By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
Puerto Rico’s story stretches from Indigenous seafarers who reached the islands thousands of years ago through Taíno society, Spanish conquest, African slavery, revolution, abolition, U.S. conquest, American citizenship without full federal representation, industrialization, debt, hurricanes, mass migration—and today’s struggle over power, water, energy, and political status.
DOMINATORS HELD POWER, BUT THE PUERTO RICAN INDIANS COOPERATED IN POLITICAL ALLIANCES WITH EACH OTHER
Class struggle and DOMINATION-ISM, the ideology our ancestors from Planet Nibiru (the Anunnaki) inculcated in us, move through the people of Puerto Rico to this very day.
2700 BCE–1493 CE: PUERTO RICO (The Taíno Indians’ “Borikén”) BEFORE SPAIN TOOK IT
Puerto Rico’s Taíno combined a strong village-level ethos of collective life, reciprocity, ceremony, and group solidarity with an increasingly hereditary chiefly hierarchy, tribute, elite privilege, political rivalry, and competition among chiefs.
At the whole-island level, political organization was never fully centralized. Taíno political boundaries were fluid because chiefs competed, made alliances, and changed their spheres of influence.
AGÜEYBANÁ I PARAMOUNT CHIEF ?–c. 1510
Agüeybaná, from Guaynía in southwestern Puerto Rico, exercised paramount influence and controlled the rituals chiefs attended within his shifting network of Taíno alliances. He claimed chiefly authority through hereditary membership in a prestigious chiefly family, gift exchange, and reciprocal obligations. He owned objects that embodied ancestral powers and ritually compelled other chiefs to defer to and ally with him in both kinship and politics.
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He sponsored ballparks for ceremonies (similar to the football stadiums of Yucatan), organized feasts and gift-exchange ceremonies.
He mobilized alliances based on rank and relationships with other chiefs and their people to secure tribute, collective labor, and fighters for his wars.
He created an extensive political-social network spanning Puerto Rico, eastern Hispaniola, and other islands.
Marriages, name exchanges, and prestigious objects that Agüeybaná possessed bound other chiefs to him.
He exercised domination-consciousness to a lesser degree than the colonial extraction system that Spain subsequently imposed on the island.
Indigenous Puerto Rican political economy before the Spaniards came contained a strong “We the People” component in their collective ceremonies and institutions;
their central plazas were their communal centers where people assembled for ceremonies. Building these plazas also required substantial organized collective labor.
Late precontact Taíno society was a melding of group solidarity and the Taíno elite power network of allied lineages, held together by trade, barter, and reciprocity.
Within their communities, people depended intensely on cooperation—for growing food, fishing, construction, ceremonies, exchange, kinship, and mutual obligations.
Above this cooperative foundation stood increasingly privileged chiefly families who could mobilize labor and tribute and compete with other chiefly networks.
Competition among the Indians, including war, led to substantial rivalry among paramount chiefs, shifting chiefdom boundaries, and networks involving marriage, exchange, competitive feasting, alliances, and joint warfare.
TAÍNO & SPANISH MET & CLASHED
Columbus visited Puerto Rico in 1493, but the man who actually initiated sustained Spanish conquest and colonization wasJuan Ponce de León.
AGÜEYBANÁ II — PARAMOUNT CHIEF & RESISTANCE LEADER, RULED PUERTO RICO c. 1510–1511
In 1508, Ponce came with a colonizing expedition, and Agüeybaná II received him.
Instead of attacking him, Agüeybaná II extended the Indigenous institution of guaitiao—creating reciprocal social/kinship relations with the stranger.
Agüeybaná II was doing what caciques already did: CREATE ALLIANCE → EXCHANGE → KINSHIP → RECIPROCAL OBLIGATION.
Chief Agüeybaná II’s powerful mother/counselor knew that Spain had already destroyed Indigenous chiefdoms on Hispaniola.
She advised him to appear cooperative to the Spanish in order to preserve the Taíno accommodation–a rational survival strategy.
CAPARRA: SPAIN RELEGATED THE TAÍNO TO SERFDOM
Ponce de León, backed by Spanish soldiers, established CAPARRA in 1508—the Spaniards’ first permanent colonial settlement and administrative base in Puerto Rico.
