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The Migration of Canary Islanders to the Americas: An Unbroken Current Since Columbus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

James J. Parsons
James J. Parsons*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, California
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Extract

The Canary archipelago lies off the coast of Africa at 29° N latitude, some 700 nautical miles south of Gibraltar. Its conquest and occupation, including the subjection of the native Guanche population, represented Spain's first overseas venture, a blueprint and precedent for the colonization of America. For nearly a century prior to Columbus the Spanish Crown found here a laboratory and testing ground for colonial administration, including relations with an aboriginal population that offered an irresistible attraction for enslavement and evangelization. The philosophical justification and legitimization of conquest was first faced in the Canaries as a new colonial bureaucracy sought to adapt and refine the medieval, European institutions of government to the new situation. Authority to appoint officials and to distribute land and natives in service was delegated to local governors while exhaustively detailed ordinances formulated by appointed councils (cabildos) regulated every phase of life through a complex structure of regulations, fines and taxes. The model was in place and operative by the time there was need to organize the first Spanish government in the Antilles.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , April 1983 , pp. 447 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1983 

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References

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5 Canario speech is not a dialect but rather a variant of that of Andalucía but with significant Portuguese influence. See Alvar, Manuel, Atlas linguístico y etnográfico de las islas Canarias, 3 vols. (Las Palmas: Cabildo Insular, 1975–1978).Google Scholar

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8 Vidal, Pérez, “Aportación….” 10–14.Google Scholar The contribution of the Canary Islands to the early settlement of the New World has been vastly underestimated because of the tendency of scholars to accept the Lista de Pasajeros a las Indias, the authorized departures from Sevilla in the 16th century, as representative of the geographic origin of the participants in Spain’s ‘Great Enterprise.’ Only a handful of Canarios are included among the many thousands thus inscribed, for those embarking from the islands were completely beyond the reach of the peninsular authorities. Thus Boyd-Bowman, Peter, Indice geo-biográfico de 40,000 pobladores españoles de América en el siglo XVI, vol. 1, 1493–1519 (Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1964),Google Scholar and vol. 2, 1520–1539 (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1968) list only 39 Canary Islanders as having departed for the New World for the period 1493-1539! Later periods show no significant increase. Boyd-Bowman, , “Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the Indies, 1579–1600,” The Americas 33 (1976), 78–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Friede, Juan, “The Catálogo de pasajeros and Spanish Emigration to America to 1550,” Hispanic-American Historical Review 31 (1951), 333–348,Google Scholar shows that less than one-third even of those embarking from Sevilla were recorded in the registry.

9 Foster, , Culture and Conquest: America’s Spanish Heritage (New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation, Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 27, 1960).Google Scholar

10 Borges, Analola, “Aproximación al estudio dela emigración canaria a América en el siglo XVI,” Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 23 (1977), 239–262 Google Scholar; Borges, , El archipelago Canario y las Indias Occidentales (Madrid: Editorial Cultura Hispánica, 1969).Google Scholar

11 There is a considerable literature on the Canario migration, but it is written almost exclusively from an island vantage point and from island sources—the archives and libraries of La Laguna and Las Palmas—and published in local journals of restricted circulation or, more recently, in the proceedings of a series of colloquia on Canario-American relations sponsored by the Casa de Colón of Las Palmas and the Cabildo Insular of Gran Canaria. The prime mover in these, and the most influential contributor to the literature, has been Francisco Morales Padrón, professor of American history at the Universidad de Sevilla and himself an islander. E.g., “Colonos Canarios en Indias,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 8 (1951), 399–441; El comercio canario-americano, siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1955); Sevilla, Canarias y América (Las Palmas: Cabildo Insular, 1970); “Las Canarias y la política emigratoria a Indias,” Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana I (1976), 210–293. The fifth of these colloquia was held in Las Palmas in October, 1982.

