The Tainos called it Yagueca, but after the invasion by the Spanish and their establishment in Boriquen it has been known as Anasco (Gaztambide 11). For centures bare feet ran across the banks of the Guaorabo, now called the Rio Grande de Anasco, to collect water and fish. Those same feet crossed miles of mountainous tropical forest in order to go back to their bohios. The male Tainos had to carry out these duties every day to help their tribe survive in the "alluvial village" of Yagueca (Gaztambide 12). Nowadays, there is no sign that even suggests that Anasco was once an active Taino region. The town's plaza exhibits seventeenth century Spanish cannons used against English pirates who tried to smuggle merchandise into the island and sculputures of mayors who have lead Anasco to prosperity. However, there is only one scupture, a fountain, presenting the Tainos, and not in a postive way. It displays three Tainos drowning a Spanish settler. The Spaniard's name was Diego Salcedo, and the Tainos randomly chose to drown him in order to test the divine powers of the Spanish colonizers (Gaztambide 13). Was this an act of beasts, like many history books imply, or was this an act to break the chains of slavery? It seems that after Martin Alonso Pinzon, the captain of La Nina, the smallest of the three ships Christopher Columbus used in his first voyage, discovered Puerto Rico through Yagueca in 1492, and after Columbus claimed Puerto Rico's discovery as being his in 1493, the Tainos were labeled as primitive people who imperatively needed to be educated (Lopez 70). Most people in Anasco know that the town's name is the last name of the a Spanish colonizer who came with Ponce de Leon in 1506 and who "chose [to settle] the Yagueca region, very near to the settlement of Cacique Urayoan" (Gaztimbide 12). Nevertheless, almost no one knows that after the Tainos discovered by drowning Salcedo that the Spanish were not gods, "their leader Urayoan began a war against the Spanish" (13). This war sentenced the end of Taino culture , since the last tribe was this one that lived in the Sierra de San Francisco, a mountain range in which Anasco is situated (Municipio 8). The day after Hortense hit Puerto Rico in September 1996, there was no water at home, so I decided to take a bath at the Salto de la Encantada. The Salto is a system of streams and cascades where a Taino princess committed suicide because her father didn't let her marry her Spanish lover (Carrero 16). People say that now and then a young girl can see the princess' image combing her hair while sitting on a rock. I was ready to relax by listening to the songs of the birds and the water running, but, when I got there, the place was crowded by nearly-naked people who had the same idea I had. I thought that maybe the crisis made people solve the problem using the last resource. But right away I revised my hypothesis. The crisis caused people to readopt "primitive" survival methods that we are conscious of due to our Taino heritage. No one can deny that each Puerto Rican has some Taino trait, in our hair, our skin, our eyes. From now on, when someone asks me what town I am from, I will answer, "Yagueca." And when they ask me what is its most important characteristic, I will no longer say that it is the location of an old sugar refinery. I will say one rock along the banks of the Guaorabo has on its surface an ancient, uniquely complex hieroglyph which reaffirms my attachment to the bohio.

Caraballo, Jorge L. El petroglifo de Urayo. Añasco, P.R.: Instituto de Cultura Puertoriqueña

Carrero, Concepción, Jaime A. Antología de poesías y leyendas añasquenas. Mayaguez, P. R.: Anitillian College Press, 1982

Gaztambide Arrillaga, Carlos. Añasco: Notas para su historia. San Juan: Comité Historia de los Pueblos, 1984

López, Leonora. "Don Aurelio Tío y la gesta de Martín Alonso Pinzón." El Nuevo Día 19 de November 1992: 70

Municipio de Añasco. Añasco: Donde los Dioses murieron. Añasco: GPO