Título en español.

Abstract

The aboriginal legacy in the genetical formation of boricua (Puerto Rican) ethnicity has been underestimated. Traditional historiography has minimized the indigenous input and replaced it with the influx of African slaves. Regardless, analysis of the so called Lando "Census" (1530-1532), an inventory of slave categories owned by certified Spanish colonists (required to establish a residential household) reveals the preeminence of slave women as virtual housewives and mothers of mestizo offspring and generational heirs. Available documentation shows that the administrative policy of the nascent Spanish empire favored miscegenation to securely populate the Island as a strategic bulwark of the colonial perimeter.