During the early 20th century the native Borinqueños, Boriquans or Boricuas of Puerto Rico lost their rightful historical heritage. Since then Puerto Rico entered a cultural crisis evolving from taino quandaries. Jesse Walter Fewkes (1907) manuscript was written while working for the Bureau of American Ethnology it reignited in America a research trend originally launched by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque Schmaltz in 1836. Rafinesque named the language and people of Haiti or Ayti as tainos which for over fifty years matured mostly in France and Germany eventually filtering during the late 19th century into the Caribbean. The research, marketing, and standardization of the native Caribbean terminology was to undergo a tumultuous change shortly after 1898 when Puerto Rico was annexed by the USA. The great native North American research experience flourished tracking native footprints, monuments, artifacts and the surviving native Nations of North America alongside the original national native identity of yesterday and today in the 21th century: -that was not the case in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico presented a new challenge, -a new culture, national language and geographical isolation with no apparent surviving natives to stand-up for their ancient homeland. Puerto Rico after four centuries of law, acculturation, and Christianization by Spain was suddenly engage in a new restructuring of territorial intercession, economics, societal practices and cultural identity. Consequently, the classic history and prehistoric heritage of Puerto Rican natives faced a fast-track institutional an academic research devotion as never experienced. The research challenge led by the international contemporary academic community rooted a generic standardization strategically filled by the illusory taino of Rafinesque. Such was the success of the substitution and imposition of the non-existing taino that it overtook the native Caribbean history and heritage by storm leading to a tragic fixation among scholars and a cultural crisis.

Caribbean Native History