7 The Coloniality of Social Studies and History Textbooks in Puerto Rico
Portrayals of Taíno Religious Beliefs and Spanish Colonial Conquest
Rafael V. Capó García
Textbooks are a useful and fascinating window into the world of statesanctioned historical narratives. They advance official interpretations of supposedly valuable and necessary knowledge, “particular ways of selecting and organizing that vast universe of possible knowledge” (Apple, 1991, p. 3), and “they claim that ‘this is certain knowledge and this is the knowledge you need’ ” (Issitt, 2004, p. 685). The year 2018 saw the publication of The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies, a compilation of perspectives by experts in the field of textbook studies. While most of its chapters include English-language studies from Latin America, Africa, or Asia, only two chapters explicitly draw on texts from the Global South (Bromley & Lerch, 2018; Oteíza & Achugar, 2018). Andreassen and Lewis’ (2014) edited volume Textbook Gods also lacks in its in-depth representations of the Latin American community. Textbooks as a medium for qualitative research have not received the attention they deserve (Issit, 2004; Reed, 2018), and in Latin America this is even more of the case.
My chapter seeks to contribute to the field of textbook studies from a Caribbean point of view where Europeans and Indigenous Americans first clashed with one another. I argue that although many Puerto Rican social studies and history textbooks today critique colonialism and Eurocentrism, they do so from within Eurocentrism itself. These textbooks fail to question the inherent violence of colonial enterprise and instead embrace the discourse of harmonious mestizaje that frames genocide against Indigenous populations as an unintended consequence of civilization. Textbooks oversimplify Indigenous ways of knowing and project them as palatable forms of folklore that constitute one of the roots in the holy trinity of Puerto Rican identity—the mixture of the Indigenous Taíno, White Spaniard, and the African negro.
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Their treatment of history and Indigenous ways of knowing strengthen the coloniality of power (Quijano, 1997) by claiming epistemic authority over their ways of knowing, positing colonialism and its repercussions as unavoidable, and isolating the blame away from the modern colonial project and onto individual exceptional actors. The modern nation-building project of mestizaje enters the stage as a way of depoliticizing conflict and strengthening unity through collective amnesia. As illustrated later in the chapter, textbooks employ various types of narratives and epistemic maneuvers that assuage the violence of the “racial triad” in order to strengthen its acceptance in society.
Theoretical Framework
Scholars argue that textbooks frequently fail to adequately address their theoretical perspectives (Nicholls, 2003; Carrier, 2018; Foster & Karayianni, 2018; Szakács, 2018) as “very few studies make their theoretical position clear or even explicit” (Szakács, 2018, p. 203). Foster and Karayianni (2018) found that “textbook researchers generally refrain from theoretical discussions … most of the textbook studies … provide only limited reference to how theory has shaped their research processes” (p. 272). My analysis is framed within a Caribbean episteme rooted in the works of Glissant (2010) and Trouillot (1995). Glissant’s work on relationality and his creolization of Deleuze and Guattari’s (2009) rhizomatic thinking is fundamental to my analysis. For Glissant, identity has traditionally been framed through the ecological allegory of the tree with its single trunk and easily traceable roots. Alternatively, the rhizome has no clear source nor starting point and entangles itself into an indiscernible amalgamation of relations which in my opinion finds its ideal metaphor in the form of a mangrove. This landscape conjures the imagery of “interlocking roots and dense coastal thickets” (Thomas, 2013, p. 6) and challenges the essentialization of Caribbean identity and universal truth.
I consider the metaphor of the mangrove a useful tool to explore the way intellectuals interpret and write about history. Upon looking at the mangrove, one cannot identify the initial root or node; each continues to grow and stem underground establishing a convoluted network that sustains life and complicates truth. Glissant (2010) also introduces the idea of opacity as a means of accepting unclarity and unpredictability, a distraction from “absolute truths.” Glissant refuses to allow his identity to be “cornered in any essence” nor “mixed into any amalgam” (p. 192). Western ways of thought have traditionally been obsessed with systematizing, cataloging, and controlling epistemologies and ontologies. Glissant’s opacity challenges this need to know oneself and the other, and celebrates the comfort of obscurity. In the same way as Glissant views his identity, I will explore
textbooks and their historical interpretation of Indigenous ways of knowing as an amalgam of roots entangled together in the mangrove where opacity is not only a right but also a way of life.
Haitian anthropologist Trouillot’s (1995) seminal scholarship on history and historical narratives will help us theorize the way textbooks frame the past. For Trouillot, “any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences,” (p. 27) that “are neither neutral nor natural. They are created” (p. 48). Silences permeate the historical process at every stage, from the creation of sources and archives to their retrieval in the process of making narratives and history. Historical events always arrive “with some of its constituting parts missing. Something is always left out while something else is recorded” (p. 49). Furthermore, Trouillot’s formulas of erasure and banalization will also be useful in addressing the different epistemic maneuvers textbooks employ in their construction of narratives.
Trouillot (1995) argues that “the historical narrative within which an actual event fits could precede that event itself, at least in theory, but perhaps also in practice” (p. 26). This insight leads us to the work of Wertsch, whose “schematic narrative templates” provide a useful framework to analyze textbooks. For Wertsch (2008, p. 123):
These narrative templates can produce replicas that vary in their details but reflect a single general story line. In contrast to specific narratives, these templates do not deal with just one concrete episode from the past. Instead, each takes the form of a generalized schema that is in evidence when talking about any one of several episodes.
Schematic narrative templates are thus the models that specific narratives frequently follow. In the case of social studies and history textbooks in Puerto Rico, the narratives we will discuss are at the service of mestizaje which constitutes the master “schematic narrative template” at the heart of the curriculum.
My analysis will also be guided by the modernity/coloniality paradigm. Textbooks offer an important medium from which to analyze the coloniality of power (Quijano, 1997) and how it manifests itself in school curricula. For Quijano (1997), the coloniality of power emerged during the conquest of the Americas, as Europeans questioned the humanity of Indigenous Peoples and the enslaved Africans. A way of thinking emerged that placed Europe at the center and rendered the colonial difference as incapable of generating knowledge. As Walter Mignolo (2012) puts it, the modern/colonial imaginary enacted the coloniality of power, “an energy and a machinery to transform differences into values” (p. 13). Maldonado-Torres (2007) argues that the Enlightenment, capitalism, and history itself are Western constructs inspired by the “ego conquiro” that preceded Descartes’ “ego cogito”;
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Europeans first became conscious of their existence because of their dominant relation with the American other. Most of the Americas might be free from colonialism today, but not from coloniality. Much like Orientalism and its “reductive polarization” of East versus West (Said, 1979), Occidentalism and White supremacy continue to frame epistemologies of the Global South aided by the hierarchy of academia. Analyzing textbooks through this paradigm allows us to see how Eurocentrism is reproduced and helps us develop “narratives geared towards the search for a different logic” (Mignolo, 2012, p. 22) that will help us unmask the coloniality of power that continues to limit the possibilities for a decolonial curriculum.
