Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is a mountainous tropical island of 8,896 sq km with a population of about four million. It is the easternmost island of the Greater Antilles, with a maximum length and width of 111 km and 36 km respectively. In addition to the main island, Puerto Rican territory embraces a few smaller islands (Vieques and Culebra to the east; Mona, Monito and Desecheo to the west; Caja de Muertos to the south) and a number of barren islets and cays (Picó 1954). Puerto Rico was discovered and annexed to the Spanish Crown by Columbus on 19 Novem-

ber 1493. At the time, the island was occupied by Arawak-speaking Taínos (Island Arawaks), who lived in a fairly developed chiefdom society. Only decades after the island’s colonization had begun (1508), the indigenous population had plunged due to repeated epidemics and/or ill-treatment. The remaining survivors were eventually acculturated and assimilated by the Spaniards. In order to replace the declining Indian labour force, thousands of African slaves were brought to work in the mines and fields in the 16th century (Sauer 1966; Alegría 1999; Anderson-Córdova 1990, 2005). The native Taíno called their island Borikén, but Columbus named it San Juan Bautista and

it later came to be known as Puerto Rico (Coll 1970; Alegría 1999). Due to its strategic situation, the island had the potential of playing an important role as a sentinel of the Atlantic navigation routes and warehouse for the Spanish empire. However, its coasts, particularly its capital San Juan, suffered from repeated raids, first by Caribs from St Croix (Virgin Islands) and later by pirates, privateers and naval fleets from nations at war with Spain (Van Middeldyk 1903; Blanco 1947; Cifre de Loubriel 1964; Alegría 1981; Sonesson 1990; Alonso and Flores Román 1998; Rivera Fontán et al. 2003; Wells 2004; Reina Pérez 2007). The last of such events was the invasion by US troops in connection with the Cuban-

Spanish-American War on 25 July 1898. As a result, the United States annexed Puerto Rico, together with other Spanish colonies. Puerto Rico’s first civil government was inaugurated on 1 May 1900, and 17 years later all Puerto Ricans received US citizenship through the Jones Act (Van Middeldyk 1903; Estades Font 1988; González Vales 2006). In addition to improvements in trade, education and health, these developments brought a series of systematic investigations by American archaeologists and anthropologists to the island, mainly in connection with the

Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands (see, e.g., Fewkes 1903, 1907; Boas 1916; Aitken 1917; Haeberlin 1917; Rainey 1933, 1940; Mason 1941; Rouse 1952a, 1952b). Of especial interest are Aitken’s (1917) investigations of a funeral cave with 20 burials in the district of Caguana. The decolonization process, which is marked by the first elected Governor in 1948 and the

proclamation of Puerto Rico’s Constitution and Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Estado Libre Asociado) in 1952, gradually stirred new interest about the island’s past. The publication of the work by American researchers on the island during the first half of the twentieth century may have also played a part (Gutiérrez Ortiz 1998) in encouraging Puerto Rican scholars to carry out their own investigations and to publish and study archaeology and anthropology abroad (see, e.g., de Hostos 1919, 1923a, 1923b, 1941, 1955; Alegría 1955, 1965; Alegría et al. 1955). The first local legislation concerning the protection of monuments and relics and human remains was introduced in the late 1960s. During the Spanish colonial period, there were no systematic studies or attempts to protect

aboriginal sites or their contents. They belonged, after all, to a culture that was foreign and unimportant to the Spanish settlers. During this time anyone could destroy any monuments or seize any relics from the aboriginal period. Swedish Pharmacist J.A. Hjalmarson, for example, was able to remove ten aboriginal crania from a Puerto Rican burial cave (Figure 50.1) and take them to Sweden in the 1850s (Gejvall and Henschen 1971; Núñez et al. 2009). In the second half of the 19th century, however, a sense of romantic curiosity about the past

of the Antillean aborigines seems to have developed among some criollos (ethnic Spaniards born in the colonies) and Europeans living in the island. This trend is reflected in Puerto Rico by the work of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (1862), Enrique Dumont (1876), German born Leopold Krug (1876), Agustín Stahl (1889) and Cayetano Coll y Toste (1897, 1921). It is worth mentioning that there was a debate about the origin of syphilis between Stahl, who placed it in Europe, and Coll y Toste, who traced it to the Taíno. It now seems that the latter may have been right (cf. Estrada Torres 1990; Crespo Torres 2005a; Núñez et al. 2009). When American anthropologists began their Scientific Survey of Puerto Rico under the direction of Franz Boas in 1906, they relied heavily on the information collected by these and other local amateurs who had fallen in

Figure 50.1 Nine of the ten aboriginal crania removed from a Puerto Rican burial cave and taken to Sweden in the 1850s

Source: Gejvall and Henschen 1971; Núñez et al., 2009; photos: M. Núñez and M. Llorens-Liboy

love with Puerto Rico and its culture. Other scholars also wrote on Puerto Rico’s past (see, e.g., Van Middeldyk 1903; Lovén 1935).