By DAMIEN CAVE


JAYUYA, Puerto Rico - The seven girls posed, preened and smiled with all the energy of Miss Universe contestants, but this was no ordinary pageant.

The competitors, from about 6-years-old to 16, had just paraded through a downpour to a small stage surrounded by mountains, where they displayed elaborate outfits handmade from wood, plants or, in one case, jingling shells. And the judges also sought a special kind of beauty: those who most resembled Puerto Rico’s native Indian tribe, the Taino, received higher marks.

“It’s different,”said Felix Gonzalez, president of the National Indigenous Festival of Jayuya, of which the pageant is a part.“It’s not white culture and blue eyes; it says that the part of our blood that comes from indigenous culture is just as important.”

Puerto Ricans have long considered themselves a mix of African, European and Native American influences. But since the 1960s, the Taino - a tribe wiped from the Antilles by European conquest, disease and assimilation - has come to occupy a special place in the island’s cultural hierarchy.

The streets of Old San Juan are lined with museums and research centers dedicated to unearthing Taino artifacts and rituals. Children are taught from a young age that “hurricane” is Taino in origin, from the word “huracan,” while no Latin pop music concert is complete without a shout out to Boricuas - those from Borinquen, the Taino name for Puerto Rico, which means “land of the brave noble lord.”

The ties may be more than cultural. In 2003, Juan Martinez Cruzado, a geneticist at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, found that at least 61 percent of Puerto Ricans possess remnants of Taino DNA - and nearly all seem to believe they belong in that group.

“The Indian heritage is very important because it unites the Puerto Rican community,” said Miguel Rodriguez Lopez, an archaeologist with the Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, an independent graduate school in San Juan.“There is a feeling that it represents our primary roots.”

In Jayuya, a town of a few thousand people in the mountains north of Ponce, Taino celebrations began decades ago. When local leaders discovered in the mid-60s that the town was named for a Taino chief, they commissioned a sculpture to honor him. It was dedicated in November 1969 at the first indigenous festival.

Actual Taino women wore only loincloths. But with the influence of local teenagers, the costumes for the pageant have become exponentially more extravagant.

Mr.Rodriguez, the archaeologist and a former judge of the pageant, compared it to Brazil’s carnival.“It’s a sincretismo,” he said, using the Spanish word for “syncretism.”“They mix different cultures, different beliefs.”

Natalia Fernandez, 16, said she had spent a month and half building her outfit, which required her to carry on her back a wooden Taino dancer weighing at least 11 kilograms. Asked before the contest how she thought she would do, she said,“I’m going to win.”

The event started an hour late, and the rain and competition seemed to surprise Natalia. She frowned under the downpour, looking chilled with a bare midriff and no shoes. After all the girls introduced themselves and explained their outfits, the judges called Natalia’s name last, like all great pageant winners. Her friends and family cheered loudly from beneath umbrellas as she smiled and twirled for the digital cameras.

“It’s about a beautiful culture,”she said before taking the stage.“It’s not about just beauty.”