Theres no denying it. But Puerto Rican culture is inherently African & Taino culture. Did you know that Africans were part of the formation of the Puerto Rican culture & identity from the very beginning? Helping to shape the music, art, language, & heritage. From the early colonial times there were free black citizens, freed slaves, & cimarrones, or escaped slaves. Christian convert slaves, also known as ladinos had accompanied Ponce de León to the Boriken aka the indigenous name of the island of Puerto Rico in 1509. The slave trade did not reach Puerto Rico until 1519. The slaves were brought into work the sugar cane fields. Between the years 1530 & 1540, the slave population reached its highest level. With slaves surpassing Spaniards 5 to 1. Slavery was abolished on March 22, 1873. The African imprint in Puerto Rican culture is apparent in many ways. Like every Spanish/Latino culture, there are two things that shape Puerto Rico: Catholicism & music. Mind you the descendants of former African slaves weighed heavily on the future political, economical & cultural structure. The music, athleticism, cuisine, arts & education you now see in the island is the culmination of 373 years of the slave trade through the island. Foods such as gandules, cocos, bacalao, yames, funche, platanos & pasteles. Music such as bomba & plena & in our vocabulary with words like borundanga, & fufú. The most distinct African cultural influence comes from the Yoruba tribes in Africa. Puerto Rican music & dance are finely seasoned with sabor Africano. Part of the undisputed African legacy on the Puerto Rican culture includes a peculiar speech pattern. Ladinos slaves that spoke Bozal Spanish, a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish, & the language spoken in the Congo. The African influence in the Spanish spoken in the island can be traced to the many words from African languages that have become a permanent part of Puerto Rican Spanish ( &, in some cases, English) Notice that many Puerto Ricans have the habit of swallowing the s, & often pronounce the r as an l. This is because in the African tongue there is no s or r sound. ( Afro Antillian Vocabulary ) ( Think about how the Spanish colonial government prohibited Tainos from writing) Be it known, the majority of SPANISH SPEAKING PEOPLE TODAY ARE NOT SPEAKING THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE. NONE. Also, the melange of flavors that make up the typical Puerto Rican cuisine counts with the African touch. Pasteles, small bundles of meat stuffed into a dough made of grated plantain. Sometimes combined w/ pumpkin potatoes, plantains, or yautía & wrapped in plantain leaves. That were devised by African women on the island & based upon food products that originated in Africa. Being Puerto Rican is not a racial identity, but rather a cultural & national one. Being Latino is not a cultural identity but rather a political one. We were all enslaved, conquered & forced a language, culture & religion that was not our own.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 01:49:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015