Methodology
Scholars also argue that textbook studies rarely discuss methods and methodologies (Nicholls, 2007; Carrier, 2018). Heeding Grever and van der Vlies’ (2017) recommendation, I will employ a holistic approach to the textbook that “goes beyond a representational analysis limited to one person, event or period, separated from the context of the whole textbook” (p. 294). The opening chapters of each textbook which are dedicated to the Indigenous Peoples of Puerto Rico are obviously where most of my data stems from, but other sections are also important in order to draw comparisons of how they portray other religions. In their study on the portrayal of religion in textbook studies, Stimac (2018) argues that textbooks predominantly present the religions of prehistoric and traditional societies in their opening pages and Christianity in the final sections, thus implicitly declaring it to be the completion or perfection of a process of evolution (p. 255). I will move beyond the opening chapters and assess the portrayal of different religions in the textbook in a holistic manner (Andreassen & Lewis, 2014). Thus, sections that explore Christianity are also key to understanding how the Taíno religion is portrayed.
I employ a thematic analysis of textbook content and discuss the different themes that surfaced in my assessment of the portrayal of Taíno religion in Puerto Rican social studies and history textbooks. I also use discourse analysis as a method in certain sections as conceived by Atienza and Van Dijk (2010) in their study of discourse in textbooks. Certain themes will benefit heavily from an analysis of the subtle and suggestive wording of content as well as the assumed “epistemic community” of the text. As Atienza and Van Dijk argue, this analysis “is especially relevant because it tells us what kind of knowledge children and adolescents must have, and activate, in order to understand their textbooks in the first place” (p. 95). The assumed “epistemic community” is an important variable to consider and explore and while it is also imperative to stress that discourse is not necessarily constructed with the intent of exerting power and influence,
it does not mean that it does not do so (Atienza & Van Dijk, 2010). If textbooks are inherently Western mediums of knowledge production and intergenerational transmission (Oteíza & Achugar, 2018), then how do they navigate the religion, passed down by oral means, of the men and women who formerly inhabited the Caribbean?
Additionally, I will draw on two semi-structured in-depth interviews I conducted in 2021. First, I interviewed historian and Taíno religion specialist Dr. Sebastián Robiou Lamarche who has authored numerous books on Caribbean Indigenous topics and also collaborated with one of the textbooks I analyzed (TB-SM, 2018). I also interviewed the Director of Puerto Rico’s Department of Education’s Social Studies Program, Sheykirisabel Cucuta Gonzalez. While not the main sources of data collection, these conversations provided me with academic expertise and insights into the process of textbook production.
Textbooks Analyzed1
I analyzed 13 textbooks in total. Nine of the 13 texts are primary- and secondary-level textbooks published by the four most prominent and widely circulated textbook publishing companies that operate in Puerto Rico: Santillana, Panamericana, Publicaciones Educativas, and Ediciones SM. I refer to these specific textbooks by the publisher’s name, the date of publication, and adding TB at the beginning (e.g., TB-Santillana, 2002). While the exact number of textbooks in circulation is not available, the Director of Puerto Rico’s Department of Education’s Social Studies Program informed me that these are in fact the most widely used textbooks in public schools and that my sample is representative of the system. Furthermore, the owners and employees of the two largest bookstores in San Juan— Librería Mágica and Norberto González—also confirmed this.
Of the nine school textbooks, three are primary-level textbooks (Educativas, 2011a; Panamericana, 2014; Santillana, 2007) and the remaining are secondary-level textbooks (Educativas, 2011b; Norma, 2015; Panamericana, 2011; Santillana, 2002, 2016; SM, 2018). I analyzed three additional textbooks that were published primarily for introductory college-level courses. Two of these were authored by two prominent Puerto Rican historians, Francisco Scarano (2000) and Fernando Picó (1992), and the other by renowned historians Blanca Silvestrini and María Dolores Luque de Sánchez (1992). The latter was very popular in the 1990s but is seldom used in courses today, and the former continue to be used at universities and in private Catholic high schools.
While I attempted to obtain data on the specific textbooks used at these private schools, it was largely impossible given that each institution has its own unique curriculum. Through informal conversations with students,
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I have gathered that many Catholic high schools use TB-Scarano (2000) to this day.
The final textbook consists of the modules written by the Department of Education in 2020 in order to facilitate remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several textbooks for the Spanish language course published by Ediciones SM were also reviewed but their content was less relevant, and thus I have decided not to analyze them in this chapter. The sample selection was carried out specifically to account for the four companies with the largest market share in textbook publishing in Puerto Rico. My sample represents the most widely circulated textbooks in the public education system and potentially the private system as well. Some of the textbooks have received updated editions, but I could not access them due to COVID closures of libraries. Nonetheless, the sample is representative of the majority of textbooks that have been widely circulated and used in public schools for the past two decades.
Historical Context of Taíno Representations
We intend to approach here the first American mythic corpus that suffered the translation of codes that goes from the oral tradition to writing.
(Mercedes López-Baralt, El Mito Taíno)
Before discussing the portrayal of Taíno cosmology in Puerto Rican textbooks, I would like to briefly explain the basic tenets of the Taíno worldview, yet as we shall see, this is a problematic task. The Taínos were an agricultural society divided into chiefdoms or cacicazgos spread mostly throughout the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea.
They were ruled by male and female caciques who anthropologists believe were chosen through matrilineal descendance. Our knowledge of their belief system is completely dependent on 15th-century Spanish Christian missionary Ramón Pané’s (c. 1498/1999) Relación Acerca de las Antigüedades de los Indios [An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians] Pané arrived in America on Columbus’ second voyage and quickly learned the language of the Macorix, an Indigenous People who inhabited the Southern part of the island of Hispaniola. Their language, believed to be linguistically related to Taíno, was nonetheless very different from the one spoken by the majority of the people on Hispaniola. Since Pané did not understand the Taíno language, he asked Columbus for an interpreter and was allowed to take Guaicabanú, a young Taíno who would later convert to Christianity and take the name Juan. Thus, we begin this entanglement by establishing how our knowledge of the Taíno religion is based on a Catalan-speaking (López-Baralt, 1999) Christian missionary’s trust in a
Taíno’s translation of oral histories from the chiefdom of Maguá, located in what is today the Dominican Republic.