12 This is suggested by Barrenechea, Eduardo, Objetivo: Canarias (Barcelona: Dopesa, 1978).Google Scholar

13 In Brazil a native of Tenerife, Father José de Anchieta, was one of several priests and brothers who established the primitive Jesuit mission in 1554 at what was to become the city of São Paulo. Anchieta, destined to gain fame as the “Apostle to the Indians,” has been proposed for canonization. Several Spanish sources credit him with being the founder of São Paulo. E.g., Borges, El archipelago Canario…, 20–37.

14 But see Villena, Guillermo Lohmann, “Notas para un estudio sobre recuerdos canarios en el Perú,” Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana 2 (1977), I., 165–189.Google Scholar

15 Vidal, Pérez, “Aportación…,” 128–189.Google Scholar

16 Borges, Analola, “Notas para un estudio sobre la proyección de Canarios en la Conquista de América,” Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 20 (1974), 145–265,Google Scholar details the participation of Canarios in the Conquest and town-founding in the New World.

17 Apparently the isleños had a considerable reputation for their boisterous ways. A visitador advised in 1547 that they should be permitted to depart only with special authorization.

18 Borges, , “Aproximación…,” 261.Google Scholar

19 Santo Domingo en los manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muñoz, (Santo Domingo: Fundación “García Arévalo,” 1980), 1, 366; Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antíguas posesiones expañoles…, 1st ser., 23 (Madrid 1875), 110–117;2d ser., 17 (Madrid 1925), 289; Perez Vidal, “Aportación.…” 112. An inscription in a park in the modem pueblo of Montecristi reads “Montecristi fue fundado el 30 de Mayo del año 1533 por Juan de Bolaños y 60 familias procedentes de las islas Canarias.”

20 Padrón, , “Las Canarias y la politica emigratoria,” 212.Google Scholar

21 Chaunu, Pierre, Seville et l’Atlantique, (1404–1650), tome VIII (1), Les estructures géographiques (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1959), 377–441.Google Scholar

22 Padrón, Morales, “Colonos Canarios en las Indias,” 406.Google Scholar

23 Chaunu, , Seville et l’Atlantique, 8 (1), 388–391.Google Scholar He terms the data on the Canaries traffic, along with that of the slave trade, the weakest point in our statistical elaboration.’ Their strategic location made the islands a favorite base for contraband trade and as such they were a continuous source of annoyance to Spanish authorities. Prohibitions or restrictions on Canarias traffic, designed to protect Seville interests, were generally shortlived and ineffective.

24 Farías, Eduardo Arcila, Economía colonial de Venezuela (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Ecónomica, 1946), 64.Google Scholar

25 Padrón, Morales, Sevilla, Canarias y América, 326.Google Scholar

26 Marrero, Levi, Cuba: economía y sociedad (Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1974–1978), 2: 184–185.Google Scholar This extraordinary study, when completed, will total 14 volumes and carry Cuban economic history through to the arrival of the socialist society in 1960.

27 Ibid., IV: 97. One of these was the Diaz Pimienta family. Francisco Diaz Pimienta, born to Canario parents in Havana in 1596, became supreme commander of the Royal Navy.

28 Ibid., III: 18, 263, 270.

29 Ibid., III: 18–19.

30 E.g., in 1659 Jamaica sent a representative to Madrid to request colonos de trabajo y provecho como lo es de las Canarias. Vidal, Pérez, “Aportación…” 115.Google Scholar

31 Padrón, Morales, El Comercio Canario-Americano. 195–196 Google Scholar; Vidal, Pérez, “Aportación…”, 117–118.Google Scholar

32 A Royal Order of 1718 allocated the Canaries 1,000 tons of cargo annually to certain American ports: Havana 300, Campeche 300, Caracas 200, Cumaná, Trinidad, Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo 50 each. There was included an obligation to deliver 50 families of five annually to Santo Domingo.

