Talk:Puerto Rican-American
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Puerto Rican-American is part of WikiProject Puerto Rico, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to the people, history, language, and culture of Puerto Rico on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, help with the tasks listed below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. Please do not substitute this template. |
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[edit] Merge
Is there any differnce between Puerto Rican and Puertorrican people to merit separate articles? IF so please provide the differences and reasons for both articles? If no reasons are found this article should be merged into Puerto Rican since it came before and is a more common spelling/ pronunciation. Joelito 04:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
- This page should either be merged or deleted. I dont tihnk Puerto Ricans are in any way an ethnic group as they vary in terms of origins, cultures, race and even language. It is a nationality, not an ethnic group. 69.156.88.98 22:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Race
Thank you for this article.. Puerto Ricans won't acknowledge anything other than Spainish coming to the island..We had French..Germans..English..Irish..Dutch even Chinese. I've notice this among other Hispanics of other countries.. they have no clue what they are or who they came from. to think we are all the same is ignorant..like thinking everyone born in America is the same race..not even everyone from the same city is the same race. only once in my life did I meet a person who looked so much like me she could pass for my sister..she was from the Netherlands. My mother has no African blood and my father has no Taino blood both are "native" Boricuas. I traced my paternal grandmother to the middle east of Sephardi blood while my maternal grandmother only has 1 person non Taino who was a Gitana..not the italian looking European but more Hindu looking with very dark skin(calé). It's a lie that all Boricuas are a mix of Taino,Spanish/white,Yoruban it's also a lie that the Spanish married Taino & African women..it was against the law as it was in America.
I agree that many Hispanics (including most Puerto Ricans) don't even know what their roots are. Puerto Ricans can be white, black, asian, mulatto and even mestizo if they have married someone with Indian heritage. However, there seems to be a movement to eliminate the "Spanish" heritage out of Latin Americans, as if having Spanish ancestry was something to be ashamed of. This is quite common in Mexico, Central America and places like Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador where the Indigenous population has always been high. This type of thinking has made many Puerto Ricans believe that they are descendants of Taino Indians when in fact, most of the indigenous population of Puerto Rico was wiped out by the time serious colonization of the island began. Yes, Spaniards took Indian women even though it was forbidden by Spanish law back then, but their offspring became absorbed by the waves of immigrants who later colonized the island. More immigrants have settled in Puerto Rico than the number of Taino Indians in Puerto Rico at the time of the discovery. Many Puerto Ricans forget that immigrants from the Canary Islands came by the thousands to Puerto Rico and numerous villages and towns where founded by Canary Islanders (such as Mayagüez, Hatillo, etc..) Of all the Spaniards, Canary Islanders tended to have darker complexions since many where descendants of the Guanches who were the original Berber inhabitants of the islands before being colonized by Spain. The fact that the Spanish spoken in Puerto Rico bears a striking resemblance to the Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands shows how heavy the Canarian influence was on the island. Also, waves of Corsican immigrants settled in Puerto Rico as well as French, Irish, Dutch, Catalonians, Basques, Chinese and Germans and in recent times Cubans, Dominicans and other Spaniards. Most importantly, we cannot forget the African heritage which has made more impact in the culture of Puerto Rico than the Taino culture ever did. If there was ever any significant race mixing in Puerto Rico, it was between European and African, not Indian, and it was done after slavery was abolished. Nowadays, immigrants from Mexico and other parts of South America have come to Puerto Rico in which some do have Indian heritage, but they are a new addition to the population and they typically don't consider themselves as Puerto Ricans.
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- I agree with much and disagree with some of what you've said. It is true that many immigrants came from other european countries rather than just Spain, many where Irish and Dutch in particular, but many did so as mercenaries and laborers for the Spanish which is why there is much confusion over the issue, since many even adopted Spanish versions of their original names. My last name is French and my second last name (mother side) is Danish, but my the family tree goes way back to the time of the pirate Cofresi. So there definitely was a great variety of Europeans coming to Puerto Rico. But Also I want to point out that a great proportion of these immigrants from the earliest days where male over 80-90% by some studies, and most who stayed around (some immigrants island-hopped through the spanish caribbean looking for better opportunites) took native wifes. In fact Puerto Rican spanish has many taino words in use which distinguishes its spanish from other spanish speaking caribbean islands, and other parts of Latin America. I would direct you to the works of Dr. Ricardo Alegria for further information on the linguistic heritage of the taino in Puerto Rican Spanish. The reason this is important is because most language transfers occur from mother to child, particularly in the areas of domestic usage, which is where most of the Taino influenced is found in the language. The conclusion arrived al by the greater of concensus of Puerto Rican athropologist who study the issue is that the Taino was assimilated, and largely indoctrinated by the Church, into what we now call Puerto Rican, by around 1600. The African Heritage in the island is also important, but keep in mind that the island was never a true slave society, unlike Cuba where slaves reached close to 50% of the population at times, the best evidence shows Puerto Rican slavery around the 10%-15% range, and this is largely due to an already existing wage labor economy on the island, which made slavery less competitive than it otherwise would have been. And also due to the terrain of the island, which is largely irregular for large sugar plantations like those found in Cuba the Dominican Republic, or even many of the islands of the lesser antiles like Barbados. African words are also found in the language to a similar extent as Taino words. In all linguistically speaking, Puerto Ricans are a mixture of African, Taino, and Spanish, ethnically it is obviously much more diverse, but lets not dismiss the taino as one root of Puerto Rican Culture, Identity, or History.Mad05963 10:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] The merge is meant
I've read both of these articles and even though I don't precisely agree with any of the opinions expressed in this discussion, these articles together will be more helpful and useful than two separate ones. They both provide rightful information and will make it easier to the user to have all that information in one page rather than two or even more. Therefore, both articles should be merged with a disambiguation to each other.
[edit] There is no difference, articles should be merged
I agree, there are no differences between Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican people. If anybody feels there is some difference, it could be explained in a paragraph or two inside the merged article. mjuarez 20:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Content collected from other pages for consideration
I have created the page Talk:Puerto Rican American/Merge for the placement of content removed from other articles for consideration for inclusion in this article. Alan.ca 10:56, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
- The main article should be called Puerto Rican, not Puerto Rican American... that term is never used, plus there is no Iowa American... Cjrs 79 05:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
The history of the Puerto Rican people is a history of migration, especially after the mid-20th century. The Puerto Ricans of Chicago are as much a part of the Puerto Rican people as the people in San German. Puerto Ricans carry the island of Puerto Rico within them, or hear about it from parents or grandparents. But given the close relation between Puerto Ricans in the island and Puerto Ricans outside it, the "oneness" of the people has been maintained. Wikipedia should reflect that reality and have one entry for Puerto Ricans, with the entry of "Puerto Ricans in the United States" called that, because that is what it is.
