Borinquen MadePeriod
1493-1599
The entries in this magazine that fall in these years, in the order the events occurred. Freeze 2026-08-22. Not current events in these History essays; News is. Not original historical research.
Columbus's landing in 1493 and the name San Juan Bautista
Columbus's second voyage, a far larger fleet than the first, is the exact hinge where Puerto Rico's written, documented history begins.
The cacique Agüeybaná and the uneasy first peace
For a few years, the island's most powerful Taíno cacique and the newly arrived Spanish coexisted under an uneasy peace, one that his own brother would later break.
Borikén before the forts
Yucayeques and bateyes before the walls of San Juan.
From casabe to mofongo
Casabe is Taíno; mofongo is Afro-Caribbean.
Juan Ponce de León and the founding of Caparra
Fifteen years after Columbus's landing, Spain's first real colonial settlement on the island was a small town called Caparra.
The encomienda: forced Taíno labor under Spanish rule
Spain called it mutual obligation: protection and instruction in exchange for labor. In practice, it was forced labor that the Crown itself soon judged too brutal to leave unregulated.
Moving the capital: from Caparra to the islet of San Juan (1521)
The Spanish abandoned their first settlement a year after founding it, and the port they moved to would define the island's next four centuries.
Diego Salcedo and the Taíno rebellion of 1511
A group of Taíno put the mortality of the Spanish to the test by drowning a soldier and watching his body for three days, and the answer they found set off the island's first great war.
The beginnings of African slavery and early resistance
When the Taíno population lay devastated, Spain turned to a new source of forced labor, and almost at once the enslaved people on the island began to resist.
Disease, exploitation, and the Taíno demographic collapse
This is the era's hardest and most important chapter: an honest account of how quickly the Taíno population was devastated, and why "vanished" was always the wrong word.
La Fortaleza: the fortress that became a palace
Puerto Rico's governor still works today in a building that began, in the 1530s, as a raw defensive fortress against pirate raids.
Building El Morro: guarding the port of San Juan
Six levels of stone rising 140 feet straight up from the Atlantic: El Morro took some 250 years to reach its final form, and it fell to a direct assault only once.
The situado: how Mexican silver subsidized Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico's enormous stone forts were not paid for with the island's commercial income: they were financed from thousands of miles away.
Three sieges of San Juan: Drake, Cumberland, and the Dutch (1595-1625)
In three decades, San Juan survived three distinct European assaults: one repelled at sea, one that took the city outright, and one that besieged it for two months and still failed.