33 Pons, Frank Moya, Historia colonial de Santo Domingo (Santiago: Universidad Católica ‘Madre y Maestra,’ 1974), 217 ff.Google Scholar

34 Hoetink, H., The Dominican people, 1850–1900 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 26–27.Google Scholar Some of the original residents of San Carlos early moved to Cuba. José Peraza de Ayala, El régimen comercial de Canarias….89n.

35 Peasants were not the only ones involved in this migration. Thus, in 1729 the cabildo of Tenerife proposed that ‘persons of nobility or distinction’ among settlers in America should be awarded twice the amount of land given to others, Ibid., 135.

36 Padrón, Francisco Morales, “El desplazamiento a las Indias desde Canarias,” Revista Museo Canario 33–36 (1950), 1–25,Google Scholar lists departures of emigrant ships between 1720 and 1764. In addition to those persons going to Santo Domingo in this period others went to Puerto Rico (786), Florida (707), Venezuela (439), Texas (162), Campeche and Bacalar (149), Montevideo (97), and Trinidad (13). For another 100 persons no destination is indicated. Apparently all were subsidized by the Crown, but at various levels.

37 Sevilla Soler, Maria Rosario, Santo Domingo; tierra de frontera (1750–1800), (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americano, 1980), 52.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., 57–63; Moya y Pons, Historia colonial…., 286–290. These places survive today as signi¬ficant regional trade centers (e.g., San Juan de la Maguana, Neiba, Dajabón, Samaná, Sabana la Mar, Baní). Baní, in the southern part of the country, founded in 1764, had such a predominance of isleños that it could be called by Eugenio María de Hostos “the Dominican Canaria, maintaining the purest lineage to the point that until only a few years ago there were scarcely any colored people there… a veritable ethnological parenthesis.” Quoted in Hoetink, The Dominican people.…,27. Even today its people have a special reputation as superior businessmen. The city has produced an unusual number of politicians and intellectuals. Earlier Canaria establishments included Banica and Hinche.

39 Nazario, Manuel Alvarez, La herencia linguística de Canarias en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1972), 47.Google Scholar

40 Padrón, Morales, “El Desplazamiento…”, 18.Google Scholar

41 Vidal, Pérez, “Aportación…”, 27.Google Scholar

42 Marrero, Cuba…, III: 73–74. More than one-third of all registered vessels departing from the Canaries for America during the seventeenth century listed Havana as their destination. Angel López Cantos, “El tráfico comercial entre Canarias y América durante el siglo XVII,” Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana II, I: 303–372, reference 313.

43 Marrero, , Cuba…, 6: 6–7.Google Scholar

44 Of vessels out of the Canaries in the Indies trade, 1708-1776, 87 out of 208 were destined to Havana with most of the rest going either to Venezuela (62) or Campeche (52). de la Tabla, Javier Ortiz y Ducasse, , “Comercio colonial canario, siglo XVIII: nuevo indice para su cuantificación, la contabilidad del Colegio de San Telmo, 1708–1776,” Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana 2, 2: 7–17.Google Scholar In contrast none of the passenger-carrying vessels on the 1718–1765 list ( Padrón, Morales, “El desplazamiento…” 18–22)Google Scholar were bound for Cuba, presumably because immigration to that island was not under a mandatory quota.

45 Hanna, Kathryn Abbey, Florida: Land of Change (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 60.Google Scholar It was proposed that the colonists be brought first to Havana to learn something of cotton and indigo cultivation, then transferred to Apalache (Florida).

46 Padrón, Morales, “El desplazamiento…” 15–17.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 21. Better than five percent of the 1,101 males whose names were recorded in the marriage records of St. Augustine parish, 1658-1756, were listed as natives of the Canary Islands. There were 27 in the 1692–1732 period, 15 from 1733–1756. Corbett, Theodore G., “Migration to a Spanish Imperial Frontier: St. Augustine,” Hispanic-American Historical Review 54 (1974), 414–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I have found no other evidence of Canarios in Florida prior to 1756.

