San Juan was taken and burnt down by the Dutch but they left when El Morro could not be conquered. The fort called El Morro showed its muscles fruitfully against attacks by the fleets of the British ( Sir Francis Drake, 1595) and the Dutch ( Boudewijn Hendricksz, 1622). To protect the rich island (hence the name) from French, English and Dutch pirates, the Spanish fortified the town of San Juan (now the capital). The colonizers consequently introduced African slaves to take part in sugar cane agriculture.Īll kinds of new treasures sailed the oceans heading for the home ports in Spain. Six years and a Taino rebellion later, there were only 4,000 natives left. The invaders erected their first town on the south shore of what now is the San Juan Bay, and named it Caparra. The Tainos were turned into slaves by the conquistadors when Ponce de Léon returned to the island in 1508. The Tainos called the island Borinquén, but the Columbus crew named it San Juan Bautista, after the baptist St. The so-called Taino tribe consisted of 30,000 people. When the discoverer arrived on the western shore of the island with his companion Juan Ponce de Léon on that November 19, it was already inhabited by indians. HistoryĬolumbus discovered Puerto Rico in 1493 on his second voyage to the New World. The welfare partly comes from the deep-rooted American influence. With an average year income of more than 2200 euro (almost equivalent to the same amount of US Dollars at the moment) and an average life expectancy of seventy years, Puerto Rican life is of relative good quality. Here, we detail some remarkable findings of our ongoing research in this topic, including (1) the spatial distribution of introduced green iguanas with respect to people's activities and land uses, (2) the intracultural variation in attitudes and values regarding introduced iguanas and other introduced species in the study region, (3) local people's knowledge about iguana diets in the estuary, and (4) the interactions between green iguanas and the tourism industry in Puerto Rico.Puerto Rico is one of the richer islands in the Caribbean. Humans are the dominant species in most world ecosystems, and, thus, studying an introduced species' interactions with people is of utmost importance to understand its impacts, make predictions, and inform environmental policy.
Non-indigenous, introduced species and their impact on invaded ecosystems, including humans, are a worldwide environmental concern. This paper reports results of interdisciplinary research between anthropologists and wildlife ecologists about the interactions between people and introduced green iguanas (Iguana iguana) in the San Juan Bay Estuary in Puerto Rico.
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