ABSTRACT
Like many colonial and postcolonial nations, Puerto Rico has gone through massive and relatively sudden periods of cultural upheaval and revalorization in its history. Leaving aside those sociocultural transformations that occurred during the early Spanish colonial period, when the aboriginal taino population and its culture were virtually wiped out and when large numbers of enslaved Africans (with their own cultural manifestations and their techniques of resistance to captivity) were added to the population pool, one may discern at least four main episodes of sociocultural change in Puerto Rican history.