48 Tinajero, Pablo Ternero, “Emigración canaria a América: la expedición cívico-militar a Luisiana de 1777–1779,” Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana 1, 345–354.Google Scholar

49 Lockey, Joseph B., “The St. Augustine Census of 1786,” Florida Historical Society Quarterly 18 (1939), 11–31 Google Scholar; Murdoch, Richard, “Governor Céspedes and the Religious Problem in East Florida, 1786–1787,” Florida Historical Society Quarterly 26 (1945), 325–344.Google Scholar

50 Rodríguez, Antonio Acosta, La población de Luisiana española, 1763–1803 (Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 1979), 145.Google Scholar Those departing for Florida numbered 2,373 (Ternero Tinajero, “Emigración canaria…,”) but some perished en route and others defected in Cuba. Disease further reduced their numbers once established in Louisiana.

51 Rodríguez, Acosta, La población…, 140–145 Google Scholar; Gayarré, Charles, History of Louisiana, (3 vols.; New York: W. J. Middleton, 1866),Google Scholar vol. 3, “The Spanish Domination.”

52 Tinajero, Ternero, “Emigración canaria…,” 353.Google Scholar

53 E.g., MacCurdy, Raymond, The Spanish Dialect in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Publications in Language and Literature No. 6, 1950)Google Scholar; “Spanish Folklore from St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana,” Southern Folklore Quarterly. 13 (1940), 180–191.

54 In proposing the settlement the Marques de Aguayo had written the King that “one permanent family would do more to hold the province than 100 soldiers.” He urged the sending of 200 Canarios and another 200 Tlaxcalans, who had been successful settlers in Saltillo and Parras on the northern frontier of New Spain. Ramsdell, Charles, San Antonio: a Historical and Pictorial Guide (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976).Google Scholar

55 The seven missions along the San Antonio river hemmed in the Canario settlers and there were numerous law suits over land titles, water rights and grazing privileges. In 1745 a viceregal auditor reported that “the 14 families of Canary Islanders complain against the reverend fathers of the missions, against the Indians that reside therein, against the captain of the presidio and against the other 49 families settled there so that it seems they desire to be left alone in undisputed possession. Perhaps even then they may not find enough room in the vast area of the province.” Ibid.; see also Buck, Samuel M., Yanaguana’s Successors: the Story of the Canary Islanders’ Immigration into Texas in the 18th Century (San Antonio: Naylor, 1949).Google Scholar

56 Glick, Thomas, The Old World Background of the Irrigation System of San Antonio, Texas (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1972),Google Scholar Southwestern Studies monograph 35.

57 Although there seem to have been no later additions to the colony, Canario family names still survive in San Antonio and there is an active Canary Island Descendants Association, recently split by a factional dispute. “Solution Eyed to End Canary Islander Fued,” San Antonio Express, May 9, 1982. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and San Antonio are “Sister Cities.”

58 Padrón, Morales, “El desplazamiento…,” 7.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., 20; Gerhard, Peter, The Southeast Frontier of New Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 73.Google Scholar

60 Floyd, Troy S., The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967), 168–171.Google Scholar

61 Ferry, Robert J., “Encomienda, African Slavery and Agriculture in Seventeenth Century Caracas,” Hispanic-American Historical Review 61 (1981), 609–635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Ibid., 619.

63 One official noted in 1720 that bringing families from the Canaries to Venezuela as colonists had been “a superb idea in principal but in practice of little benefit because they have not been allocated good land or enough of it but rather the worst….their misery eventually forcing them into other activities, often the contraband trade.” He urged that knowledgeable persons be named to select land for such settlements and that advice be given on the best crops to grow and the market for them. Arcila Farías, Economía colonial.…, 172.

