Rodriguez-Cintron, Pedro C Avila, Elad Ziv and Esteban Gonzalez Burchard, “Ancestry-related assortative mating in Latino populations,” Genome Biology(2009, open access on the internet). (Data = 104 genetic markers (AIMS), 223 individuals from Puerto Rico, 154 from New York.)

Salari, Keyan, Shweta Choudhry, Hua Tang, Mariam Naqvi, Denise Lind, Pedro C. Avila, Natasha E. Coyle, Ngim Ung, Sylvette Nazario, Jesus Casal, Alfonso Torres-Palacios, Suzanne Clark, Angie Phong, Ivan Gomez, Henry Matallana, Eliseo J. Pe´rez-Stable, Mark D. Shriver, Pui-Yan Kwok, Dean Sheppard, William Rodriguez-Cintron, Neil J. Risch, Esteban González Burchard, and Elad Ziv, “Genetic Admixture and Asthma-Related Phenotypes in Mexican American and Puerto Rican Asthmatics,” Genetic Epidemiology (2005) 29: 76-86. (Data: 44 genetic markers (AIMS*), 181 individuals from clinics and hospitals on the island.)

Santiago, W., “Análisis del mestizaje en Puerto Rico,” Prensa RUM (University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, 10-23-2009). (Data = 93 genetic markers (AIMS)* from 642 individuals resident in 28 island “municipios.”)

Tang, Hua, Shweta Choudhry, Rui Mei, Martin Morgan, William Rodriguez-Cintron, Esteban Gonza´lez Burchard, and Neil J. Risch, “Recent Genetic Selection in the Ancestral Admixture of Puerto Ricans,” The American Journal of Human Genetics (2007) 81: 626-633. (Data: 112,584 genetic markers (SNPs**), 192 unspecified Puerto Ricans from an earlier study.)

Zuniga, J., Ilzarbe, M., Acunha-Alonzo, V., Rosetti, F., Herbert, Z., Romero, V., Almeciga, I., Clavigo O., Stern, J.N., Granados, J., et al., “Allele Frequencies for 15 Autosomal STR Loci and Admixture Estimates in Puerto Rican Americans,” Forensic Science International (2006) 164: 266-270. (Data: Not specified as cited in Tang, et al. (2007: appendix.)

*AIMS = ancestry informative markers
**SNPs = single-nucleotide polymorphisms

Gabriel Haslip-Viera is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at City College and past Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. A specialist in the social history of colonial Mexico and the evolution of Latino communities in New York City, Dr. Haslip-Viera has lectured extensively on these subjects and on the relationship between invented racial identities and pseudo-scholarship. He is the editor of Taino Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics (2001) and author of “Amerindian mtDNA does not matter: A reply to Jorge Estevez and the privileging of Taíno identity in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean,” Centro: The Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Fall 2008). He can be contacted at haslip-viera@ccny.cuny.edu.

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