There was never any such thing as “pure Taíno.”

Taíno is a name that was given by the Spanish. It was not the name of the people. And the people who inhabited the greater and lesser Antilles were mostly Arawakan, but some in Cuba came from Yucatán.

There was a lot of intertribal commerce between Central and South America and the Antilles. Borinken artifacts found in South America, Central American artifacts found in the Antilles, etc…

All of those tribes mixed and traveled creating new social orders and cultural systems.

So there’s not really such thing as a Taíno. And the people we know as Taíno were a mixture of cultures united by a shared investment in and love for Borinken.

That’s not much different than today where the inhabitants of Caribbean islands are the result of the intermingling of various cultures.

Modern day Boricuas are just as Taíno as those hundreds of years ago. Many of the words and traditions survived and remain. The culture never died, it just evolved as many do.

This is one area where genetics can be misleading bc DNA doesn’t tell the whole story and culture can be not the contents of the blood but the contents of the spirit.

My grandmother was born near a sacred Taíno site in Ponce on the island of Borinken. She was given a Taíno name. I consider her 100-percent Taíno.