64 de la Rosa, Leopoldo, “La emigración a Venezuela en los siglos XVII y XVIII,” Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 22 (19760, 617–631, reference p. 626.Google Scholar

65 Ibid., 623–624. Until 1751 the Cathedral held the only records of marriage for Caracas. There-after other parishes, probably in modest barrios, drew off many couples with a consequent sharp decline in the percentage of Canarios. Of the Canary Islanders identified in the Book of Matrimony during the 65-year period referred to better than 80 percent were from the island of Tenerife.

66 Borges, Analola, “Presencia de ‘Isleños’ en el cargo de Gobernador y Capitán General de Venezuela, 1699–1721,” Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 7 (1961), 215–237.Google Scholar

67 Hussey, Roland D., The Caracas Company, 1728–1784: a Study in the History of Spanish Monopolistic Trade (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934),CrossRefGoogle Scholar especially 122 ff. In the same year as the revolt against the Caracas Company a 20-year monopoly privilege for settling and trading with the island of Trinidad had been proposed unsuccessfully by a Tenerife group. de Ayala, Peraza, El régimen comercial…, 165.Google Scholar

68 Quoted in Hussey, , The Caracas Company…, 120–121.Google Scholar

69 Fernández, David W., “José Fernández Romero y la fundación de Montevideo,” Revista Histórica (Museo Nacional de Uruguay), 29 (1959), 201–204 Google Scholar; Vidal, Pérez, “Aportación…,” 158–161,Google Scholar citing especially Gil, Enrique Azarola, Los Origenes de Montevideo, 1607–1749, (Buenos Aires, 1933).Google Scholar All but one of the original 20 families was from Tenerife.

70 Recurrent famines on drought-prone Lanzarote and Fuerteventura led to frequent surges of outmigration from these drier eastern islands that intensified pressures on Gran Canaria and Tenerife. E.g., Parsons, James J., “Drought and Hunger on Fuerteventura,” Geographical Review 65 (1975), 110–113 Google Scholar; Roldán, Roberto, El hambre en Fuerteventura, 1600–1800 (Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Aula de Cultura, 1968).Google Scholar

71 Levies by both the army and the navy took thousands of additional island youths, many of whom doubtless ended up in America. Ayala, Perazade, El régimen comercial.…, 135,Google Scholar documents 2,500 such enlistments of Canarios, 1721–1758.

72 E.g., Ibid., 161 n; de Bethancourt Messieu, Antonio, “Aproximación a la economía de las islas Canarias, 1770–1808,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea (Madrid) 27 1978), 185–202, reference 193.Google Scholar

Humboldt, on Tenerife in 1799, observed that “emigration would be diminished if uncultivated demesne lands were distributed among private persons, if those which are annexed to the majorats of the great families were sold, and feudal rights were gradually abolished.” He judged that “the misery of the people has considerably diminished since the cultivation of the potato has been introduced and since they have begun to sow maize more than wheat or barley.” There were, he suspected, more isleños on the new continent than in their own country. Personal Narrative…, I: 289–292.

73 Many of the isleños who chose the losing side in the wars were left destitute. The shock waves brought on by the carving out of most of the Americas from the Spanish empire has been termed one of the principal causes of the “ruin and general poverty” of the archipelago to which many returned. de León, Francisco María, Apuntes para la historia de las islas Canarias, 1776–1868. (Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Aula de Cultura, 1966) 219.Google Scholar

74 Albelo Martín, María Cristina, “La emigración Canarias-América (1826–1853),” Aguayro (Boletín Informativo de la Caja Insular de Ahorros de Gran Canaria) 132: 5–9; 133: 10–13 (1981).Google Scholar

75 García, Julio Hernández, “La planificación de la emigración canaria a Cuba y Puerto Rico, siglo XIX,” Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana 2, 1: 201–238, reference 221–222.Google Scholar

76 Martín Ruiz, Juan Francisco, El N. W. de Gran Canaria: un estudio de demografía histórica, 1485–1860 (Las Palmas: Mancomunidad de Cabildos de Las Palmas, 1978).Google Scholar

