Lola Rodríguez de Tió La Borinqueña

The Puerto Rican

National Anthem

Englishtranslation I Arise,boricua! Thecalltoarmshassounded! Awakefromtheslumber, itistimetofight! Doesn'tthispatriotic callsetyourheartalight? Come!Weareintunewith theroarofthecannon.

III Wewant freedom, andourmachete willgiveittous. Come,Boricuas, comenow, sinceanxiouslyawaitsus anxiously,freedom, �� freedom, freedom!

Schoolchildren on the U S mainland learn the chant: “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue , ” in which Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus is portrayed as an intrepid explorer who obediently found some gold “to bring back home as he’d been told ” Schoolchildren in Puerto Rico know the parts of the Columbus story that were left out of the rhyme, namely, the extermination of the indigenous Taínos In this massive work in the Santurce neighborhood, artists from the collective El Basta help make the collateral damage of Columbus’s “achievements” more visible

This work in Rio Piedras depicts Indigenous Taínos. The Taínos were described in great detail by Ramon Pané, a Catholic missionary who joined Columbus on his voyage to the New World In one of his accounts, Pané tells the story of Cazivaquel, a Taíno chief, who had a vision in which he foresaw “a clothed people who would [come to] rule them, and slay them ”