In Account, Pané (1999)) himself even accepts the limitations of his interpretations by stating the following:
And because they have neither letters nor writing, they do not know how to tell such fables well, nor can I write them well. Therefore, I believe that I put first what ought to be last and the last first. But everything I write, they tell it thus, in the manner I am writing it, and thus I set it down as I have understood it from the people of the country.
(p. 11)
Pané admits that it is impossible for him to see the entire picture and acknowledges that perhaps a lot of what he has chronicled isn’t even accurate. Pané goes even further when he states that the Taínos “cannot give a good account of how they have heard this from their ancestors, therefore they do not all say the same thing, nor can one even write down in an orderly fashion what they tell” (p. 8). Here Pané reveals how Taíno cosmology was not homogenously conceived throughout the Caribbean region. Thus, once again, Pané is conscious of the limitations of his interpretation and the heterogeneity of Taíno mythology, which serve to further complicate the text.
On top of this, the actual manuscript and original text of Pané’s Account, completed between 1498 and 1500, was lost and has never been recuperated. It is only known to the modern world thanks to Fernando Columbus’ biography of his father Christopher, which included a version of Pané’s Account and which also hasn’t been recuperated According to renowned literary scholar Arrom (1999), “all we know of the Account at present is Anglería’s summary in Latin, Las Casas’ extract in Spanish, and Ulloa’s Italian translation” (p. xxv). Further complicating this is the reality that each interpreter’s own personal views and agendas influenced their perception and dissemination of information, as I shall now discuss in the case of Las Casas and Ulloa.
Las Casas (1909) summarized Pané’s Account of Taíno mythology in order to humanize their existence and create empathy for his case against their abuse. In his famous Apologética Historia de las Indias (Apologetic History of the Indies), published in the mid-16th century, Las Casas frames the Taíno People as a somewhat monotheistic and benevolent tribe who could easily be converted to the Christian faith. Las Casas states that
the people of the island Hispaniola had a certain faith and knowledge of a one and only true God, who was immortal and invisible, that no one
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can see him, who had no beginning, whose home is the sky, and they named him Yócahu Vagua Maórocoti.
(p. 321)
Las Casas then immediately follows up this statement by claiming that their knowledge of this one true God was “truly Catholic” (p. 321).
For Alfonso de Ulloa, who translated Fernando Columbus’ version of Pané’s text into Italian, political motives do not seem to be present, yet there are some interesting academic issues that I believe haven’t been linked elsewhere to the entanglement of Taíno cosmology. Ulloa was a prolific translator who followed the literary current of his fellow Italian translator Juan Boscán, who believed translators should be allowed to interpret the text to preserve its meaning instead of literally transcribing it word for word. The “libre traductor” (Morreale, 1959, p. 27, cited by Carpi, 2012, p. 239) is a:
“faithful translator, because he did not bound himself to the word, as many do, but instead to the truth of the sentences” (Garcilaso de la Vega, 1995; 267–268), convinced of the right and duty of the translator to change the original in order to channel it more correctly into the language of arrival.
(Carpi, 2012, p. 238)
Additionally, Ulloa never finished his translation as he died in a Venetian jail in 1570 (Arrom, 1999). Ulloa’s belief in the interpretive and artistic role of the translator, and the unfinished nature of his work, is thus another variable to consider when gauging the historicity of Taíno mythology as interpreted by academics.
Furthermore, there are no direct living descendants of Taínos who can corroborate and expand our understanding of their belief systems. Given these circumstances, how do textbooks then navigate contemporary interpretations offered by a Spanish translation of a nuanced 17th-century Italian translation of a version included in the lost biography of Columbus written by his son Fernando, who himself transcribed a Catalan-speaking Christian friar’s interpretation of Guaicabanú’s own translation of the Taíno People of Maguá on the island of Hispaniola. This run-on sentence is purposefully convoluted in order to emphasize how problematic it is to claim knowledge over Indigenous Taíno ways of knowing.
Relevant Textbook Studies
Studies on the depiction of belief systems and religious traditions in Puerto Rican textbooks have, to the best of our knowledge, not been carried out.
The most relevant study I found was an article by Godreau et al. (2008) who assessed the portrayal of African heritage in classrooms, including two elementary school textbooks. Their main argument is that “silencing, trivializing, and simplifying the history of slavery are fundamental maneuvers for the maintenance of the ideology of blanqueamiento (whitening) and its public denial of racism in schools” (p. 119). Their conceptualization of “maneuvers of simplification,” which draws on the work of Trouillot (1995), will be particularly useful for my study, as I argue that many textbooks consistently dumb down the rich and complicated belief systems of the Taínos in the interest of promoting unifying national metanarratives that portray the “other” as a known entity. Furthermore, I look to build upon their seminal study and continue to show the usefulness of textbook analysis in assessing how nation-building in Puerto Rico is carried out through misleading discourses that conceal the complexity of history in favor of the unifying narrative of mestizaje.
Another important study that is worth mentioning is Araújo and Rodríguez Maeso’s (2012) analysis of Eurocentricity in Portuguese textbooks. They argue that critiques of colonialism emerge “as a critique of the incompetency of Portuguese colonialism, rather than of colonialism itself. As a result, the legitimacy of colonialism is never questioned” (p. 1270). Furthermore, they argue that while Portuguese textbooks mention the inhumanity of slavery, they follow it up with benevolent and compassionate euphemisms that attempt to assuage the tragedy as “ ‘circulation’, ‘acculturation’, and ‘miscegenation’ ” (p. 1279). Most of the textbooks I reviewed employed a similar discourse, especially with the concept of mestizaje. The 20th-century Puerto Rican elites constructed the nation around the harmonious mixture of Taínos, Africans, and Spaniards, otherwise known as the racial triad (Dávila, 1997; Llorens, 2014). The Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, founded by archeologist Ricardo Alegría (who is quoted in many of the textbooks) even uses the three “races” as its symbol. Numerous statues depicting the three groups together can be found throughout the island (Capó García, 2021, 2023), and children are commonly taught that they are the result of the combination of these three cultures (Godreau et al., 2008). This simplistic trope has sought to construct a national identity around collaboration and unity, ignoring the violence and divisions of the past in favor of a harmonious future.
