I Am The Land
Po Araní offers grass to approaching wild horses at Tibes Indigenous Ceremonial Park outside Ponce, Puerto Rico. Oct. 2021. Photo by Josee Molavi for palabra
Native islander uses ancestral wisdom to help return Puerto Rico to its indigenous roots
Editor’s note: Filmmaker Josee Molavi spent three months last year in Puerto Rico learning from those who identify with the taíno community and documenting the living history of the island. She returned this July to capture a pivotal chapter of that story. The result is her documentary “I Am the Land,” which we proudly feature in palabra. The film explores the key intersections of modern science, environmental activism, and indigenous spiritual knowledge in the pursuit of climate justice. Reporting for this documentary was supported by the Pulitzer Center and the American University Center for Latin American & Latino Studies.
Words and images by Josee Molavi, @JoseeMolavi.
The jungle is alive along the dirt path to the ancient ball fields of Tibes Indigenous Ceremonial Park. Leading the way on the familiar stretch, Po Araní walks through the abundant green foliage, passing familiar flora and fauna that is eager to provide the tools for healing and sustenance. Ancestral knowledge buzzes through his brain as he recalls centuries of information passed down through generations of his taíno indigenous roots on the island of Puerto Rico, or as his ancestors called it, Borikén.
Most Puerto Ricans identify interchangeably with the words Puerto Rican and boricua – the latter derived from the taíno name for the island. Despite the unmistakable presence of their influence on modern Puerto Rican culture, taínos such as Po Araní have been fighting to reverse the long-held myth that their peoples have been extinct since the Spanish conquest in the late 1400s. Unlike other Native American tribes, the taíno remain unrecognized by the government that occupies their ancestral land, despite centuries of practicing traditional medicine, ceremonies, and rituals both on and off the island. And while various foreign interests have dominated their homeland over the past 500 years, the taíno have persisted under the cover of culture, language, food, and music.
Though only a few minutes have passed since we met in a small parking lot north of Ponce, Borikén, to embark on the trek into the rainforest, I quickly realize that I am in the presence of a medicinal and cultural expert. The day spent with Po Araní was one of many that impacted me over the course of the three months spent documenting this connection to the land via spiritual knowledge across the island. Po inherited a respect for nature’s gifts and a practical guide for how to use them from his grandmother, who learned it from her grandmother before her.
Arms outstretched to the treetops, he points up. That leaf will cure your cold, and this bark will help relieve your arthritis. Down the path, we walk, and Po wields his unbelievable encyclopedic knowledge of the natural pharmacy around us. The trust he places in traditional medicine is highly respected by his community, who call him for advice on their ailments, from allergies to muscle pain to COVID-19. Po knows how to heal his people and he knows how to act in reciprocity with the land he relies on to provide the tools to do so – but the natural world here has been hurting, too.
“The ceiba is a tree of the three worlds: heaven, Earth, and the underworld,” said Po Araní. Oct. 2021. Photo by Josee Molavi for palabra
Po Araní whistles to the horses in Tibes Indigenous Ceremonial Park. Oct. 2021. Photo by Josee Molavi for palabra
The harrowing truth I learned from those who cherish a bond with the island is that their home is in danger as long as the climate crisis continues. Colonization disenfranchised Borikén’s original environmental stewards of the means to build a promising legacy. As development trends threaten local ecology and communities in the pursuit of foreign profits and progress, cultural experts such as Po Araní may have the wisdom and tact to revert this destructive fate.
A dark cloud looms over Puerto Rico as alarming natural disasters seem to shadow the outsider’s perspective of the U.S. territory: intense earthquakes, rising sea levels, and the infamously destructive Hurricane María in 2017. The United States took control of Puerto Rico in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. The island to this day remains a U.S. territory, or what some Puerto Ricans call a modern-day colony.
‘The holders of the traditional knowledge are the ones that are carrying the burden of climate impacts. We are losing this richness and this depth of knowledge.’
Foreign investors recall the initial conquest of the island when they stake their claim on paradise, and the tax breaks that support them are upheld by a consistently unpopular Puerto Rican government. Critics of the current governor Pedro Pierluisi say that he, like others in his circle, is complicit in the corruption that fuels the destruction of the island and its crumbling infrastructure. Pierluisi’s predecessor Wanda Vásquez-Garced was recently arrested by the FBI on bribery charges, and another former governor, Ricardo Rosselló Nevares, faced massive protests that forced his resignation in 2019.
Many of these modern-day struggles can be traced back to the Spanish arrival to the island. The colonizers imposed Catholicism on the taínos and demonized their spiritual practices. The taínos once revered the arrival of Guabancex, the goddess of tumultuous storms, and gave offerings to Atabey, the Mother Earth spirit, to practice reciprocity with the land and the sea. Once the Spanish began to co-opt the island’s rich resources for their own profit, the traditional practices of environmental stewardship were rendered obsolete. The resulting dominant culture of consumption upset the delicate balance the taínos held with nature — one that Po Araní and others within his community feel has not been restored since.
Afternoon fog sets in over the forested hills of central Puerto Rico. Sept. 2021. Photo by Josee Molavi for palabra
Isabel Rivera-Collazo is a friend of Po Araní’s, and is a Puerto Rico native and professor of Biological, Ecological and Human Adaptations to Climate Change at the Department of Anthropology and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. She works with taíno elders on the island to incorporate traditional ancestral knowledge into her climate and anthropology research, including her own heritage and personal connection to la patria (the homeland). Rivera-Collazo explains what she calls the breakup of identity through colonialism: “It ignores this relationship that we have with our land…that has a whole bunch of environmental implications, from deforestation, to impact on coral reefs, to polluting rivers.”
