I do not personally believe that those who were labeled raza india in the 1800s were of pure Taíno or indigenous blood. For starters, the island had already been invaded for close to 400 years which would mean that the natives of the island would have had to constantly evade Spanish contact for that amount of time.
Could it have been possible? Possible… sure – I actually saw recently a 23andMe ancestry composition on Reddit of someone’s mother who was basically 100% native from out west in the mountains of Utah.
Is it possible for a Puerto Rican? I believe, likely no. Our highest mountains are not too high, meaning there really was not an area in Puerto Rico completely remote and isolated for 400 years without being discovered on such a small island.
As DNA becomes more useful and popular in Puerto Rican genealogy, I think it can be helpful for proving or verifying the category of pardo used back in the 1700-1800s. We know at some point there were pure indigenous ancestors in our lines, but what they might look like on paper is a complete mystery to me so far!
One last important note is that phenotype does not equal genotype. Many of our ancestors might have looked a certain way, and stories were passed down to us of ancestors who were pure “Taíno” or pure “Spanish” based on looks like long dark black hair or blue eyes. Yes, our ancestors did possess these phenotypic characteristics but a deeper look below the surface will show a mix of DNA.
One of my paternal great-grandmothers who I was told was the daughter of a Spanish man and a Taíno woman passed down an African maternal haplogroup while a maternal 2nd great-grandfather who had blue eyes and was told to be of Spanish stock has a mother who was registered as parda on her baptismal record.
So while my 3rd great-grandfather Buenaventura Ortiz Rivera was labeled raza india in his death record – I know that there is much more to the story than just those two words.