From Yuca to High Tech

Caribbean Business 25th anniversary special editionTo mark its 25th anniversary in 2000, the Puerto Rico newsweekly Caribbean Business hired me to produce a different kind of history of the past thousand years, focusing on the economy of the island and how people earned a living over the centuries. While certainly not a comprehensive history, the resulting 30,000-word publication, which I wrote entirely, provides snapshots of Puerto Rico's development at selected moments in time.

1500

European conquest

If the beginning of the millennium marked a peaceful change in Puerto Rico, as one culture evolved from another, the mid-way point of the millennium saw a far more abrupt change that would lead to unprecedented violence on the green and tranquil island.

A simple economy based on the cultivation of yuca was destined to be overrun by an economy of exploitation fueled by a desire for gold.

As the 16th century began, the Taíno culture was at its peak and Puerto Rico was the center of activity among the islands. Except for occasional attacks by bands of Caribe invaders from the Lesser Antilles, Boriquén was a peaceful island, home to a comfortably thriving society.

Over the course of 500 years, agriculture had intensified, population had grown and the religious and ceremonial life of the Taínos had become richer. Trade had also advanced. Caciques ruled the various regions of the islands in a loose federation.

"Had there not been European contact, the Antilles islands would have probably at some time joined together in an economic base and a political base," reasoned archaeologist Argamenon Gus Pantel.

Today, we can only speculate what the Taíno culture may have led to, because at the halfway point of the millennium, in a matter of three decades, the Taínos went from rulers of their realm to straggled survivors — some virtually enslaved, other fleeing their native island to keep their freedom.

Though Columbus had stopped at Puerto Rico in 1493, on his second voyage, Spaniards did not begin settling the island until 1508. There was a squabble in the Spanish courts and before King Fernando, who finally gave Juan Ponce de León the right to establish a settlement on the island.

Ponce de León's little expedition circled the island to choose the best spot for a settlement. San Juan Bay offered obvious advantages, but Ponce de León wasn't sure it had a good site for a settlement with a supply of fresh water. For a while he considered the banks of what is now called the Manatí River, but he finally returned to the north coast's most impressive bay and founded a settlement on the high ground set back from the water, calling it Caparra.

Things did not start out badly. When Ponce de León returned a year later with 200 more potential inhabitants, the tiny settlement was already producing a good crop of yuca, some Taíno caciques had been converted to Christianity and some of the Spaniards had already married Taíno women.

"The work of Juan Ponce de León in Puerto Rico was the work of a farmer, done peacefully and with a conscience; it was not the work of a soldier, a conquistador," wrote Luis M. Díaz Soler in his book "Puerto Rico: From the Origins to the End of Spanish Domination."

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But the peace would not last. The Spanish crown not only granted settlers the right to work the land, but also gave them the right to force the Taínos to work it. Some were worked to death, whether mining gold or growing food. Others died from diseases brought in by the Europeans. In the end, the Spanish settlers enslaved the Taínos and destroyed their way of life.

The Taínos naturally resented the forced labor and relocations, and Ponce de León would soon become a soldier after all. For a long time, the Taínos held their anger in check in the face of the Spaniards' superior weapons. They had firearms that could kill and armor that deflected arrows. The Taínos' weapons were no match. But a new leader led them to attack anyway.

The insurrection began in 1511. The Cacique Agueybana had died, and his nephew was named to replace him. He took the same name. The second Agueybana differed in personality from his predecessor, and he decided to fight back against the Spaniards.

Eliminated or assimilated?

For many years, the standard line of thinking was that the Spanish settlers eliminated the Taíno population by brutally forcing them into slavery and exposing them to diseases for which they had no natural defenses. Taíno bloodlines died out, the theory went.

Today, there is a different perception among historians and archaeologists. "The majority of those who study the issue believe the indigenous people were not physically eliminated but were assimilated into the new society," said Ovidio Dávila, director of the Division of Archaeology at the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture. "The process was one of cultural assimilation, not elimination."

That view is supported by a preliminary study by Juan Carlos Martínez, a biology professor at the University of Puerto Rico. The study found that 53 percent of a small sample of Puerto Ricans had traces of DNA linked to the original settlers of the Americas. Among another small group who showed Indo-American features, 70 percent had Taíno DNA.

Those findings prompted a more complete study, funded by the National Science Foundation, that will attempt to determine the prevalence of Taíno ancestry in today's Puerto Ricans. Dávila said there could be more than one explanation for the findings in the DNA study, such as unexpected mixing of genes from European settlers. But the evidence suggests more mixing of the Taínos and the Spanish settlers than previously believed.