Finally, two more studies have enriched my understanding of the portrayal of problematic pasts in textbooks. In a study on Canadian textbooks, Montgomery (2005) finds that textbooks portray racism as existing “in ‘them,’ over ‘there,’ and potentially anywhere excepting in the midst of ‘we Canadians’ ” (p. 438). This idea that racism is an exceptional attitude or behavior, isolated in certain individuals and present in past unfortunate times, has not been sufficiently explored by textbook analysts. Jason Nicholls
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(2006) argues that Italian textbooks portray fascists as incompetent, which suggests that they were terrible at being fascistic, but when textbooks discuss anti-Mussolini movements, the Italians are suddenly excellent and competent soldiers. In addition to this, textbooks blame Mussolini for Italy’s fascism and its participation on the wrong side of the war. In textbooks, “we find that by placing blame for Italian involvement on the ‘fascist degenerate’ Mussolini, the Italian people are cleared of responsibility” (p. 98). While none of these studies focus directly on the portrayal of Indigenous religions, they poignantly identify misleading discourses that also operate in the textbooks I reviewed for this study.
Findings
Representations of Yúcahu
According to European chroniclers of the early contact colonial period, one of the most important idols of worship, known as cemíes, was reserved for the Taíno’s primary deity who appears in history books with many different names—Yucahú, Yocahú, Yucahú-Guamá, Yucahuguamá, Yocahú Bagua Maorocoti, and Yukiyú. Robiou Lamarche (2009b) argues that the most accurate spelling is Yúcahu Bagua Maorocoti and that Yucahuguamá is an advocation of the first. Many of the textbooks that I analyzed describe this important deity within a Christian framework. Panés’ (c. 1498/1999) Account opens with a description of Yúcahu Bagua Maorocoti; “they believe he is in heaven and is immortal, and that no one can see him, and that he has a mother. But He has no beginning” (p. 3). Robiou Lamarche (2009b) argues that this description is fueled by Pané’s Christian worldview, which posits that Jesus has a mother, yet no worldly father, and God is everywhere yet cannot be seen, which are fundamental tenets of the Christian belief system.
Just as Pané interpreted Taíno religion through a Eurocentric prism, many textbooks also describe Taíno religion in the Christian code. Four textbooks (Department of Education of Puerto Rico, 2020; Panamericana, 2011, 2014; Santillana, 2016) describe Yúcahu as the creator of all things, yet Pané never stated this, nor has this been translated by linguists from the deities’ multiple names. According to Arrom (1967), linguistic analysis has helped us approximate the meaning of Yúcahu Bagua Maorocoti and Yucahuguamá’s names to “Spirit of the Yuca and of the Sea, Without a Male Ancestor and Sir Creator of Yuca” (p. 386). Since the yuca was the Taínos’ principal food staple, it is understandable that Yúcahu be considered the creator of everything, yet none of the textbooks that claim this establish this relationship. Furthermore, six textbooks (Educativas, 2011a, 2011b; Santillana, 2016; DE, 2020; Scarano, 2000; Picó, 2008) portray Yúcahu as a benevolent God who is the source of all good.
Representations of Atabey
Also interesting is how textbooks portray Atabey who along with Yúcahu are considered to be the two most revered cemíes and deities in Taíno cosmology. According to Pané (1999), Atabey is simply Yúcahu’s mother, and she is known also as “Yermao, Guacar, Apito, and Zuimaco” (p. 4), but contemporary scholars argue that she constituted much more. Robiou Lamarche (2009a, 2009b) argues that her multiple names suggest that Atabey was the “mother of water” and together with Yúcahu they represent maternity and paternity in Taíno culture. If Yúcahu represents the yuca and Atabey represents water, then together they provide sustenance and life for the Taíno People. Atabey’s importance is also magnified by the fact that the Taínos are considered a matrilineal society (Sued Badillo, 2007; Robiou Lamarche, 2009a, 2009b; Oliver 2009). This was first documented by 16thcentury chroniclers Bartolomé las Casas and Pedro Mártir de Anglería who stated that a chief’s succession was primarily preserved through maternal lines. Thus, Yúcahu’s power was dependent on Atabey’s lineage, as he has no male ancestor. Although most of the textbooks discuss the matrilineal structure of Taíno society, none of them link this structure to Yúcahu’s lack of a male ancestor and Atabey’s maternal significance. Five textbooks introduce Atabey simply as Yúcahu’s mother (Santillana, 2002; Panamericana, 2011; Educativas, 2011a, 2011b; Scarano, 2000) and say nothing else. Four textbooks (Panamericana, 2014; Santillana, 2016; SM, 2018; Norma, 2015) highlight her importance, and the remaining four (Picó, 2008; Santillana, 2007; Silvestrini, 1992; DE, 2020) do not mention her. Of those that do, TB-SM (2018) is the only one that includes all of her names and possible associations with “water, moon, tides, maternity and universal mother” (p. 108). TB-Panamericana (2014) and TB-Santillana (2016) only mention her relationship with water, and TB-Norma (2015) introduces her alongside Yúcahu as the principal deities of Taíno cosmology.
Representations of Hurricanes and Guabancex
Although TB-Santillana (2016) is the only textbook approved by the Puerto Rican Association of Historians, it claims that Guabancex is a God of creation and Yúcahu’s mother. This is a completely unfounded claim and probably a mistake, as Guabancex is widely agreed to be a female goddess related to storms and hurricanes (Arrom, 1999; Robiou Lamarche, 2009a, 2009b). While the word “hurricane” is debated to be of either Taíno or Mayan origin (Hernández Aquino, 2013), there is no evidence that the Taínos conceived of a deity named after this natural phenomenon.2 Most of the textbooks I analyzed (Department of Education of Puerto Rico, 2020; Educativas, 2011a, 2011b; Panamericana, 2011, 2014; Picó, 2008;
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Table 7.1 The number of deities and myths mentioned by each textbook
Santillana, 2016) invoke Juracán as the God of evil, sickness, death, and fury, while two others (Norma, 2015; Scarano, 2000) call attention to this error. According to Pané (2001), Guabancex would “move the wind and the water and push the houses and rip out the trees” (p. 37) when she was mad. TB-SM (2018) and TB-Norma (2015) are the only textbook authors that describe Guabancex as the God responsible for hurricanes.
In Table 7.1 we can see how many deities and myths each textbook discusses, and TB-Santillana (2016) and TB-Department of Education of Puerto Rico (hereafter TB-DEPR) (2020) appear to be second only to TBSM (2018) in the inclusion of Taíno deities yet; unfortunately, these two textbooks are littered with numerous egregious inaccuracies. Apart from their descriptions of Juracán, both textbooks state that Guabancex is the mother of Yocajú and that together they constitute the two creative powers. Their wording is identical to each other, as well as their descriptions of Yucahuguamá, “the God who ensured the cultivation of yuca.” This leads me to believe that the pandemic modules TB-DEPR (2020) plagiarized TB-Santillana (2016). Strangely, they also mention a God who I, along with Robiou Lamarche, have never encountered in our research—Casibu the supposed God of the skies. The only other place I encountered this being is a virtual quiz on a website generated by a user over three years ago, which curiously also includes the same wording for the module’s other deities.3
“Interpreting” versus “Knowing the Past”
Since the Taíno People never developed a written language, our knowledge of their culture and belief system is almost completely dependent on Pané
Portrayals of Taíno Religious Beliefs 181
and contemporary anthropologists. Archeology has been instrumental in uncovering the Caribbean’s ancestral past, making the most out of what was left behind to piece together an educated estimate of their culture. Yet archeologists will be the first to stress how many of their claims are academically rigorous interpretations and hypothesis, and thus must be presented as such.