77 Pegot-Ogier, E., The Fortunate Isles: the Archipelago of the Canaries; translated by Locock, Frances (2 vols., London: Richard Bentley, 1871), I: 246.Google Scholar

78 de Olive, Pedro, Diccionario estadístico-administrativo de las islas Canarias (Barcelona, 1865).Google Scholar A much discussed proposal for a regular steamship service between Tenerife and Havana was to carry 400 passengers a month. The fare was to be 17 dollars steerage. The round trip was to require one month, with stops at both Gran Canaria and La Palma. The promoters estimated that one-fifth of those who went would return. At the time some twenty sailing vessels were reportedly in the business, all making a profit. With the more comfortable facilities to be offered by the new service the migration current was expected to be substantially augmented. The plan does not seem to have been put into effect. Recopilación de los diferentes artículos publicados en pro y en contra del proyecto de una línea de vapores entre las islas Canarias y ésta (Habana: Barcina, 1855).

79 Hernández García, “La planificación…” cites nearly a dozen such schemes. A Tenerife agent for a wealthy Cuban hacendero is quoted as saying in 1878 “In spite of the distance [Cuba] is not so much an American island as the richest of our own archipelago which provides most of the money in circulation here.” 233. A review of the petitions to emigrate filed at La Laguna (Tenerife) 1848–1885 but broken 1867–1872 shows that in this period 1,420 such requests were filed. Most were in family groups but 216 individuals were included. Of the total, 936 petitioned to go to la isla de Cuba; Venezuela, with 86, was a distant second. Others included Puerto Rico 56, Argentina 24 and Uruguay 14. The Cuban requests tailed off in the late years while those for the La Plata countries increased. The additional 219 that listed “America” would have been going to either of the two remaining Spanish possessions, Cuba or Puerto Rico. García, Julio Hernández, “La emigración de La Laguna en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX (1848–1895),” Revista de Historia Canaria 25 (1976), 91–124.Google Scholar

80 “Inmigración de Canarias,” Boletín de Historia de Puerto Rico 7 (1920), 53–54.

81 de Loubriel, Estela Cifre, “Los inmigrantes del siglo XIX: sus contribuciones a la formación del pueblo puerrtorriqueño,” Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña 3 (1960).Google Scholar

82 National Archives, Washington, D.C., Consular Despatches, Tenerife, “Joseph Cullen to the U.S. Minister, Madrid, April 20, 1836.” Two years later the difficulties seemed to have been resolved but on April 20, 1839, it was again complained that “obstructions and all manner of impositions” were being placed in the way of American vessels that sought to embark with passengers to La Guaira and to Havana.

83 Balfagar, Enrique Guerrero, “La emigración de los naturales de las islas Canarias a las repúblicas del Río de la Plata en la primera mitad del siglo XIX,” Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 6 (1960), 493–517 Google Scholar; Arlaud, Santos Fernández, “La emigración española a América durante el reinado de Isabel II,” Cuadernos de Historia (Madrid) 4 (1973), 419–455.Google Scholar

84 For Spanish vessels going to Cuba or Puerto Rico clearance from the Juez de Arribada in the Canaries was all that was required. Individuals seeking permits to go to one of the “rebelling countries” had to go to the Council of the Indies; but as the “red-tape” generally discouraged them they usually joined the illicit traffic.

85 The history of one such contratista de colonos has been documented by Ruiz, Nelson Martínez, “La emigración Canaria en Uruguay durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX: una sociedad para el transporte de colonos,” Revista de Indias 38 (1978), 349–402.Google Scholar Capitalizing on the government’s interest, a prominent Uruguayan business man and ship-owner, Juan María Pérez, had obtained a licence in 1835 to bring 3,000 Canario families to Montevideo. The society he founded for this purpose, with influential agents in Madrid and in the islands, had little difficulty in circumventing Spanish government restrictions on the traffic.