As a non-indigenous person, I often question what do we miss when we rely so much on Western traditions of science and medicine, that we fail to see the importance of perspectives based on thousands of years of ancestral knowledge and experience?
Rivera-Collazo is one of the only researchers in the niche discipline of Puerto Rican climate change, human ecology, and archaeology. She regularly combines traditional knowledge and interdisciplinary scientific research in her work on the island. But, she makes clear that she will always prioritize the taíno teachings — because preservation of this knowledge is essential to her island’s longevity.
“The holders of the traditional knowledge are the ones who are carrying the burden of climate impacts. We are losing this richness and this depth of knowledge,” she said.
Isabel Rivera-Collazo and Po Araní examine a shard of stone at the site of a community archeology project in western Puerto Rico. Nov. 2021. Photo by Josee Molavi for palabra
Código Taíno, a multi-platform cultural educational hub, is Po Araní’s demonstrated commitment to teaching both outsiders and fellow Puerto Ricans alike about indigenous culture through his music, videos, photos, and writing. He also operates an online storefront to sell homemade tincture blends that harness the medicinal properties of his homeland’s native plants. Po is focused on mobilizing people on and off the island, whether they are from indigenous backgrounds or not, to engage in traditional taíno practices of healing and connecting with the land as they speak out against the climate crisis.
“Código Taíno makes our culture more visible. Integration of the fight will always be important,” he says.
The paper genocide
When the Spanish colonized Puerto Rico over 500 years ago, the taíno people fled from their coastal settlements to the central mountainous region of the island, known for its thick jungles, rolling hills, and rushing rivers. Today, you can see the indigenous influence in towns such as Utuado and Jayuya. Nonetheless, the myth that the Borikén taínos went “extinct” quickly spread like wildfire and cemented the native people’s fate as a cornerstone of the island’s past.
“They say that the taíno disappeared, but the disappearance has really only been in what’s written,” notes Po, referring to the paper genocide, a phenomenon of native erasure through which authorities inaccurately represented the population of taíno indigenous people in early census counts of the island’s population. By 1802, there were supposedly no natives left in the Caribbean. It was this practice that erased the presence of the taínos, obscuring their political, cultural, and physical domain over their home.
But the colonization of Puerto Rico all those hundreds of years ago didn’t truly render the taíno peoples extinct, as island-wide mitochondrial DNA research in 2003 revealed that 61% of Puerto Ricans carry traceable taíno ancestry through their maternal line. A related study in 2018 asserted that “native components in some modern Caribbean genomes are closely related to the ancient taino, suggesting that indigenous ancestry in the region has survived through the present day.”
Po Araní plays a steady beat on the mayohuacán, a traditional drum, with a maraca in hand and an ocarina whistle around his neck — all his own handcrafted taíno instruments. Oct. 2021. Photo by Josee Molavi for palabra
The almacigo tree was historically used to suppress appetite, but Po Araní also uses it to cure colds and aid digestion. Trees that provide nutrition and healing like the almacigo are among the most sacred of plants to tend and harvest. Oct. 2021. Photo by Josee Molavi.
Po’s own curiosity about his ancestry sparked his efforts to practice taíno culture as an act of resistance and redefinition of identity. He told me of vivid dreams that called him to examine his roots. At a visit to his great-grandfather’s farm in Barrio Collores, in the mountainous town of Yauco he uncovered his family lineage via birth records and came face-to-face with the paper genocide. Next to his great-grandmother’s name, he read the word “mulata,” a term that refers to a person of mixed race, but he took DNA tests that later confirmed that he comes from a long line of indigenous taíno heritage.
The leaves of the tree-lined path part as we come across a clearing in the brush. Wild horses graze the grasses and care for their young, immediately alert to our presence. Po takes a seat along a line of stone slabs laid there by his ancestors who built and used this ceremonial park for hundreds of years before the Spanish ever set foot in Borikén. Tibes is the oldest-known indigenous burial site of its kind in the Caribbean, as over 186 skeletons have been uncovered there.
Po whistles to the horses on an ocean-blue ocarina around his neck, a small flute instrument he carved himself, and to my surprise, the horses approach us cautiously. It’s moments like these that allow you to feel that every part of the island is connected and alive — to sit in the presence of the bond that Po Araní holds with the land is to experience it firsthand.
Po believes that we’re living in a time where the Puerto Rican conscience is shifting. Amid ongoing battles to retain access to public parks and beaches, improve the island’s infrastructure, and conserve its natural resources, he knows that fellow residents need to understand that they’ll need to protect and preserve the island to continue to survive there. From the western beaches of Rincón and Aguadilla, to the mountains and rivers of central Jayuya and Utuado, to the northeastern shores of Fajardo, local communities are fighting in solidarity to defend their island’s natural gifts.
“When we have to fight for our island, we will be there,” said Po Araní.
Josee Molavi is a bilingual filmmaker and multimedia journalist passionate about immigration, human rights, and environmental justice. Using the visual storytelling language to tap into underrepresented narratives, she focuses on socio-cultural documentary films and intersectional reporting projects. Molavi graduated with a degree in Communication, Legal Studies, Economics, and Government (CLEG) from American University in 2020 and has a background in immigration law and community organizing. She pursues freelance journalism and videography, serves as the bilingual producer in the media team for the city of Annapolis, Maryland, and writes and produces original music.