Most textbooks (Educativas, 2011b; Panamericana, 2011; Norma, 2015; Picó, 2008; Scarano, 2000; Silvestrini, 1992; SM, 2018) acknowledge these epistemological limitations by either explicitly stating the impossibility of certainty or by constantly using words that let the subject know that what they are reading is an interpretation. TBScarano (2000), for instance, constantly reminds the reader that what we know is “indirect … imperfect” (p. 42), “mysterious” (p. 47), and “imprecise” (p. 48), all the while clearly emphasizing archeology’s interpretive framework. TB-Panamericana (2011) insists that “archaeological findings have demonstrated” (p. 97), “some archeologists postulate” (p. 102), “it is believed” (p. 111) and links specific interpretations to renowned archeologist Miguel Rodríguez López who they thank in the opening pages of the textbook. TB-Educativas (2011b) does the same with Ricardo Alegría and Irving Rouse, two of the most renowned archeological experts in Taíno culture, letting the reader know that the accounts reproduced in the textbook are interpretations made by highly skilled specialists, but should not be considered facts.
TB-Norma (2015) uses “thanks to these sources” (p. 70) but doesn’t caution the student again throughout the text. TB-SM (2018) is perhaps the most careful of all the textbooks as it constantly frames knowledge as “according to Pané” (p. 72), or “other theories sustain that” (p. 64), and “the majority of scientists believe” (p. 64) while reminding the reader that these are all “approximations” (p. 63). TB-SM even remarks how “it is necessary to remember that the chronicler’s observations were not free of prejudices and, therefore, should be studied cautiously” (p. 68).
TB-Scarano and TB-Picó also mention this issue, as they highlight the evangelizing agendas of many of the original chroniclers.
While TB-Educativas (2011b) emphasizes how content is linked to specific interpretations, they include exercises that ask students to differentiate between facts and opinions, and true and false statements, which force students to assume an authoritative voice over the subject. The rest of the textbooks (Department of Education of Puerto Rico, 2020; Educativas, 2011a; Panamericana, 2014; Santillana, 2002, 2007, 2016) do not encourage students to understand that little is known with certainty.
TB-Santillana (2002, 2007) does not discuss archeology. TB-Educativas (2011a) on the other hand does discuss it but reproduces parts of Pané’s text without problematizing its prejudice. They simply ask students why
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the text is valuable and how it can help understand the past, but they do so without contextualizing the primary document or discussing historical and archeological interpretations. Similarly, TB-Santillana (2016) presents various pictographs and asks students to answer, “what are the Taíno pictographs about?” (p. 59). This question is also glaringly simplistic, as not even the most highly trained and experienced archeologists have reached a consensus on what most of these symbols mean. Asking a student to say “what they are about” instead of asking them to interpret what they think they represent freezes the Taíno People in time. It strips them of their opacity, of their right to not be known. This stems from an Occidental gaze obsessed with knowing and thus controlling the other by fragmenting their existence within Western academic disciplines (Said, 1979). It suggests that the Taíno People are known by the West and that their history is set in stone.
The “Exceptional” Violence of the Encomienda System
An important historical process every textbook discusses is the encomienda system of the early colonial period. Taínos were distributed to conquistadores in order to carry out construction, mining, and agricultural duties. In exchange, the Spaniards had to provide clothing, protection, and Christian education to their Indigenous subjects. Every textbook draws attention to the abuses and shortcomings of the encomienda system, but only a handful actually critique the system itself as a racist and ethnocentric project. Most of the textbooks critique the encomienda system by arguing that it was perhaps not correctly implemented, instead of critiquing the racist undertones of the system itself (Department of Education of Puerto Rico, 2020; Educativas, 2011a, 2011b; Panamericana, 2011; Santillana, 2007; SM, 2018). This is in line with Godreau et al.’s (2008) findings in their study of third-grade level school textbooks in Puerto Rico, which they argue portray African “slavery as a valid system that was not practiced correctly” (p. 123).
TB-Santillana (2007) argues that:
In the majority of the cases, the work of the encomienda left little time for the teaching of the Christian faith, and for many encomenderos (those who controlled the Taínos) the extraction of gold was more important than the teaching of the Christian faith. (p. 162)
TB-Santillana suggests that the main issue with the encomienda system was that the Spaniards neglected their moral obligation to evangelize the Taínos, thus positing Christianization as an unproblematic imposition. It also suggests that not all encomenderos were like this which implies that
the system itself had some merit and that abuses were exceptional acts done by exceptional people. The same textbook also considers that “it was necessary for the Spanish to learn from the errors committed and confront new problems, like the dramatic reduction of the Taíno population” (p. 166). By framing the encomienda as a mistake, TB-Santillana (2007) implies that genocide and epistemicide were unintended consequences that provided teachable moments for the Spanish to improve their economic enterprise.
TB-Panamericana (2011) also argues that the encomienda system was, unfortunately, corrupted. According to TB-Panamericana, it was clear that the King had the
desire of initiating the Indians in the Christian faith, of educating and offering them housing, food, and clothing in exchange for their labor which consisted of working in the extraction of gold, in the construction of houses and in the harvesting of the fields. But this purpose was initially distorted, and the Spanish reduced the Indians to a state of semi-slavery, which decidedly influenced their rebellion. (p. 161)
TB-Panamericana portrays the encomienda as a well-intentioned system in theory that was “distorted” in practice. As seen in most of the textbooks, the encomienda is depicted as an “exchange” between Taínos and Spaniards, which fails to acknowledge its inherent power imbalance, violence, and injustice. TB-Educativas (2011a) also highlights the encomendero’s evangelizing duties which “although … had the intention of avoiding abuses, it had the opposite result” (p. 142). Once more it appears that “some” encomenderos were responsible for the atrocities of the period, but not the system itself. TB-Educativas (2011b) also carries out this scapegoating in the following passage:
Through the encomienda the Spanish were tasked with the custody of several Taínos, together with the land that they were granted. The encomendero was committed to protecting them, providing them clothing and food, and teaching them the Christian faith. In exchange, the Indian would work in the home, the land, and the mines. Some encomenderos exploited the Indians. They separated them from their towns and their traditional activities. They took their wives and daughters and they exposed them to the diseases they brought from Europe. (p. 133)
By providing a brief critique of the treatment of the Taínos, TB-Educativas (2011a, 2011b) appears to be providing multiple perspectives on the
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encomienda system, yet they end up suggesting that it could have worked if not for a few bad apples.
