Some Remarks on the Origin of Afro-Puerto Rican Spanish

Abstract

A number of proposals have tried to account for the genesis and development of a set of Afro-Hispanic language varieties, the vernaculars ​​that formed in Latin America from the contact between African languages ​​and Spanish in colonial times (Sessarego 2021). This article presents a sociohistorical and linguistic analysis of Loza Spanish (LS), an Afro-Puerto Rican vernacular spoken in Loíza, Puerto Rico by the descendants of the Africans brought to this Caribbean island in colonial times to work as slaves on sugarcane plantations. This article assesses the evolution of this variety and its implications for creole studies. In so doing, it contributes to the long-lasting debate on the reasons behind the paucity of Spanish-based creoles in the Americas (Granda 1968 et seq.).