The region where Puerto Viejo is located was occupied by aborigines belonging to the Chiefdom of Talamanca, an indigenous manor culturally belonging to the Intermediate Area, made up of various ethnic groups such as Bribri, Terraba, Cabécar, Terbi and Taraca. On September 25, 1502, Christopher Columbus arrived in the current territory of Costa Rica and visited the town of Cariay, located near the current city of Limón. In 1655, Andrés Arias Maldonado y Velazco was appointed Governor of Costa Rica. One of his first tasks was to look for a suitable site to build a port on the Atlantic, since the river ports of Suerre and Matina could not meet the economic needs of the time. His son, Rodrigo Arias Maldonado, discovered a port on the coast, belonging to the Taracas, with a large number of vessels, which it has been speculated was located between Punta Cahuita and Punta Carreta, where the town of Puerto Viejo is currently located. Despite subduing the indigenous people, the Spanish could not maintain an effective port in the Caribbean, due to the inclement weather, the distance from the colonial capital Carthage, the bellicosity of the aboriginal refugees in the mountains of Talamanca and the attacks of the pirates and mosquito zambos, leaving in the region, as vestiges of this time, numerous sunken ships and legends of lost treasures and spirits that guard them. With the Spanish arrived the first Africans, brought by them as slave labor, especially individuals of the Bantu ethnic group from Angola and Congo, who settled in the Caribbean region, mainly in Matina, to take care of the cocoa plantations. In 1750, turtle fishermen arrived in the region from Nicaragua and Bocas del Toro in Panama, many of them of Afro-Caribbean origin, who established temporary camps. One of them, William Smith, decided to settle in the Punta Cahuita area with his family, which was imitated by other fishermen. In 1872, with the arrival of Jamaican immigrants to build the Atlantic railway, many of them settling permanently in the region, an Anglophone and Protestant Afro-British culture was established, very different from the culture of the rest of the country, and which was remained very alive due to the isolation that the province of Limón experienced with respect to the rest of the country during much of its history, at least until 1948 and its proximity to Bocas del Toro.