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Indigenous Puerto
Rico:
DNA evidence upsets established history
By Rick Kearns
Reprinted with permission, from
Indian Country Today
Posted: October 06, 2003 - 1:34pm EST
by: Rick Kearns / Correspondent / Indian Country Today
History is written by the conquerors. The Native
peoples of North America know this all too well, as they are still trying
to bring the truth to light. Now, their long-lost Caribbean cousins are
beginning the same process.
It’s an uphill battle.
Most Puerto Ricans know, or think they know, their ethnic and racial
history: a blending of Taino (Indian), Spanish and African. Students of
the islands’ past have read the same account for over 300 years; that the
Native people, and their societies, were killed off by the Spanish
invaders by the 1600s. It was always noted though, how many of the
original colonists married Taino women or had Taino concubines, producing
the original mestizaje (mixture) that, when blended with African, would
produce Puerto Ricans.
Those first unions, according to the conventional wisdom, explain why some
Puerto Ricans have "a little bit" of Native heritage. Mainly we are
Spanish, we are told, with a little African blood and far-away Taino
ancestry.
But the order of that sequence will have to change.
Dr. Juan Martinez Cruzado, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico
Mayaguez who designed an island-wide DNA survey, has just released the
final numbers and analysis of the project, and these results tell a
different story.
According to the study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 61
percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27 percent
have African and 12 percent Caucasian. (Nuclear DNA, or the genetic
material present in a gene’s nucleus, is inherited in equal parts from
one’s father and mother. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from one’s
mother and does not change or blend with other materials over time.)
In other words a majority of Puerto Ricans have Native blood.
"Our study showed there was assimilation," Martinez Cruzado explained,
"but the people were not extinguished. Their political and social
structure was but the genes were not.
"The people were assimilated into a new colonial order and became mixed …
but that’s what Puerto Ricans are: Indians mixed with Africans and
Spaniards," he asserted.
"There has been an under-estimation of the Amerindian heritage of Puerto
Rico, much larger than most historians will admit," he said.
Martinez Cruzado cited the historical descriptions of life in Puerto Rico
during the 17th and 18th centuries as an example.
"These accounts describe many aspects that are totally derived from Taino
modus vivendi, not just the hammocks but the way they fished, their
methods of farming, etc.," he related. "It is clear that the influence of
Taino culture was very strong up to about 200 years ago. If we could
conduct this same study on the Puerto Ricans from those times, the figure
would show that 80 percent of the people had Indian heritage."
Another historical moment that should receive more attention involves the
story of a group of Tainos who, after 200 years of absence from official
head-counts, appeared in a military census from the 1790s. In this
episode, a colonial military census noted that all of a sudden there were
2,000 Indians living in a northwestern mountain region. "These were
Indians who the Spanish had placed on the tiny island of Mona (just off
the western coast of Puerto Rico) who survived in isolation and then were
brought over," Martinez Cruzado said. "They became mixed but there were
many Indians who survived but eventually mixed with the Africans and
Spaniards. These Mona Tainos must have had a further influence as well".
Martinez Cruzado noted how many customs and history were handed down
through oral tradition. To this day on the island, there are many people
who use medicinal plants and farming methods that come directly from the
Tainos.
This is especially true of the areas once known as Indieras, or Indian
Zones.
He also pointed out that most of these Native traditions probably do come
from the Tainos, the Native people who appeared on the island circa 700
AD. But there were other waves of migrations to Puerto Rico and the entire
Caribbean area.
Through the extensive study of the Puerto Rican samples, Martinez Cruzado
and his team have found connections between island residents and Native
peoples who arrived before and after the Tainos. He pointed out how a few
of the samples can be traced back 9,000 years from ancient migrations,
while others correspond to the genetic makeup of Native peoples of the
Yucatan, Hispaniola, Margarita Island and Brazil among others. These
latter genetic trails point to the presence of other Native peoples who
were probably brought to the island as slaves from other Spanish or
Portuguese colonies after the 1600s.
While island scholars will have much work to do to catch up with these
"new" facts, the genetic detective work for Martinez Cruzado is also far
from finished. As word spread of the remarkable survey, other scholars
from the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Venezuela began to invite the Puerto
Rican scientist to present his findings. They also want him to assist in
similar projects in their respective countries.
"We started a very similar survey in the Dominican Republic last year," he
stated. "And archaeologists from Venezuela and Cuba have invited me to do
the same and I intend to go … I hope to have a proposal ready to collect
samples in both of those countries and do a Caribbean-wide study. They
already have evidence of migrations from both sides, north and south."
In the meantime, while Martinez Cruzado and his colleagues will focus on
the history of Pre-Columbian migrations, people in the current Taino
restoration movement (such as Nacion Taina, The Jatibonicu Taino Tribal
Nation of Boriken, Taino Timucua Tribal Council, the United Confederation
of Taino People, and others) are hoping that many of their compatriots
reflect on the following quote: "The DNA story shows that the official
story was wrong," Martinez Cruzado said. "This means a much larger
Amerindian inheritance for Puerto Ricans."
And if some folks in the Dominican Republic and Cuba are right, the same
will hold true for their histories.
Issues
in Caribbean Amerindian Studies
(Occasional
Papers of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink)
Vol.
V,
No. 2, Jun 2003 - Jun 2004.
Added to
the Caribbean
Amerindian Centrelink on:
Wednesday, 26 May, 2004
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