Similarly, TB-Santillana (2002) implores students to think of colonization and the encomienda as a cultural exchange. Although TB-Santillana (2002) recognizes the disproportionate sacrifices the Taínos were forced to make, they nonetheless equate genocide and epistemicide with the “difficulties” faced by the Spanish who now had to live in tropical climates. TBSantillana goes on to ask students whether “the sudden integration of two cultures to erect a civilization is easy” and to “identify the characteristics of the Conquest that made it difficult for both cultures to gradually adapt to a relationship of cohabitation and labor” (p. 107). TB-Santillana also asks students to consider “how the Taínos could have been integrated into European society without eliminating their customs and traditions” and to ponder “whether it was necessary to ban their cultural practices in order to hispanize the discovered lands” (p. 113). Although TB-Santillana recognizes Spanish abuse and their sense of superiority, they seem eager to have students find solutions to the “Indian problem” within a multicultural framework where colonization is a foregone conclusion and mestizaje its unavoidable outcome.
The Cultural Survival of the Taínos
Almost every textbook discusses the ways that the Taíno culture survived colonization and the encomienda system. Most of them share a diversity of objects, foods, instruments, and/or names that are derived from Taíno vocabulary and culture (Department of Education of Puerto Rico, 2020; Educativas, 2011a; Norma, 2015; Panamericana, 2011; Santillana, 2007, 2016; SM, 2018). These include objects such as canoes and hammocks; foods like yuca and its bread cazabe; instruments such as maraca and the güiro; and place names of municipalities and rivers such as Caguas and Arecibo. TB-Educativas (2011a) and TB-Santillana (2007) ask students to compare Taíno religious ceremonies with our present-day manifestations in order to establish change and continuity. One of these questions even asks students to compare their skin color with the Taínos’ reddish pigmentation. A reflective exercise presented in TB-Scarano (2000) states that “some people think that the encomienda system helped to completely destroy the Taíno culture. Rationalize your response and provide examples” (p. 217). Scarano is looking for students to explore the influence the Taínos have had on present-day Puerto Rican culture. TBSilvestrini (1992) also remarks how “even though the Spanish element predominated, some Indigenous traits survived and came to form a part of a new culture that emerged as a result of this process; the Puerto Rican culture” (p. 66).
Bartolomé las Casas and the Catholic Defense of the Taínos
Many textbooks discuss Catholic friar Bartolomé las Casas, considered by historians to be the defender and protector of the Taínos, as well as Antonio Montesinos, who penned a famous speech against the violent conquistadores. Various textbooks seem eager to draw the reader’s attention away from the atrocities of the encomienda system and onto the internal opposition exerted by Spanish Catholic friars. TB-Educativas (2011a) asks students to state who protested against the mistreatment of the Taínos, for which the answer seems to be Las Casas and Montesinos, and not the Taínos themselves who rebelled in 1511 in Puerto Rico. TB-Educativas (2011b) discusses the exploitation of the encomienda system and then immediately focuses on Las Casas and Montesinos as defenders of the Taínos. While the title is historically accurate, it is misleading to consider Las Casas as the protector or defender of the Taíno People. Even though he did protest their economic exploitation, he never questioned the imposition of Christianity and in fact rooted his defense within Christianity itself. The textbooks leave ideological and religious intolerance unquestioned and reproduce the friar’s exaltation as exceptions to the violence when in fact they are also guilty of ethnocentrism and colonial dominance. TB-Norma (2015) is the only one that while mentioning Las Casas and Montesino’s role in colonial history also discusses how “behind the efforts of converting Indigenous Peoples and their economic exploitation, the sentiment of European superiority could be found. The Taínos were considered inferior … due to the fact that they were not Christians” (p. 102).
Discussion
The findings of my research point to the subtle ways Eurocentrism seeps into the epistemological framework of the curriculum. Even when some of the textbooks I analyzed critique colonialism and Eurocentrism, they do so from within a Eurocentric conception of history. Echoing Godreau et al.’s (2008) study of the portrayal of African heritage in Puerto Rican textbooks, I will now discuss three types of “maneuvers” (Trouillot, 1995) textbooks discursively deploy to distract readers from the racial violence of the modern colonial system. First, the majority of textbooks I reviewed discuss Taíno cosmology with an arrogant and dominating sense of certainty (Said, 1979); second, they present colonialism and its repercussions as inevitable processes (Araújo & Rodríguez, 2013) or what I refer to as epistemic determinism; and third, they exculpate the colonial project by isolating exceptional scapegoats (Montgomery, 2005; Nicholls, 2006). All of these discourses constitute “maneuvers of simplification” (Godreau et al., 2008; Trouillot, 1995) that reproduce palatable “schematic narrative templates”
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(Wertsch, 2008) of the Taínos to strengthen their inclusion into the national archetype of Puerto Rican identity; a depoliticized and romanticized (Carretero, 2011) harmonious mixture of three races whose unifying ethos can only be accomplished through uncritical epistemic acceptance “of an official ‘multicultural’ national identity” (Anderson, 2019, p. 20).
Epistemic Certainty
Most of the textbooks I analyzed caution readers to understand that our knowledge of Taíno culture is an approximation. Those that don’t, reflect a need for certainty that strips the Taínos of their opacity (Glissant, 2010) and autonomy (Said, 1979). Eduard Said argues that “to have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it. And authority here means for ‘us’ to deny autonomy to ‘it’ ” (p. 32). Indigenous cultures are portrayed within an oversimplified Eurocentric Christian paradigm that makes them more compatible with systematic forms of Western thought. This implies leaving the more well-known deities and idols outside of the text and avoiding the discussion of their rich and complicated stories. Deities are discussed as one-to-one representations of natural phenomena, yet their rich involvement in creation stories is almost completely neglected. Their spiritual beliefs only appear in the opening sections and disappear in subsequent chapters, making it clear that their ways of knowing are incompatible with modernity and contemporary history. Their deities are only valuable for understanding the distant past, but they are worthless for understanding the present. Textbooks are authoritative instruments that advance a “master narrative, which function as the de facto sanctioned history curriculum” (Faden, 2014, p. 196), thus their portrayal of Indigenous cultures constitutes a mechanism of curricular control that reflects a need to prove that they “know” the “other.” In the context of a state-sponsored cult of mestizaje, the Taínos must be understood and sanitized to fit into the national archetype. They must be quarantined, simplified, and deprived of their opacity in order to form part of the depoliticized racial triad.