In seven voyages between 1836 and 1844 the society's vessels brought 832 immigrants, chiefly in family groups. More than half were women and children. Most of them came from Lanzarote, where recruitment was in the hands of the prominent Arata family. So successful was it that island officials and the local press became alarmed that Lanzarote, with only 7,000 inhabitants, was being left without hands to harvest its meager crops. At the same time Spanish diplomatic representatives in Montevideo were protesting the treatment of the newly arrived settlers who “anticipating an idyllic life in a Garden of Eden were instead passed from hand to hand almost like slaves until they had accumulated sufficient funds to pay the high price of their passage.”

According to one estimate, of the 48,118 immigrants from overseas arriving in Uruguay between 1835 and 1842 some 8,200 were from the Canaries. In the same period France contributed 17,520 and Italy 11,995 while “other Spaniards” (chiefly from Galicia) numbered 4,527. Lamas, Andrés, “Apuntes estadísticos….” Revista del Instituto Histórico y Geográfico de Uruguay, 6(1928),Google Scholar quoted in Martínez Ruiz, op. cit., 383.

86 Martínez Ruiz, “La emigración Canaria en Uruguay…,” Guerrero Balfagar, “La emigración de las naturales…” and Fernández Arlaud, “La emigración española…” all describe in detail the exploitation of the Canario migrants to the La Plata region. Similar conditions prevailed in connection with the Venezuela traffic, and somewhat later that to Cuba.

87 Arlaud, Fernández, “La emigración española…,” 443.Google Scholar

88 Presedo, Vicente Vásquez. Estadísticas históricas argentinas, 1875–1914 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Macchi, 1941), 46.Google Scholar

89 Izard, Miguel, El miedo a la revolución: la lucha para la libertad en Venezuela, 1777–1830, (Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1979), 48–49.Google Scholar

90 In connection with government efforts to promote emigration from the Canaries the Junta de Comercio de Canarias observed in 1841 that Cuba was the preferred country for islanders and that those who went to Venezuela or other overseas destinations did so because of the attraction of subsidized passages. It took a dim view of emigration on ships of foreign flags. de Ayala, Peraza, El régimen comercial… 234n.Google Scholar

91 Immigration directly contracted for by the Venezuelan government involved less than 500 persons in the 19th century; later it became more significant. But most of the 29,000 Canarios who are said to have arrived between 1904-1935 came independently of government-supported schemes. Prior to World War II the Basque provinces rather than the Canaries provided the majority of the Spanish immigrants to Venezuela. Memoria del Instituto Técnico de Inmigración y Colonización (Caracas, 1940).

92 Hoetink, H., The Dominican people…, 27–28.Google Scholar

93 National Archives, Washington, D.C, Consular Despatches, Tenerife, “Solomon Berliner to Daniel J. Hill, Assistant Secretary of State, October 9, 1902.”

94 Ibid., May 29,1900, March 2,1900 and December 4,1899. Emigrants leaving for either Cuba or Puerto Rico for a time were required to have their visas stamped by U.S. Consular officials and to obtain public health clearances before embarking. A fee of one dollar (later two dollars) imposed by consular agents at Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife was later lifted in the face of strenuous protests from the two companies carrying immigrants, Cía. Transatlántico and Pinillos.

95 U.S. quarantine officers at San Juan and Havana complained to the Surgeon General in Washington about conditions on emigrant ships from the Canaries and the peninsula. They urged that U.S. consular officials in those ports should not sanction the departure of such vessels unless they provided adequate accomodations and had enforced vaccination and disinfection requirements. The steamship companies were blamed for the violations. Some of the ships in service were described as “tramp vessels, filthy beyond description” and very overcrowded. Few if any of them provided the 12 cubic feet of space per passenger suggested as an acceptable minimum. Ibid., Official Correspondence 22 “U.S. Consul General, Barcelona, to Solomon Berliner, Consul General, Tenerife, September 23,1899;” A. H. Glennan, Surgeon, Chief Administrative Officer for the Island of Cuba to the Surgeon General, U.S. Marine Hospital Service, Washington, D.C., December 27, 1900.

