In tandem with land appropriation, Spanish colonizers enslaved indigenous peoples to perform punishing labor, including precious metal extraction, a process that lead to famine, overwork, suicide, war, and migration. Consequently, in less than 100 years, Taínos went from a community of thousands, perhaps millions, and a status as members of a distinct polity and society, to less than a hundred subjects of the Spanish crown (de las Casas [1552] 1992). By 1570, cosmographer López de Velasco declared that there was only one indigenous village left in Puerto Rico, composed of non-natives to the island (Lucena Salmoral 1982, 501–502; Bacci 2008, 243). This outcome led anthropologist Geoffrey Conrad to state that the Taínos “were the first people in the path of the hurricane” (quoted in Osgood 2011) of globalization in the New World.