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Why I Wrote “The Moonlit Vine”

By Elizabeth Santiago

HAVANA TIMES – When I was growing up, my mother often said, “Nosotros somos indios, africanos y españoles.” We are Indigenous, African, and Spanish. She said it so matter-of-factly that I never questioned it. In our family, being descended from the Taíno wasn’t something to debate. It was simply who we were. Then I went to school.

Like many Puerto Rican children educated in the United States, I learned a very different story. History books told me the Taíno had disappeared shortly after Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean. With disease, violence, forced labor, they had been wiped out. The message was clear: the Taíno belonged to the past.

I found myself caught between two truths. My family spoke about our Taíno ancestors as if they had never left. Academic history spoke about them as if they no longer existed.

As I grew older, curiosity became research. I visited Taíno petroglyphs in Puerto Rico. I talked with elders in the town where my parents were raised. I read historians, anthropologists, archaeologists,........

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