Epistemic Determinism
Textbooks frame colonial conquest and colonization as foregone conclusions, conditioning the reader to accept its inevitability and move past its pointless critique. In order to protect the integrity of the racial triad and its harmonious dilution of Taínos and Africans into a predominantly European identity, the modern colonial system is seldom questioned, and “the present dominance of Europeans seem inevitable and natural” (Stanley, 2006, p. 34). Different ways of existing and thinking in the world are not advanced or taken into account. Instead, the textbooks ask readers
to look at the “brighter side” of modernity and appreciate the rich heritage conceived through racial mixture. The assumed epistemic community (Atienza & Van Dijk, 2010) is clearly Christian as none of the textbooks even discuss Christianity, approaching it without the same rigor or detail they accord to Taíno cosmology. It could be argued that textbooks avoid controversy by neglecting to academically approach Christianity. By failing to provide the reader with a definition of Christianity, textbooks do not distance themselves from its ideology. The TB-DEPR module (2020) even asks students to mention how those accused of heresy were punished and whether those methods correspond to the “basic precepts of the Christian faith” (p. 113). While the module implores students to critique Christian intolerance and violence, it does so from a Christian perspective and suggests that these behaviors contradict the true teachings of the Christian faith. It does not discuss the basic precepts of Christianity, but it assumes the reader knows what they are; it also assumes that critiquing violence as anti-Christian is worthy of pedagogical intervention. Reading about Taíno religion in textbooks forces the reader to see it as an academic phenomenon that merits critique and scrutiny. Failing to explore the Christian belief system in the same way shields it from the rigors of critical thinking and classroom discussion.
Epistemic Scapegoating
Scholars have shown how textbooks assuage violent pasts by identifying scapegoats that exculpate the rest of society (Montgomery, 2005; Nicholls, 2006). Most of the textbooks I reviewed followed suite and blame particular people for the atrocities of colonialism instead of holding the Church, Crown, and modernity’s ethos accountable. Apart from TB-Norma (2015), textbooks reproduce Eurocentric discourses that refuse to acknowledge the relationship between colonization and racism. The textbook authored by Norma (2015) offers a unique narrative that goes as far as even critiquing the discourse of mestizaje as being predominantly conceived through rape and violence. The book discusses the European sentiment of superiority and problematizes the overall Christianizing mission of friars and conquistadores. In one of the final exercises of the chapter, TB-Norma asks students to think about injustices stemming from the intolerance of difference and to consider ways of combating this ignorance. The book establishes that genocide stemmed from the overall colonial project rooted in ethnocentrism, though they do not explicitly mention racism. In fact, not a single book in the sections on Taínos and colonization mentions the word “racism” nor its development in the context of the colonization of the Americas. This discourse manages to strengthen the misleading and problematic racial triad paradigm. It allows the reader to look beyond ethnocentrism
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and genocide by framing colonialism as a cultural exchange which resulted in a rich mestizaje (Araújo & Rodríguez, 2012). In a section titled The Taíno Cells That Live within You, TB-SM (2018) posits that,
Aboriginal ethnicity lives on in the veins of the Puerto Ricans of today in revindication of the struggle of friar Las Casas against the abuses carried out by his compatriots against the Taínos. Since the Taínos could not overcome the violence of colonial conquest, they remain in the collective Caribbean cultural memory, and in what shapes us as human beings: bones, blood, and cells.
TB-SM elicits powerful imagery of Las Casas almost smiling in his grave, as if his life’s work had not been completely in vain. It unproblematically sees mestizaje as an acceptable alternative to genocide, or at least a positive consequence. Las Casas can be revindicated because although the people he defended did not survive the onslaught of his compatriots, they at least managed to survive through contributions to our present-day culture. While we continue to use Taíno words to name the world, eat their fruits, and play their instruments, few if any of their ways of knowing carried over into our Eurocentric epistemological framework. Las Casas is thus satisfied, for the only Taíno cultural manifestations that survived colonization were palatable to Christianity and Eurocentricity; he succeeded in killing the Indian and saving the man (Pratt, 1892, quoted in Churchill, 2004). Mestizaje is thus the bright side of it all, the positive outcome of a well-intentioned and inevitable enterprise distorted by isolated and individual instances of greed. Similar to the ways Puerto Rican historiography has turned “the history of slavery into the history of abolition” (Díaz Quiñones, 2003, p. 41), by discussing the abolition movement immediately after mentioning slavery, textbooks turn the history of the encomienda into the history of its Catholic condemnation and inevitable mestizaje.
The Politics of Textbook Production
Editorial, political, and national contextual considerations surrounding the publication of the textbook are important factors when attempting to draw conclusions about how content is portrayed (Apple, 1991), yet they are frequently ignored in textbook studies (Clark et al.,2024). Nowhere is this clearer than in the Department of Education’s (2020) modules for remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic. As I have already discussed, the module I reviewed reproduces numerous erroneous claims literally based on Santillana’s (2016) textbook and what appears to be other online sources. The text also claims that the first inhabitants on the island arrived 2,000 years ago, a notion that has been debunked for decades (Robiou
Lamarche 2009a). It appears that the modules were prepared rather hastily, and understandably so given the circumstances, by teachers without consulting academic experts or academic texts. I believe teachers must participate in textbook writing as they are usually better tuned to understand how to transmit information to younger and less experienced learners in clearer ways. Having said this, it is still important that academics work alongside teachers in order to avoid reproducing long-ago debunked tropes and historical interpretations (Keenan, 2019). In my conversation with Cucuta Gonzalez, Director of the Social Studies Program of the Department of Education of Puerto Rico, she stated that the Department provided no funds whatsoever and that teachers volunteered their own time to work on the modules. This commitment is commendable, yet the result is a text that is disrespectfully misleading and highlights the need for collaborative authorship and editing in the field of textbook production.
