Friday, June 4, 2010

Brown and Proud


Brown and Proud, originally uploaded by veesvision.
Well, if you know me, I am not exactly brown... but that is part of Puerto Rican history. For the past couple of weeks I have brushed up on my island history and it really is depressing.


Why do Puerto Ricans look all kinds of different?
After Columbus dropped off his merry men (who were Spanish light skinned) they enslaved the Tainos (brown skinned). Ahem... 1 plus 1 = ...you know. Then later on in history Ponce de Leon brought over African slaves because the Tainos were dying off too quickly due to starvation, dehydration, among other things like rape and disease.
After that, there was a time the Dutch tried to flex and then the French.

I guess the next chapter that will be written, will be about it's statehood. Click here for an article in the NY Daily News on this topic. Care to discuss? Click on the picture above to be redirected to the Flickr page. One may leave a comment there.