Spanish officials appropriated Taíno lands and their conucos—the cultivated garden plots that supplied communities with cassava and other staple foods
and compelled Taíno people to labor for the colonists. The Spanish inserted themselves into the existing chiefly system and used local chiefs to mobilize Indigenous workers.
In 1509, Juan Cerón oversaw an early Spanish repartimiento—an allocation of Indigenous Taíno people to Spanish colonists who compelled them to work.
Gold mining expanded. By October 1510, a gold smelting at Caparra produced more than 14,000 pesos of gold.
Spanish encomienda transformed an Indigenous system of chiefly labor obligations into colonial compulsory labor serving Spanish owners and the Crown.
Then came resistance and the 1511 rebellion. Importantly, conquest wasn’t one decisive battle after which every Taíno surrendered; warfare and Indigenous resistance continued for years.
BEFORE SPAIN PREVAILED, PUERTO RICO MIXED PARTNERSHIP AND DOMINATION
At the village level, kinship, reciprocity, collective labor, agriculture, exchange and communal ceremony bound people together. Above village elders, hereditary chiefs accumulated prestige, tribute, ritual authority and control over labor. Chiefly families competed, allied through marriage and gift exchange, and sometimes fought.
Agüeybaná II did not rule a centralized Puerto Rican state like a European king. He stood within this shifting network as one of its most powerful leaders.
When Ponce de León arrived, Agüeybaná responded through his society’s familiar language of kinship, alliance and reciprocity.
Spain responded with the institutions of empire: land seizure, gold extraction, compulsory labor and conquest.
VILLAGE CHIEFS (Yucayeques) vs NOSOTROS, EL PUEBLO who said: We weren’t without hierarchy. But much of our life depended on relatives, neighbors, reciprocity and obligations to one another. We had leaders before Spain—but leaders lived within networks of relatives, communities, obligations and exchange. Borikén was already a social and political world. Spain did not create our history by arriving here.”The conquerors turned relationships and labor toward enriching an empire.
The Taíno lived in organized communities called yucayeques. A yucayeque was headed by a chief (a cacique). Agüeybaná II, whose center was in southwestern Guainía/Guánica, was among the island’s most powerful leaders when the Spaniards began colonization. Other historically recorded leaders included Urayoán and other chiefs who subsequently appear in accounts of resistance and accommodation. Taíno society was already stratified into classes. Chiefs and other high-ranking people possessed political power and ceremonial authority, as did the elite in most of Earth’s literate societies. But authority operated inside a network of kinship and reciprocal obligations. Chiefs built alliances through gift exchange, marriage, ceremonial relationships, and the ritual exchange of names. Valuable objects and sacred cemís circulated between leaders and communities—even across the Mona Passage between Borikén and Hispaniola. This web of relationships, sustained through reciprocal giving and taking—not a European-style monarchy, but not an egalitarian utopia either.
People cultivated cassava and other crops. They fished and gathered shellfish; grew cotton; made pottery, baskets, cloth and elaborate ceremonial objects; and traveled and traded extensively by canoe. Some large Taíno canoes could carry dozens of people. Taíno religion, politics and community life overlapped. Cemís embodied spiritually powerful beings and ancestors. Bateyes served as public ceremonial and ball-game spaces, while areítos transmitted history and collective identity through ceremony, song and dance. Caguana in Utuado—with numerous stone-lined courts/plazas, petroglyphs and a cacique’s caney—demonstrates the sophistication of this ceremonial organization before conquest.**
WE THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO
Before the Spanish takeover, authority in Puerto Rico operated inside a network of kinship and reciprocal obligations. Chiefs built alliances through gift exchange, marriage, ceremonial relationships, and the ritual exchange of names. Valuable objects and sacred artifacts circulated between leaders and communities—even across the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. The hierarchy intertwined with reciprocity—not European-style monarchy, but not an egalitarian utopia either.
