Celebrities with Puerto Rican Roots

Three roots of Puerto Rican ancestry

Puerto Rico lies in the Caribbean, about 1,000 miles southeast of Miami.^[1] Puerto Ricans descend mainly from three groups: the Indigenous Taíno, European settlers, and Africans brought to the region in the transatlantic slave trade.^[5]

A 2011 study measured the mix in a census-based sample of 642 people from all parts of the island, using 93 genetic markers.^[6]

A 2021 study in Nature used a different method and found similar shares for Puerto Rico, with about 68% European, 18% African and 14% Indigenous ancestry.^[5]

African ancestry is highest in the east of the island, at 31.8% on average, and the authors trace this pattern in part to the colonial sugar plantations. Native American ancestry varies little from one region or person to the next.^[6]

The maternal line gives a different picture. A 2005 study analyzed mitochondrial DNA, which passes from mother to child, in 800 islanders chosen to represent the population. Of their maternal lines, 61.3% were Native American, 27.2% sub-Saharan African and 11.5% West Eurasian.^[7] The authors of the 2011 study see in this “an excess of ancestry contribution from European males and Native American females”, a pattern common across Latin America.^[6]

The Taíno and their island Borinquén

People first reached the Caribbean islands about 6,000 years ago.^[5] A 2020 study in Science linked one early migration into the western Caribbean to North America.^[8] The 2021 Nature study traces these first settlers to a population closest to Central and northern South Americans and disputes the link to North America.^[5]

At least 1,700 years ago, farming and pottery-making people related to Arawak speakers of northeastern South America moved through the Lesser Antilles into the larger islands. They replaced more than 98% of the older lineages, and their ancestry is still present today.^[5] The genome of a Taíno woman who lived in the Bahamas about 1,000 years ago points to the same origin in northern South America.^[9] The Taíno of Puerto Rico called their island Borinquén, also spelled Borinkén.^[1]

The largest Taíno ceremonial site in the West Indies lies at Caguana near Utuado, in the mountains of west central Puerto Rico. It dates from between about 1200 and 1500 and has ten ball courts lined with earth and stone, called bateys, and a ceremonial dance ground with numerous petroglyphs.^[10]

How many Taíno lived on the islands is disputed. Some historical estimates for the time of contact run from hundreds of thousands to millions. From stretches of DNA shared between islands, the 2021 study estimates a far smaller population for Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. Its authors add that “the devastating impact that European colonization, expropriation, and systematic killing of Indigenous people had on Caribbean populations is indisputable.”^[5]

Taíno ancestry has survived to the present. The Native American part of some present-day Caribbean genomes is closely related to the ancient Taíno.^[9] The 2021 study found a previously unknown branch of the maternal lineage C1d in ancient islanders and in a present-day Puerto Rican. The authors see this as “direct evidence that Indigenous matrilineal ancestry persisted in the Caribbean since pre-contact times.”^[5]

Spanish rule and African slavery

Christopher Columbus landed on the west coast of the island on November 19, 1493, during his second voyage, and named it San Juan Bautista.^[11] Spain founded a permanent settlement in 1508, when Juan Ponce de León led settlers from Hispaniola.^[1] Their first town was Caparra. In 1519 Rodrigo de Figueroa drew a plan for moving the city from Caparra to a new site across the bay.^[12]

Spanish colonizers forced the Taíno into servitude.^[1] After raids by French corsairs and several Taíno uprisings, the Spanish began to fortify San Juan, with La Fortaleza in 1537 and El Morro in 1539.^[11]

Africans were brought to the Caribbean in the course of the transatlantic slave trade.^[5] The African maternal lines in the 2005 study show a strong affinity to West Africa, with components from Senegambia and the Gulf of Guinea.^[7] In 1867 the island had 656,328 inhabitants. The count recorded 346,437 as white and 309,891 as “of color”, a category that grouped Black people with people of mixed descent.^[13]

On September 23, 1868, several hundred rebels took the mountain town of Lares and proclaimed a Republic of Puerto Rico, which declared free the enslaved people who had joined them. Spanish militia soon ended the revolt.^[13] The short-lived Spanish Republic abolished slavery in Puerto Rico on March 22, 1873.^[13] The owners received compensation, and the freed people had to keep working for three more years.^[14]

From Spanish colony to US territory

During the Spanish-American War, US troops landed at Guánica on July 25, 1898. In the Treaty of Paris of December 10, Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States. The US flag had already been raised over San Juan on October 18, when the last Spanish troops left.^[13]

In 1900 Congress replaced military rule with a civilian government under the Foraker Act.^[1] In a series of rulings known as the Insular Cases, the Supreme Court decided that territories such as Puerto Rico remained unincorporated.^[15] In Downes v. Bidwell of 1901, Justice White described the island as “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense”.^[16]

The Jones Act of March 2, 1917, made Puerto Ricans US citizens. Its fifth section states that they “are hereby declared, and shall be deemed and held to be, citizens of the United States”. Anyone who wished to keep their previous status could do so by sworn declaration within six months.^[17]

The Elective Governor Act of 1948 let Puerto Ricans choose their own governor at the polls.^[18] In 1950 Congress recognized the island’s authority over its internal affairs, and in 1952 it approved Puerto Rico’s constitution. Since then the island has been known formally as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,^[1] in Spanish Estado Libre Asociado.^[18]

What “commonwealth” means is disputed. Some see a unique status between territory and state, based on a compact that neither side can change alone. Others treat it as a traditional name, as in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and hold that Congress keeps its broad powers over the territory.^[1]

People born in Puerto Rico are US citizens.^[1] Residents of the island do not vote in presidential elections, and their only delegate in the US House has limited voting rights.^[4] Since 1967 the island has held seven nonbinding votes on its status, most recently in 2024.^[4] In 2020, 52.5% of voters answered yes to the question of whether Puerto Rico should be admitted immediately as a state. Island parties have argued over the wording and turnout of some earlier votes.^[1]

Language, flag and the word Boricua

Spanish is the predominant language of the island.^[1] A US Army order of 1898 made English the official language of the government, and an act of 1902 allowed both languages. A law of 1991 made Spanish the only official language. Since 1993 Spanish and English have both been official again.^[2]

Boricua means a Puerto Rican or a person of Puerto Rican descent. The word comes from Borikén, another spelling of the island’s Taíno name.^[19] Nuyorican, first recorded in 1974, blends the Spanish nuyorquino, “New Yorker”, with Puerto Rican. It describes a person of Puerto Rican birth or descent who lives or has lived in New York City.^[20]

On December 22, 1895, Juan de Mata Terreforte, a veteran of the Lares uprising, presented the flag at Chimney Hall in New York to 59 exiles who formed the Puerto Rican section of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Its design inverts the red and blue of the Cuban flag. Three accounts name different men as the one who proposed it.^[21] The Flag Law of July 24, 1952, made it the official flag of the Commonwealth and describes five alternating stripes, three red and two white, and a blue equilateral triangle with a white five-pointed star.^[22] No shade of blue has ever been fixed as official.^[21]