Four Storeys

From the 1500s to the early 1800s Puerto Rico was Afro-Antillean as blacks and mulattos were the "first storey" of the "building" of Puerto Rican culture. Exluding the elite (government, military, church) Puerto Rican whites in those centuries adopted black ways in clothes, food, etc, and most of their descendants were mulattos (and blacks). Like Blacks, whether free or slave, these poor whites had no say in the affairs of the colony.
From the 1800s till recently the mainly white elite of Puerto Rico -products of the "recolonization" of the early and mid 1800s by Spanish and other Europeans*- had plenty to say in the affairs of the island and thus defined Puerto Rico and its culture and in so doing downplayed the African element. One example is Jose de Diego -the early 1900s sugarcane corporate lawyer who became a revolutionary only as a reaction against U.S. disavowal of annexation- was one of those of his class (landowners of the interior, professionals of the coastline) who actually viewed Puerto Rico as a solely white Hispanic island. To this day Puerto Rican "independentistas" and other Anti-Yankees basically worship De Diego, whether or not they know the full story.
Now that the elite no longer serve as an example for the masses culture has been redefined from below, from the Afro-Mestizo majority proletariat and therefore the African element has come to the fore again.

(from Jose Luis Gonzalez. Puerto Rico The Four Storeyed Country.)

*a usually unrecognized cause of the "recolonization" (not named so) was the Spanish fear of a successful slave revolution like that in French Sainte-Domingue (Haiti)