The Taíno cultivated cassava in conucos along with other crops; fished and gathered shellfish; grew cotton; made pottery, baskets, cloth and elaborate ceremonial objects; and traveled and traded extensively by canoe. Some large canoes could carry dozens of people. Florida Museum
Religion, politics and community life overlapped. Cemís embodied spiritually powerful beings and ancestors. Bateyes served as public ceremonial and ball-game spaces, while areítos [ceremonial song-and-dance performance] transmitted history and collective identity through ceremony, song and dance. Caguana in Utuado—with numerous stone-lined courts/plazas, petroglyphs and a cacique’s caney—demonstrates the sophistication of this ceremonial organization before conquest. National Park Service
The Taíno communities farmed cassava and other crops, fished, traveled by canoe, made pottery and ceremonial objects, and organized settlements around plazas and leaders called caciques. Their world included hierarchy—but also kinship, reciprocal obligations, exchange, ceremony, and extensive inter-island relationships
We, the people of Puerto Rico (Nosotros El Pueblo) say, The island already has people, communities, ancestors and ways of living. Puerto Rico did not begin when Europeans arrived.”
1598–1897 CE: INDEPENDENCE WON, SLAVERY ABOLISHED
Puerto Rico became a fortified gateway protecting Spain’s American empire. El Morro and the fortifications of San Juan testify both to magnificent engineering and to centuries of imperial competition.Sugar and other plantation crops expanded alongside African slavery.
Puerto Ricans nevertheless increasingly demanded political rights.
Ramón Emeterio Betances and Segundo Ruiz Belvis connected abolition to liberation.
On September 23, 1868, insurgents launched the Grito de Lares and proclaimed a Puerto Rican republic before Spanish forces defeated them.
Slavery was finally abolished in Puerto Rico in 1873.
In 1897 Spain granted Puerto Rico a substantial degree of autonomy.
Dominators had “Fox-news-ed them, saying, Reform will occur when Madrid permits it.
But, ”Nostros, El Pueblo, retort, Freedom granted by a distant ruler ain’t freedom. Rebel!
RAMÓN EMETERIO BETANCES
1898–1947 CE: SPAIN CEDED PUERTO RICO TO THE U.S. WITHOUT A PUERTO RICAN REFERENDUM
During the Spanish-American War, U.S. troops landed in Puerto Rico and established control over the island.
1898: TREATY OF PARIS
Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States under the Treaty of Paris in December 1898.
Spain and the United States negotiated the treaty without Puerto Rican representatives.
American military government replaced Spanish rule.
Puerto Ricans were not allowed to decide whether they wanted independence, statehood or American territorial government. Puerto Rico thus passed from one imperial power to another.
1900: THE FORAKER ACT
The Foraker Act of 1900 established civilian government but left decisive authority in Washington.
The act created an elected Puerto Rican House of Delegates.
But the U.S. president appointed the governor and the powerful Executive Council.
Puerto Rico received a resident commissioner in Washington, but that official could not vote on final legislation in Congress.
The Islanders got local participation, but the U.S. controlled the Island.
1917: The JONES-SHAFROTH ACT
This American law made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens in 1917—without giving residents of the island voting representation in Congress or a vote for president.
The act also created an elected bicameral legislature and established a bill of rights, but the governor remained appointed by the U.S. president.
Jones-Shafroth made Puerto Ricans eligible for military conscription, and thousands served in the U.S. armed forces.
Puerto Ricans could still not vote for president and had no senators or representatives in Congress.
1930: PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS LED PUERTO RICO’S INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT
Puerto Ricans elected Campos, the most famous militant advocate of Puerto Rican independence, Harvard-educated lawyer and gifted orator, President of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in 1930.
Campos rejected colonial government and argued that Puerto Rico possessed an inherent right to national independence.
American and Puerto Rican authorities repeatedly arrested and imprisoned him as the independence struggle became increasingly confrontational.
Puerto Rico’s Insular Police repressed Campos’ nationalist movement and culminated in the 1937 Ponce massacre.
1937: PONCE MASSACRE
On Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, Puerto Rico’s Insular Police opened fire on an unarmed Nationalist Party procession in Ponce that was protesting colonial rule and commemorating the abolition of slavery.
The cops killed 19 people and wounded 200 bystanders, women and children; the crowd killed 2 cops and wounded 200.
A commission led by American Civil Liberties Union founder Arthur Hays concluded that the event was a massacre and a grave violation of civil rights.
DOMINATORS: “Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States.”