Further Considerations
The deflective epistemic maneuvers I have described in this chapter are still threatening education today, as clearly evidenced by the Florida Department of Education’s new social studies standards which were approved following the passing of the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act in 2022, also known as the Stop W.O.K.E. Act. The specific passage that turned heads was a sixth- to eighth-grade benchmark clarification of the “African American History Strand” on page 6 of the 216-page document titled Florida’s State Academic Standards for Social Studies (2023). The clarification asks students to consider “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” (p. 6). Similar to the ways Puerto Rican textbooks portray the encomienda as a well-intentioned system that like slavery was destined to be abolished, more attention is given to the positive outcomes of slavery than to its horrendous history. While this is clearly the most explicitly problematic statement in this strand of the Florida curriculum, the rest of the section is littered with similar instances of revisionist scapegoating and deflective maneuverings. The Afro-Eurasian origins of slavery, the “contact of European explorers with systematic slave trading in Africa” (p. 5), the analysis of African patriots in the Revolutionary War, and the protagonism of abolitionism shift attention away from the brutality of slavery and onto its inevitable downfall. I would like to conclude with some curricular recommendations in order for textbook publishers and the Department of Education to improve their treatment of not only Taíno cosmology and Puerto Rican identity, but controversial histories as well. First, it is crucial that textbooks feature a healthy mixture of academics and educators as most of the secondary-school textbooks already do. Textbook publishers should follow the example set by
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TB-SM (2018) and include scholars specialized in Indigenous topics, such as Robiou Lamarche, in order to ensure that this content is treated appropriately since it fundamentally differs from how Modern and Contemporary histories are approached. As a public-school teacher, I used Robiou Lamarche’s (2009b) concise synthesis of Pané’s text for five years and can attest to its value. It is written using simple language that still manages to respect and convey the complexity of Taíno cosmology. I recommend the Department of Education incorporate this text into the curriculum as a way of exploring Taíno mythology and expanding students’ understanding of Taíno ways of knowing beyond the popular folklore found in most textbooks.
Second, textbooks would benefit from expanding their treatment of myths and diversifying their inclusion of Taíno stories and epistemologies in chapters that extend beyond the opening sections of the book. If Taínos and their ways of knowing are limited to the opening chapters of the book, their inclusion strengthens their disappearance and irrelevance in contemporary times. Furthermore, this same argument can be extended to African Peoples, their cosmologies, and their presence in Puerto Rican society. As researchers Godreau and Franco-Ortiz from the University of Puerto Rico in Cayey have found in their large-scale research project titled Visualizando la Afrodignidad (Visualizing Afrodignity), contemporary social studies textbooks in Puerto Rico are still lacking in their portrayals and depictions of African Peoples, their histories, and their agency throughout the Spanish colonial period of slavery and its abolition. In fact, they argue that textbooks privilege Taínos and their combative stance against Europeans while presenting Africans as docile victims. Thus, I cannot promote a discursive curricular reconfiguration of Taíno culture without drawing attention to how Afro-ancestral traditions and blackness must be celebrated and centered within the curriculum. Unlike blackness, and much like Glissant (1992, p. 210) has argued in the case of the French Caribbean, I would argue that Taíno Indigeneity appears to be a safe and non-threatening symbol of resistance and national pride because of their perceived extinction and mixture into the amalgamation of Puerto Rican identity.4 Black bodies, Afro-descendance, and racism on the other hand challenge the notion of a racial democracy and harmonious mestizaje which form the basis of the social studies curriculum—the grand master narrative that informs and threads together the writing of history within the textbook. If Indigeneity is a category in relation to a land and “Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how we/they came to be in a particular place” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 6), then the mangrove of Puerto Rican and Caribbean Indigeneity must be expanded to include blackness, yet without renouncing its Afro-ancestrality.
Third, simply including multiple perspectives and critiquing colonization does not challenge Eurocentricity when that same critique is conducted within Eurocentricity itself. If the encomienda system was “distorted” or only some conquistadores abused their Indigenous subjects, then colonialism and the imposition of Christianity are left intact, unquestioned, and legitimized. Mestizaje cannot constitute the bright side of colonial violence as this obfuscates more important and pressing conversations that need to occur in classrooms about present-day racism and inequalities. Textbooks must instead help students contextualize and challenge dominant narratives that dilute the past into palatable tropes that transmit depoliticized versions of identity and historical consciousness.5
Notes
1 All of the textbooks were originally published in Spanish. All translations into English are my own.
2 I remember as a child hearing of the so-called Juracán who would wreak havoc among the Taínos when infuriated. It is one of the most common misconceptions about Taíno mythology, and textbooks are partly to blame.
3 See https://quizlet.com/pr/279862737/dioses-tainos-de-las-creencias-religio sas-flash-cards/
4 For more on this critique in the context of the French Caribbean, see Glissant (1992, p. 210).
5 Special thanks to the Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future project, where as a graduate student at the University of British Columbia I worked as a research assistant under the guidance of Dr. Penney Clark. It was here where I was first introduced to textbook analysis and am greatly appreciative of the opportunity.
Textbooks Analyzed
Department of Education of Puerto Rico. (Ed.). (2020). Módulos didácticos de Estudios Sociales: Formación y desarrollo de la sociedad puertorriqueña [Didactic Modules of Social Studies: Formation and Development of Puerto Rican Society] Departamento de Educación de Puerto Rico.
Ediciones Santillana. (Ed.). (2002). Historia y geografía de Puerto Rico [History and Geography of Puerto Rico]. Ediciones Santillana.
Ediciones Santillana. (Ed.). (2007). Sociales 4 [Social 4]. Ediciones Santillana. Ediciones Santillana. (Ed.). (2016). Puerto Rico: Historia y geografía [Puerto Rico: History and Geography]. Ediciones Santillana.
Ediciones SM. (Ed.). (2018). Puerto Rico: Historia, geografía y sociedad [Puerto Rico: History, Geography and Society] (3rd ed.). Ediciones SM.
Editorial Panamericana. (Ed.). (2011). Puerto Rico: Formación y desarrollo [Puerto Rico: Formation and Development]. Editorial Panamericana.
Editorial Panamericana. (Ed.). (2014). Sociales: Puerto Rico: Geografía e historia [Socials: Puerto Rico: Geography and History]. Editorial Panamericana.
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Norma (Ed.). (2015). Puerto Rico: Raíces y evolución [Puerto Rico: Roots and Evolution]. Norma.
Picó, F. (2008). Historia general de Puerto Rico [General History of Puerto Rico] (4th ed.) Ediciones Huracán.
Publicaciones Educativas. (Ed.). (2011a). Puerto Rico, mi país [Puerto Rico, My Country] Publicaciones Educativas.
Publicaciones Educativas. (Ed.) (2011b). Historia de Puerto Rico: Espacios de la memoria [History of Puerto Rico: Spaces of Memory]. Publicaciones Educativas. Scarano, F. (2000). Puerto Rico: Cinco siglos de historia [Puerto Rico: Five Centuries of History] (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
Silvestrini, B. & Luque de Sánchez, M. D. (1992). Historia de Puerto Rico: Trayectoria de un pueblo [History of Puerto Rico: Trajectory of a People] Ediciones Cultural Panamericana.
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