DNA research upsets Puerto Rico history

Tuesday, October 7, 2003

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: According to Indian Country Today, most Puerto Ricans believe that the native people, and their societies, were killed off by the Spanish invaders by the 1600s. It was always noted though, that many of the original colonists married native women or had native concubines, producing the original mestizaje (mixture) that, when blended with African, would produce Puerto Ricans. 

Those first unions, according to the conventional wisdom, explain why some Puerto Ricans have "a little bit" of native heritage. Mainly they are Spanish, they are told, with a little African blood and far-away native ancestry. 

But the order of that sequence will have to change. 

Dr. Juan Martinez Cruzado, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez who designed an island-wide DNA survey, has just released the final numbers and analysis of the project, and these results tell a different story. 

According to the study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27 percent have African and 12 percent Caucasian. (Nuclear DNA, or the genetic material present in a gene's nucleus, is inherited in equal parts from one's father and mother. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from one's mother and does not change or blend with other materials over time.) 

In other words a majority of Puerto Ricans have native blood. 

"Our study showed there was assimilation," Martinez Cruzado explained, "but the people were not extinguished. Their political and social structure was but the genes were not. 

"The people were assimilated into a new colonial order and became mixed … but that's what Puerto Ricans are: Indians mixed with Africans and Spaniards," he asserted. 

"There has been an under-estimation of the Amerindian heritage of Puerto Rico, much larger than most historians will admit," he said. 

Through the extensive study of the Puerto Rican samples, Martinez Cruzado and his team have found connections between island residents and various native peoples. He pointed out how a few of the samples can be traced back 9,000 years from ancient migrations, while others correspond to the genetic makeup of native peoples of the Yucatan, Hispaniola, Margarita Island and Brazil among others. These latter genetic trails point to the presence of other native peoples who were probably brought to the island as slaves from other Spanish or Portuguese colonies after the 1600s. 

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