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VENEZUELA

MISCEGENATION in Venezuela proceeded along the lines described in the last chapter, namely, concubinage with first, the Indian, and then the Negro, women, with some few marriages. Laws were made for the protection of the very young Negro girls but their luscious flesh proved too tempting for the white men and the girls were ordered locked up each night when they reached the age of ten until they were married. This, also, did not work as the guardians, themselves, became seducers according to F. de Pons, French Consul in Venezuela in the 1800’s. He wrote, “Very frequently are they seduced and supported in the vicious course by those very persons whose duty it is to be guardians of their morals. How many wives united to their husbands in the sacred bonds of matrimony daily see the nuptial bed polluted by their own slaves without being able to revenge themselves upon the caprice by which they are injured, but by indulging inclinations equally guilty, which they have not an equal opportunity of gratifying.”¹

As regards mixed marriages, Venezuela was very liberal at first. Legitimate mulatto children had the same rights as white ones; and illegitimate white children the disadvantages of an illegitimate mulatto one. But as the number of Negroes, and especially of mulattoes, increased, laws were passed lowering the status of the people of color. No Negro, even if free, could hold public office or serve in the royal troops, but only in a colored militia, officered by whites. Free mulattoes could be doctors and surgeons; by dispensation of the king, they could enter holy orders or be candidates for public office, but a full-blooded Negro could not aspire to such favors though he “were a nonpareil of science and a pattern of virtue.”²

Mixed marriages, some of which were with distinguished Spanish families, continued, however, until 1785, when the plantation owners succeeded in getting the king’s consent to a decree making the consent of parents necessary to marriage, and providing that a difference of “race” could constitute a parental objection.

One reason for this law was that more European women of the upper class had been coming to the colony thus permitting the upper class to take firmer root and thereby relegating the mixed blood women more to concubinage. Still another, and probably the stronger reason, was that the Negroid population—mulattoes, free blacks, and slaves—had become so numerous that they threatened to dominate the colony. The slaves alone numbered 208,000, while in Caracas, the capital, the total Negroid population was three-fourths of the whole. As for the Indian, he had practically disappeared either by extermination or absorption.

Gil Fortoul, Venezuelan historian, estimates that at the founding of the republic in 1811 the mulattoes and the blacks were nearly double the number of Spanish and creole whites. He gives 12,000 whites, 200,000 creoles, and 406,000 people of color. Again and again in Venezuela, as in other Latin-American countries, certain leaders by winning over the mulattoes and blacks were able to seize power. Boves, Paez, and Guzman Blanco, were among those who did this in Venezuela.

During the revolution of 1811, the lower classes of Negroes, zambos, and mulattoes attained such ascendancy that they “publicly insulted” even the European Spaniards on the streets and forced the white men to acknowledge Negro women as the equal of the white ones. G. D. Flinter, an English colonel and interpreter, resident in Caracas, says, “The Negroes and the mulattoes had the privilege of greeting any person be his rank or situation in life what it might, with the familiar appellation of citizen. No public balls or dinners were given to which they were not invited with marks of particular preference; and to such a height did this levelling distinction arrive in a country like Caracas where it was, previous to the revolution, considered a mark of infamy to have any connection, or even acquaintances of color, they used to take out the ladies to dance at the public halls. On one occasion some ladies indignant at an insult of this nature refused to dance when an immense multitude of people of color gathered round the doors of the assembly room threatening to put every white person to death if they should again refuse their sable companions for partners.”³

Of these mixed-bloods and Negroes, the most powerful single group was the llaneros, or cowboys, the offspring of runaway slaves, Indians, and fugitive whites. Flinter, who describes them at length, said that “by intermarrying with the Indians, they soon became very numerous, and the children proceeding from a mixture of the Indian and Negro blood form that race of men distinguished by the name of zambo.”

These impetuous horsemen swept down on the captal in 1814 and uniting with the lower classes of Negroes and mulattoes wreaked terrible vengeance on the whites, near-whites, and whites-by-law, for their past contempt and treatment of them. Flinter, who witnessed the massacre, says, “Men, women, and children, who had the slightest tinge of European blood fell indiscriminate victims to their fury.”

DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA.

VI. African women, like these were, with the Indians, the first mothers of Latin-America. They were eagerly sought by the European colonists.

AFRICAN BELLES.

VII. Women like these were, with the Indians, the first mothers of those born in the New World. (Collection, Count de Bearn.)

TYPES OF THE FIRST MOTHERS OF LATIN AMERICA.

VIII. Slave women with the African markings still on their face dressed in Portuguese style (Debret).

TYPES OF THE FIRST MOTHERS OF LATIN AMERICA.

IX. African slave girls dressed in Portuguese style. Note the filed teeth. (Debret).

MIXING OF WHITE AND INDIAN IN LATIN AMERICA.

X(a). Mestizoes. (See Notes on the Illustrations.)

MIXING OF WHITES AND NEGROES IN LATIN AMERICA

X(b). Mulatto, Quadroon, and Octoroon. (See Notes on the Illustrations.)

WHITE-NEGRO-INDIAN INTERMIXTURE IN LATIN AMERICA.

