An Inconceivable Indigeneity: The Historical, Cultural, and Interactional Dimensions of Puerto Rican Taíno Activism by Sherina Feliciano-Santos A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in the University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Barbra A. Meek, Chair Professor Bruce Mannheim Professor Judith T. Irvine Professor Ruth Behar Associate Professor Lawrence M. La Fountain-Stokes © Sherina Feliciano-Santos 2011 DEDICATION Para Mami y Daddy Por el apoyo incondicional y por siempre creer en mi, aún cuando a mi misma se me hacía díficil. Por ser modelos de humanidad e integridad. Por ser mis padres, los quiero. También a Abuelito, Porque fuiste ejemplo y siempre te llevaré conmigo. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Five years ago, in a meeting to talk about my final paper proposal on Jibaridad in Puerto Rico, Tom Trautmann asked if there were any indigenous movements in the Island. After a responding with a resolute ―NO,‖ I thought about it and remembered that the prior summer I had read an article in a newspaper about a group of people claiming to be Taíno protesting the management of the Caguana ceremonial site in Utuado, PR. It was this question and my own response to it, which led to the questions that would ultimately inform this dissertation project. For asking that initial question, I want to thank Tom Trautmann. Barb Meek has been an exceptional teacher, mentor, advisor, and friend. During my many years at Michigan, Barb guided me in thinking about language, indigeneity, field methods, and analysis. I feel deeply fortunate to have had her exceptional input and her unwavering support throughout my graduate student career. Barb, I thank you for being a role model of integrity and inquisitive scholarship. The time spent in Bruce Mannheim‘s office hours and courses were essential to the maturation in my thinking about language, culture, and society in the Spanish- speaking world and beyond. Bruce: ¡muchas gracias por todo tu apoyo! I thank Judy Irvine for her attentive readings, which offered direction to my analyses when I did not know where to go next. Ruth, your insightful comments helped me think more broadly about my project, allowing me to see how my concerns were relevant to a broader iii audience. Y muchas gracias a Larry, who with his broad smile and discerning readings helped me contextualize my research and pushed me to circulate it to a broader audience. Thank you to all the Linguistic Anthropology Lab readers who took the time to read and give me feedback for those first, tortured drafts, especially Kate Graber and Elana Resnick. Your comments were deeply appreciated. To all of my friends at the University of Michigan with whom I shared countless hours studying for courses, for prelims, writing grant proposals, talking about the challenges of fieldwork, and who later thoughtfully read drafts of my chapters and presentations—I truly am grateful for all of your support. Anna Genina, Jessica Rolston- Smith, Kirstin Swagman, Claire Insel, Christina P. Davis, Laura C. Brown, Xochitl Ruiz, Purvi Mehta, Bridget Guarasci, Sara Feldman, Heloise Finch, and Keri Allen—thank you for being a friend. Ed Renollet, Nasia Atique, Nur, Ahmed, Ayeesha, Mary and the little ones to come—thank you for being my Ann Arbor family, I cannot begin to thank you for opening up the warmth of your home to me. In the field I was lucky enough to be able to reconnect with friends from my childhood who showed me the Island in new ways. Gracias a Raquel Pérez Rodríguez y Sharon López Lugo por ser siempre amigas en todo el sentido de la palabra. And to the new friends who always offered me a time and place to rest, thanks to Roberto Colón. Sarah, Aaron, Judah, and Huck, having you guys in Puerto Rico while doing my research was a blessing, and I‘m grateful that you guys were there! And for always being there when I needed someone to talk to, I thank Beth Marino, Toni Calbert, Carol Garvan, and Laura Wells. Y claro, no me puedo olvidar de Anel, saber que tomamos estos caminos iv erráticos juntas siempre ha sido una fuente de fortaleza para mi. ¡Gracias por siempre ser mi comadre! (Y por leer mis papers, ayudarme a traducir, hablar de nuestras teorías…) And no fieldwork happens without people who are willing to admit a relative stranger into their lives. Estoy sumamente agradecida a Valeriana Rodríguez por ser mentora y ejemplo, a Elba Lugo por su energía y generosidad, a Margarita Nogueras por ser un ser tan bondadoso y sereno, a Carlalynne Meléndez por su brío y optimismo, a Papo, Joanna, Nancy, Frank, Baké, José, David, Daniel, y todos los demás Taíno/Boricuas que permitieron que entrara a sus vidas y escribiera sobre ellas. Sé que nunca haré justicia a la riqueza de sus vidas, pero espero que este trabajo tenga en ella algo para cada uno de ustedes. Jonathan, thank you for reading each page of my dissertation, more than once. For making me food, coffee, and tea. For picking up the laundry and cleaning the litter- boxes. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Y a mi familia, gracias por darme la confianza de echar pa‘ lante, sabiendo que siempre tengo un hogar con gente que quiero y que me quiere. Les agradezco por celebrar mis triunfos aún más que yo, y por ser mi refugio cuando necesito recoger mis fuerzas. Mami, Daddy, Allen, Eric, y Liza, los amo. v PREFACE My dissertation research emerges out of a wish to understand (1) Taíno identifications on the terms of those who make such claims; and (2) why such claims can seem inconceivable to many people in Puerto Rico. As a linguistic anthropologist, I was intrigued by the several websites that indicated that many Taíno activists were involved in reconstructing the Taíno language—which made me ask: how do you (re)construct a dead language? For what purposes? In what contexts can you use it? In the process of researching and writing, other, more specific, questions emerged related to how histories, memories, and the different sets of narratives that emerge from them intersect with social interaction, activism and self-presentation. During my two years of fieldwork among several Taíno activist groups in Puerto Rico, I encountered situations that forced me to reconsider and reformulate some of the questions I had previously asked as well as inspiring new questions: how do spiritual beliefs affect what kinds of narrations are made and how do they influence social integration and Taíno sociocultural organization? How are social identifications directly and indirectly policed? How are such acts of policing and surveilling complicated by bureaucratic structures and people‘s complex social alignments? Though I expected my dissertation to explore Taíno language reconstruction efforts, once in the field, I realized that this was a project that only some activists were heavily invested in. I met people who were invested in protecting ceremonial sites, people who dedicated themselves to learning about cultural practices, others who wanted vi to reframe Taíno history to school-age children, and some who largely devoted themselves to performing Taíno dance and song. Though from my perspective such differences led to a division of labor in terms of Taíno cultural emergences in the Puerto Rican public sphere, debates among Taíno groups over who was the most authentic and genuinely serving of the larger cause emerged. Such debates made navigating my research field complicated but also enriched my purview. Prior research has mostly considered the Taíno as one group, and in doing so has homogenized Taíno activism as a singularly oriented organization. This is clearly not the case. Though I debated alluding to such contestations in writing about the Taíno, in the end I felt it was fair to show the complexity of the relationships among Taíno activists: Who tells the stories about who the Taíno are? Whose memories, recollections, and experiences are authoritative? How are these circulated and who takes them up? I never expected my research to include debates about historical memories, but I could not tell the story of Taíno activism in Puerto Rico without explaining why it is so controversial—it is, in part, a historical controversy, one that has largely emerged from incongruous historical discourses and their interactional instantiations. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii PREFACE .......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi LIST OF APPENDICES ................................................................................................... xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ........................................................ xiii TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS............................................................................. xiv ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... xv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION INDIGENOUS (IM)POSSIBILITIES?: AMBIGUITY, EMERGENCE, AND THE MATERIALIZATION OF TAÍNO ACTIVISM .................. 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................