COLONIZATION
On Why I Prefer to Use Puerto Rico’s Indigenous Name in My Writing
Reflecting on ways to honor my ancestors
You cannot discover a place where our ancestors already lived.
— from the author’s poem, “When I Was Nuyorican”
As a child growing up in New York City, the word Borikén was so very far away. And I say this to mean more than physical proximity. I have zero recollection of being told about our ancestral Indigenous roots. Even as I type these words — jogging my brain’s memory bank — I come up blank as to my first introduction of where my people come from. This all comes down to one word:
Colonization.
In the case of Puerto Rico, we are twice colonized. First, by the Spaniards, then by the United States of America. The brief version of the history of the re-naming of our lands goes like this:
1493 — On his second voyage, the lost navigator commissioned by the Spanish Crown, Christopher Columbus arrived in Borikén, thinking he had landed in the Indies. He decreed it a Spanish colony, naming it San Juan Bautista after St. John the Baptist.
1508 —Granted permission by Nicolás de Ovando, the viceroy of Española (Hispaniola), Juan Ponce de León, a former lieutenant of…