96 Ibid., Official Correspondence 22, “Annual Report on Commerce, Trade and Navigation for the Canary Islands for the Year 1901,” February 26, 1902. Emigration was said to have fallen off significantly from the previous year. The table giving the breakdown of emigration from all of the islands for 1901 and 1902, referred to as an annex to this report, is missing.

97 Ibid., “Report on Emigration,” March 2,1900. Not more than eight percent of male emigrants were being accompanied by wives and families at this time.

98 Ibid., “Annual Report on the Canary Islands for 1901.” Free passage or fare refunds were, in fact, later provided by the Cuban government.

99 Ibid., Department of State Copy Book 3, “Report on Trade and Commerce for the Canary Islands for 1905,” 50.

l00 Ibid., “Report on Trade and Commerce for the Canary Islands for 1906,” 181.

101 Díaz, Francisco González, Un Canario en Cuba (Havana: Imprenta “La Prueba,” 1916),Google Scholar He described the seasonal migration of illiterate peasants who came for the sugar harvest, travelling steerage under almost inhuman conditions. On arrival they traditionally congregated at the Hotel Triscornia in Havana to await friends or employers. The “voice of the colony” at the time was Islas Canarias, a periodical edited by Francisco Bethancourt Apolinario. I have been unable to locate its file nor that of any of the numerous other Canario periodicals of the era published in America. Fernández, David W., “Los periódicos canarios en América,” Revista Museo Canario 17–18 (1956–1957), 157–163 Google Scholar and Maffiotte, Luis, Los periódicos de las islas Canarias (Madrid, 1905)Google Scholar list some 20 such journals from the 1880’s onward, the majority of them from Cuba. El Guanche, published in Caracas in 1897 by a refugee Cuban war veteran, is said to have been the first newspaper to publicly support independence for the Canary Islands themselves. In 1980 graffitti along Venezuela highways proclaimed “Canarias Libre” and “Somos Guanches Siempre,” apparently the work of a minor splinter group of politicized isleños.

102 de la Rosa, Leopoldo, “Los Bethancourt de las islas Canarias y en América,” Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos 2 (1956), 111–164.Google Scholar

103 The same periodical carried an advertisement of a St. Augustine, Florida, industrial park although it has been nearly 200 years since Canarios were active in that community! The Cabildo Insular was urging investment on Tenerife while travel agencies in Caracas urged readers to visit the Canaries ‘por ser continuación de Venezuela.’ A charter flight was offered to La Palma for the traditional bajada de la Virgen in July.

104 “La emigración en la provincia de Santa Cruz de Tenerife,” Estudios Geográficos (Madrid) 75 (1959), 284–290.

105 Significant as it has been, estimates of the Canario migration to America in this century may have tended to be exaggerated. Decennial censuses of Spain, begun in 1857, show a steady increase in the population of the islands from 233,784 in the first one to 1,170,224 in 1970. The archipelago's growth rate consistently has been higher than that of the peninsula. At the beginning of the present century the Canaries represented 1.9 percent of the total national population compared to 3.4 percent in 1970. Adjusting for recorded births and deaths (reliability unknown) the islands show a positive net migration of 60,040 individuals in the seventy year period. Immigration from the mainland and returnees from America appear, then, to have more than compensated statistically for the outmigration. Barranechea, , Objetivo: Canarias…, 49–50.Google Scholar

The 1970 Census of Spain lists as ‘ausente’(absent) 32,000 individuals from Santa Cruz de Tenerife province and 10,000 from Las Palmas. Most of these may be presumed to have been in America but to have retained Spanish citizenship.