Articles

The United Confederation of Taíno People

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The United Confederation of Taíno People (UCTP) is an indigenous representative institution established in 1998 to promote the self-determination and protection of the human rights, culture, traditions, and sacred lands of Taíno and other…

La Historia Boricua: The Peopling of Puerto Rico

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In this episode, Roberto looks at the information available about the evolution of the Indigenous peoples who first populated Puerto Rico, based on the most recent evidence, as well as their contribution to Taíno culture and, eventually, to our Puerto Rican identity.

Podcast: La Historia Boricua – A History of Puerto Rico and her People

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Podcast by Roberto Gil Cancel Comas focused on the history of Puerto Rico. Audio can be listened to in both Spanish and English.

Reconsidering the lives of the earliest Puerto Ricans: Mortuary Archaeology and bioarchaeology of the Ortiz site

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We possess rather little detailed information on the lives of the first inhabitants of Puerto Rico—the so-called “Archaic” or “Pre-Arawak” people—despite more than a century of archeological research.
This is an image of a petroglyph, or rock carving in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. It sits beside the shore of Ensenada Honda (Deep Cove).

Current Perspectives in the Precolonial Archaeology of Puerto Rico

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During the past two decades, many of the traditional conceptions about the configuration of the cultural landscape of precolonial Puerto Rico have been critically addressed from both political and disciplinary perspectives. Colonialist undercurrents…

Puerto Rico’s Economic Crisis Timeline

Since 2006 Puerto Rico has been facing an unprecedented economic and fiscal crisis that shows little signs of ending or abating in the foreseeable future.

How Is Colonialism a Sociostructural Determinant of Health in Puerto Rico?

Puerto Rico has been experiencing a public health crisis since the 1990s, driven by limited resource allocation for preventive health care for residents of Puerto Rico, austerity policies in response to a massive debt crisis, and primary care privatization.

Disrupters: Three Women of Color Tell Their Stories

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This essay is an amplified version of the presentation we made at the 7th Biennial Seneca Falls Dialogues. Our aim is to story back into the world our first experiences and motivations for investing in suffrage and democratic activism.

Puerto Rico and PROMESA: Reaffirming Colonialism

With this dramatic announcement, Governor Alejandro García Padilla transformed the island nation’s long-simmering debt overhang problem into an international spectacle.

War Against All Puerto Ricans

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The powerful, untold story of the 1950 revolution in Puerto Rico and the long history of U.S. intervention on the island, that the New York Times says “could not be more timely.”

Preserving Identity: Puerto Rican Shift from Catholicism to Pentecostalism

Ramón Ortiz discusses how Puerto Ricans have struggled to maintain their identity, culture, heritage in the midst of New York City Catholicism which often viewed the newly arrived Catholic Puerto Ricans as inferior and in need of evangelizing.

The Puerto Rican Diaspora to the United States: A Postcolonial Migration? (2009)

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In 1953, the General Assembly of the United Nations removed Puerto Rico from its list of "non-self-governing territories." However, the exact nature of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States has been intensely disputed since the creation of the Commonwealth.

The First Birth Control Pill Used Puerto Rican Women as Guinea Pigs

Eugenics and unethical clinical trials are part of the pill’s legacy.

Herstory: 10 Puerto Rican Women Kept Out of History Books

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Latinas in the U.S. come from a long line of influential, barrier-breaking, rebel Latin American women. Through Remezcla’s Herstory series, we introduce readers to the women warriors and pioneers whose legacies we carry on.

In Puerto Rico, Women Won the Vote in a Bittersweet Game of Colonial Politics

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Puertorriqueñas’ fight for suffrage shaped by class, colonialism and racism—but even today, island residents cannot vote for president

Cafecito con William D. Caballero: Big Stories with Small Figures

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Filmmaker William D. Caballero and Dr. Jillian M. Báez discuss William’s 2017 short film Chilly & Milly, which explores the director’s own experiences with his chronically ill father and his mother’s role as his eternal caretaker.

Ancient DNA reconstructs the genetic legacies of pre-contact Puerto Rico communities 

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September 2019 Abstract Indigenous peoples have occupied the island of Puerto Rico since at least 3000 B.C. Due to the demographic shifts that occurred after European contact, the origin(s) of these ancient populations, and their genetic…

Anthropological genetic insights on Caribbean population history

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By Maria Alejandra Nieves Colon, University of Minnesota Twin Cities Abstract As the last American region settled by humans, yet the first to experience European colonization, the Caribbean islands have a complex history characterized…