NOSOTROS, EL PUEBLO: “But when did Spain ask Puerto Ricans whether Puerto Rico was Spain’s property to give away?”
Congress passed the Elective Governor Act in 1947, permitting Puerto Ricans to elect their governor rather than have the U.S. president appoint one.
LUIS MUÑOZ MARÍN
In November 1948, Puerto Ricans elected Luis Muñoz Marín as their Governor.
He became the island’s first popularly elected governor when he took office in January 1949.
Under Muñoz Marín, Operation Bootstrap accelerated Puerto Rico’s transition from a predominantly agricultural economy toward manufacturing.
New factories, schools, housing, roads, and public-health programs helped raise living standards.
But industrialization did not provide enough work for everyone.
Mechanization eliminated many agricultural jobs, unemployment remained severe, and hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans migrated to the continental United States.
Between 1950 and 1960 alone, 470,000 left the island.
Air travel connected San Juan with New York, where Puerto Ricans built enormous communities and transformed the city’s culture and politics.
1950: PUBLIC LAW 600 LET PUERTO RICO DRAFT A CONSTITUTION
In 1950 Congress enacted Public Law 600, allowing Puerto Ricans to draft a constitution.
Puerto Rican voters approved the resulting constitution in 1952, and Puerto Rico became the Estado Libre Asociado—officially translated as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
The constitution established an elected government with executive, legislative and judicial branches and substantially expanded Puerto Rico’s control over its internal affairs.
But the U.S. Congress required changes to Puerto Rico’s Constitution before approving it.
P.R. had to cut out the removal of proposed guarantees concerning work, health, social services, and an adequate standard of living.
The Commonwealth arrangement did not give Puerto Rico sovereignty comparable to that of an independent country or voting power comparable to that of a state.
Residents remained U.S. citizens, but while living in Puerto Rico they could not vote for president in the general election.
Puerto Rico still had no voting senators and no voting representative empowered to vote on the final passage of legislation in the House.
Congress retained ultimate authority under the territorial relationship.
The status question therefore continued.
In the 1967 status plebiscite, the Commonwealth received the largest share of the vote, but advocates of statehood and independence continued to challenge the arrangement.
By 1975, Puerto Ricans still governed themselves locally while remaining divided over their island’s permanent political future.
1976–2016 CE: STATUS, VIEQUES, RECESSION AND DEBT
Puerto Ricans repeatedly debated statehood, independence and Commonwealth status.
Meanwhile, an extraordinary grassroots movement confronted another manifestation of distant power: the U.S. Navy’s use of Vieques, a small island located off the east coast of Puerto Rico’s main island, for military training.
Protest ultimately helped bring an end to Navy bombing exercises in 2003.
Economic weakness became increasingly dangerous after important federal tax advantages were phased out. Puerto Rico entered a prolonged economic contraction beginning around 2005 and accumulated unsustainable public debt.
By 2015, Puerto Rico had begun defaulting.
The Puerto Rican People said, We can organize. Vieques showed that we ordinary people can force even the Yankees to listen.
2016–2024: PROTESTS OF PROMESA DEBT RESTRUCTURING & INADEQUATE HURRICANE RECOVERY FORCED GOVERNOR ROSSELL TO RESIGN
2016: PROMESA
The United States Congress—not Puerto Rico’s legislature—enacted PROMESA after Puerto Rico accumulated an unsustainable public debt and began defaulting on payments.
U.S. President Barack Obama signed the U.S. law, whose full name is the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act.
Promesa was a debt-restructuring system and a federally created Financial Oversight and Management Board with sweeping fiscal powers through which Puerto Rico could restructure debts that it could no longer pay.
The act established a federal Financial Oversight and Management Board, which it authorized to examine and certify Puerto Rico’s fiscal plans and budgets.
If the elected governor and legislature fail to produce plans that satisfy PROMESA’s requirements, the Board can impose its own—placing crucial financial decisions affecting Puerto Ricans under the control of officials whom they did not elect.
2017: HURRICANE MARIA
Hurricane María devastated Puerto Rico in September 2017.
The electrical system collapsed; thousands ultimately died from the storm and its aftermath.
In the following years, the hurricane’s damage to the island prompted the Puerto Rican community to help itself in the Anunnaki Great Goddess tradition of self-help.
