Ancestry.com released its most recent DNA results in October, and for many people of Puerto Rican descent like me, our previous Portuguese percentages were replaced with evidence of our historic Canary Islands roots. I received my initial DNA results in 2018, and according to Ancestry.com, our DNA remains the same, but the science used to interpret it gets better each year.

In 2018, DNA tests were affordable enough for me to finally answer my lifelong question: How much Taíno, African, and European ancestry did I have? The first updated results in 2019 showed I was 29% Portuguese, which surprised me enough to create an entire website about Portuguese Puerto Ricans. Those first results also showed that I was 21% Native American (13% Taino) and 18% African.

Over the years, the interpretation of my DNA ran the gamut. At one point, I was seven percent English and at another four percent Irish. I am neither today. I was once 30% Indigenous American, and at another time I was 19% African. Today, I am 29% Canary Islands, 25% Taino, and 14% African. Since the Canary Islands are off the coast of northwest Africa, the change in my African ethnicity makes sense.

Some people on Facebook have noted that the significant shift toward the Canary Islands in the recent updates may be a fluke and that the Portuguese percentages may return in future updates. In any event, highlighting the Canary Islands heritage of Puerto Ricans is historically accurate and should be reflected in DNA results moving forward.

Many historians consider the Canary Islanders to be among the principal ancestors of the Puerto Rican jíbaro, the rural farming culture that became a symbol of Puerto Rican identity. The Isleños brought agricultural knowledge, family-based farming traditions, religious customs, and folk practices that became woven into everyday life in Puerto Rico.

Many common Puerto Rican surnames, including Marrero, Morales, Vera, Acosta, Alonso, and others, can be traced to Canarian immigrants who settled on the island centuries ago.

For me, this DNA update is not really a change in ancestry but a refinement of it. What once appeared as broadly Portuguese or Iberian ancestry is now being connected to a specific historical migration that helped shape Puerto Rico itself.

My DNA may have changed on paper, but the history behind it has been there for centuries.