Jacqueline Lyon

In Puerto Rico, dominant ideologies of racial mixture have long instilled ideas of racial homogeneity – that all Puerto Ricans share the three ancestral roots of Indigenous, European, and African ancestry. Yet, the advent of accessible ancestry websites and at-home genetic testing have led Puerto Ricans and others to search out more individualized understandings of their origins. The knowledge gleaned from archival research and genetic testing shapes understandings of who we are and who we are connected to in ways that affirm or disrupt state-sponsored identity projects. For Puerto Ricans in particular, archival ancestry research requires a direct engagement with the colonial state. As recent environmental and fiscal disasters have made the colonial relationship between the islands and the United States more visible and has shifted racial identification (Godreau and Bonilla 2021), this project explores how Puerto Rican ancestry researchers construct narratives about their selves, origins, and families. I utilize participant observation in institutional and personal archives, interviews, and photovoice to examine how ‘amateur’ Puerto Rican family genealogists engage anthropological tools in the construction and dissemination of narratives about the past and the potential of their work to revise, disrupt, or engage existing theories an methodologies.