Neighbors cleared roads, distributed supplies, and installed rooftop solar and batteries.
That helped some, but it was too little and too slow.
In 2019, enormous protests over his inadequate recovery assistance helped force Governor Ricardo Rosselló to resign.
Puerto Rico subsequently restructured most of its government debt.
Fiscal conditions improved substantially, but unreliable and expensive electricity, population decline, pensions, extreme weather, and unresolved electricity debt still agitated the Puerto Ricans.
Dominators demurred and denied the country adequate relief, saying, Experts and creditors will determine what Puerto Rico can afford.
The People disagreed; they said, Budgets exist for people—not people for budgets.
2025–HOY CE — WHO DECIDES PUERTO RICO’S FUTURE?
This is where our article should become especially sharp—and especially accurate
Puerto Rico’s present governor is Jenniffer González-Colón, a Republican and strong advocate of statehood who took office in January 2025. In the nonbinding 2024 status vote, statehood received about 58.6% of valid votes, sovereignty in free association about 29.6%, and independence about 11.8%. Yet Puerto Rico cannot itself enact statehood: Congress must act. Donald Trump has previously explicitly opposed Puerto Rican statehood, at one point calling himself an “absolute no.” We should distinguish this documented position from more recent rumors about Trump somehow unilaterally making Puerto Rico independent. I have not found sufficiently strong evidence to present that latter claim as fact.
There are, however, very real Trump-administration actions to discuss
In 2025, the administration redirected $365 million that had been intended for Puerto Rican solar and battery projects toward conventional generation and grid work. The administration argued that this would deliver quicker, broader improvements; critics argued that distributed solar and storage are precisely what vulnerable Puerto Rican households need during repeated grid failures. Trump also proposed dramatically reducing FEMA’s role and transferring more disaster responsibility to states and local jurisdictions. That carries unusually high stakes for hurricane-exposed Puerto Rico. A FEMA resilience program canceled by the administration was ultimately restored in 2026 after a federal court ruled against its cancellation.
And there is a remarkable new development: Reuters reported in February 2026 that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence investigated Puerto Rican voting machines after unsupported claims of Venezuelan election interference; no evidence of such foreign interference was found. Reuters.
As of this week, another crisis is immediate: severe drought has brought water rationing affecting more than 180,000 residents.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico just approved the controversial $2-billion Esencia luxury development in Cabo Rojo despite opposition from environmental and community activists.
So our concluding question practically writes itself:
DOMINATORS: “Washington knows best. Investors know best. Financial boards know best. Political leaders know best.
”NOSOTROS, EL PUEBLO:“PUERTO RICO IS NOT A PRIZE, A MILITARY BASE, A TAX SHELTER, A DEBT PORTFOLIO OR A REAL-ESTATE DEVELOPMENT. IT IS OUR HOME.”
*cemí: sacred image/object representing or embodying a spiritual being or ancestor
#PuertoRico #Boriken #Boricua #Taino #PuertoRicanHistory #CaribbeanHistory #GritoDeLares #RamonEmeterioBetances #PedroAlbizuCampos #LuisMunozMarin #Vieques #HurricaneMaria #PROMESA #PuertoRicoStatehood #PuertoRicoIndependence #FreeAssociation #EnergyCrisis #SolarPower #FEMA #Colonialism #DominationConsciousness #PartnershipConsciousness #NosotrosElPueblo #EnkiSpeaks #SashaAlexLessinPhD
REFERENCES
- William J. Pestle et al., “Reconsidering the lives of the earliest Puerto Ricans,” PLOS ONE.
- Smithsonian NMAI, Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean.
- National Park Service, The Forts of Old San Juan: Guardians of the Caribbean.
- U.S. GAO, Puerto Rico: Fiscal Conditions Have Improved but Risks Remain (2025).
- Council on Foreign Relations, Puerto Rico: A U.S. Territory in Crisis.
- U.S. Department of Energy, Puerto Rico energy and grid recovery.
- U.S. House Historian, Jenniffer González-Colón.
- Reuters, Trump administration redirects Puerto Rico solar funding.
- AP, Puerto Rico’s 2026 drought and water rationing.Please share this post; Puerto Rico needs help against Trump.