There is no doubt many Taínos died from forced labor or disease. After their battles with the Spaniards, as many as a third of them fled to other islands, such as St. Croix, and others moved to settlements in the rugged interior mountains where it was too much trouble for the Spanish to come after them.

But an increasing amount of evidence suggests the Taíno bloodlines, as well as elements of their culture and language, remain alive in the Puerto Rico of today.

The first attack was launched in January of 1511. Some 80 Spaniards, scattered around the island, were killed, and then the Taínos attacked the western settlement called Sotomayor. Even though the Spaniards at Sotomayor had been tipped off in advance, they failed to respond.

The settlement was burned to the ground and only through the leadership of a military captain, Diego de Salazar, who had already earned the respect of the Taíno warriors, did the survivors manage to make their way across the island to Caparra.

The Taínos had effectively cornered the Spaniards into one stronghold, but Ponce de León launched an offensive. While Agueybana's troops celebrated their victories with an areyto, or Taíno celebration, the Spaniards attacked, sending the Taínos running.

After returning to Caparra for more reinforcements, Ponce de León attacked Agueybana's troops again, killing 150 Taínos. The Spaniard and the Taíno were readying their warriors for a third battle when the decisive moment occurred. A shot from a Spanish rifle hit Agueybana, killing him. His troops disbanded.

That shot ended the Taíno era in Puerto Rico. Some historians estimate that as many as a third of the remaining Taínos left their home island, preferring to take their chances with their occasional enemies, the Caribes, in the Lesser Antilles, or to return to South America. Anything other than being virtual slaves on their own island.

Of those who stayed, some retreated to small communities hidden away from the Spaniards in the mountains and others remained in the labor force for the European invaders. Mistreatment and disease reduced their numbers, and intermarriage began the mixing of genes that would broaden over the centuries to produce the Puerto Ricans of today.

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Puerto Rico belonged to Spain. A new economic order now ruled, as well. The Spaniards were not content to eat casabe and dance areytos and live a peaceful, agricultural existence, like the Taínos. They were after riches.

Specifically, gold. Unfortunately for the new inhabitants of the island, Puerto Rico didn't have much. By 1530, the gold that could be easily mined or panned from streams was gone. The real riches were to be found in the Andes and in Mexico, not in Puerto Rico, and the common lament among Spaniards on the island became "May God take me to Peru."

The already-small population began to dwindle. The colonial governor was so worried about that development that he made it illegal to emigrate. Violators of the decree could be hanged or have their feet slashed. A 1530 census counted 3,040 residents, just 369 of them white. The rest were Taínos and newly imported African slaves.

Even if Puerto Rico couldn't supply Spain with the gold and silver it sought, the island still had its uses for the empire. "Spain's interest in Puerto Rico after the gold had been extracted and exported was primarily tactical and military," writes James L. Dietz, author of "Economic History of Puerto Rico."

Even from the first days of European settlement, San Juan Bay became an important port. In 1510, the king declared that all ships on their way from Spain to Hispaniola should stop in Puerto Rico, and that order was later extended to all ships bound for the West Indies.

"By becoming the first key point in the route to the Indies, the new population was in a position to obtain the benefits of the passage of men and provisions destined for the business of exploration," wrote historian Arturo Morales Carrión in his book "Puerto Rico and the Struggle for Hegemony in the Caribbean."

African slaves were also imported from the very beginning, some of them arriving as domestic help with the first Spanish settlers. Despite Spain's ban on its colonies doing business with other countries, by 1528 Portuguese smugglers were bringing in boatloads of slaves without paying taxes, and thereby making a handsome profit in Puerto Rico, where workers of any kind were in short supply.

Spain also changed the economy of Puerto Rico by introducing new crops such as sugar cane, coffee and coconut palms, all of which are now practically symbols of Puerto Rican agriculture, but were not present before 1500. They also brought in cattle, pigs, chickens and horses.

The way people made a living in the first half of the 16th century depended greatly on the blood in their veins. The few whites were the rulers of this outpost while the Taínos and the African slaves tilled the fields, planted the new crops, tended to the herds, did the housekeeping, searched for gold while it lasted, and built houses and mills and other buildings.

Spain also provided loans for building sugar mills, since sugar was an export Puerto Rico could send to the colonial power. But with French and British ships, as well as pirates, threatening Spanish ships, a safe port and base of power was what Spain needed most from Puerto Rico. France attacked the island for the first time in 1528, and by 1539, the construction of El Morro began.

The halfway point of the millennium marked one of the most important shifts in the history of Puerto Rico. After 500 years of development, the Taíno culture was scattered to the wind in a single lifetime. In its place, a new, fledgling society was being built based on Puerto Rico's strategic value.

A fortress society had replaced the open, natural society of the Taínos and Puerto Rico would never be the same.