Taino Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics

by Gabriel Haslip-Viera

Overview

This stimulating and timely collection examines the Taíno revi­val movement, a grassroots conglomeration of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos who promote or have adopted the culture and pedigree of the pre-Columbian Taíno Indian population of Puerto Rico and the western Caribbean.

The Taínos became a symbol of Puerto Rican identity at the end of the 19th century, when local governments and nationalistic intellectuals began to appropriate the Taínos for the conception of a socially and racially balanced Puerto Rican society. Activists in the Puerto Rican diaspora revitalized this idea.

Modern critics now claim that the Taíno heritage has been canonized through state-sponsored institutions, such as festivals, mu­seums, and textbooks, at the expense of blacks. In the past, officials, alarmed at the black majorities on the other Caribbean Islands, tried to "whiten" Puerto Rican society by calling all people of color Taínos. Others complain that the Taíno revival lost its fervor, evolving from an anti-colonialist movement to a mere fashionable trend. Still, the Taíno heritage remains a central part of Puerto Rican identity in the 21st century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558762596
Publisher:	Wiener, Markus Publishers, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/01/2019
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	180
Sales rank:	554,166
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Gabriel Haslip-Viera, City University of New York, is the author of Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692-1810.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction. Competing Identities: Taíno Revivalism and other Ethno-racial Identity Movements among Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean Latinos in the United States, 1980–present.

2. Local/Diasporic Taínos: Towards a Cultural Politics of Memory, Reality and Imagery

3. Making Indians Out of Blacks: The Revitalization of Taíno Identity in Contemporary Puerto Rico

4. What’s in a Name, an Indian Name?

5. The Indians Are Coming! The Indians Are Coming!: The Taíno and Puerto Rican Identity

6. Rethinking Taíno: A Taíno Perspective

Editorial Reviews

"This book addresses some of the hardest political and scholarly issues relevant to diaspora societies today. Its elegant embrace of diverse approaches makes it an exciting and unique contribution to Caribbean studies more broadly." --Hispanic American Historical Review

From the Publisher