X(c). Mixed Castes. (See Notes on the Illustrations.)

WHITE-NEGRO-INDIAN INTERMIXTURE IN LATIN AMERICA.

X(d). Mixed Castes. (See Notes on the Illustrations.)

As regards the marriage law making parental consent necessary, this slowed up mixed marriages but did not stop them entirely. Marriage of dark Negroes and white girls continued, the white girls being usually foundlings, whose mothers had abandoned them chiefly because they were illegitimate, or the result of adultery. Such children were usually left “at the entrance of some house, before the gate of some church, or in the open street,” says Pons.

“It is observed,” he adds, “that these new-born infants when exposed are generally picked up by women of color, sometimes black women.” If the child was a boy it was received by the monks, when it grew older, but the girls were left “to share the poverty of their foster-parents, till they get married; and one need not be informed that when bred by persons of color, and altogether destitute of fortune, they are under necessity of giving their hand to the first man of color who asks it.”⁴

Of course, a large proportion of the whites had, by this time, a Negro strain. Not only that but even a dark mulatto, if he were rich enough, could purchase a royal decree, or “white” papers, making himself a white man, with all the privileges of one.

The mulatto women, because of their rivalry with the white women, were especially eager to get “white” papers. Pons says as regards this rivalry, “The white women, who are too frequently mortified by the rival-ship of women of color, not to entertain considerable prejudice against them, have always asserted the exclusive privilege of using in church carpets which are carried there by their servants. She who had one drop of African blood flowing in her veins must not pretend to this piece of convenience. The petticoats of those women who are tinged by the slightest shade of black are condemned to be soiled by the dusty floor of the church while their delicate knees must bend upon the hard flags.” However, adds Pons, “When money can create a powerful interest and give animation to the zeal of patrons, entire families are, according to royal ordinance, transferred from the class of freemen of color to that of the whites. It is unlawful to reproach them with the viciousness of their origin, and they are declared competent for exercising any public function.

“During my stay at Caracas a whole family of color obtained from the king all privileges attaching to the whites. All the real advantages which they derived from this advancement seemed to me to devolve upon the women, who, thereby acquired the right of kneeling upon carpets at church. Vain of this newly acquired privilege they displayed in the exercise of it such ostentation and extravagance as could afford no gratification but to vulgar pride.”⁵

Incidentally, what happened in Venezuela happened also in other Spanish-American lands, thus it will be seen that when certain writers, as is so often the case, protest that this or that great South American had no Negro strain, he is not necessarily right. Being socially white and physically white may be two entirely different things in Latin America.

The majority of the old families and the celebrated men of Venezuela have, perhaps, a Negro or zambo strain. Gil Fortoul, one of the most reliable historians of that land, speaks freely on the subject and declares that even the family of Simon Bolivar, greatest of all South Americans, was of mixed blood. He says, “A great number of the creoles who alleged that they were of pure Spanish blood were in reality mestizos or pardos through secret indifference of their grandfathers, or as legitimate descendants of mixed-blood conquistadores, as Francisco Fajardo, Alonzo Ruiz Vallejo, Juan de Urquijo, etc. Even the family of Bolivar, though of illustrious ancestry, was already of mixed blood at the end of the colonial period. Later, it is well-known that a sister and a niece of the Liberator married with pardos.”⁶

Bolivar, himself, said frankly that Venezuelans could not consider themselves a white people, not only because they had mixed so freely with Indians and Negroes, but that their ancestors, the Spaniards, were not white to begin with. He ridiculed the idea of superiority because of Spanish birth and laughed at sangre azul, or blue blood.

To give weight to his conviction, he, the president of the country, ranking with Washington and Toussaint L’Ouverture as one of the three then superbly greatest figures of the New World, gave his niece, Felicia, who was also his adopted daughter, to Laurencio Silva, one of his favorite generals, and a Negro, in marriage. Felicia, very proud of her aristocratic Spanish blood, refused vehemently and yielded only when Bolivar threatened to cut her off without a penny. She bore Silva many children but she never forgave Bolivar. Many years later, when she was an old woman, and one of her grandchildren asked her whether Bolivar had gone to heaven, she replied, bitterly, “No, he has gone to hell for having made me marry a Negro.”⁷

Another noted Venezuelan, who was of Negro blood, and who openly proclaimed it, was Carlos Manuel Piar, hero of San Felix, and probably Bolivar’s superior in military skill. Piar, whose victory over the Spaniards at San Felix, had turned the tide of battle in favor of independence, felt that he ought to be supreme commander of the army, instead of the second as he was. He incited the mulatto officers and Negro troops to revolt on the ground that being men of color they were being discriminated against. Piar, a native of Curacoa, was born of humble mulatto parentage and had worked his way up from the ranks. He was light-colored, which probably led some historians to say that he was not a mulatto but only claimed to be one “in order to win over the mulattoes and the Negroes.” However, most writers as Restrepo, Baralt, Larrazabal, O’Leary, and Ybarra, say that he was of Negro ancestry.⁸

FAMOUS VENEZUELANS OF NEGRO AND NEGRO-WHITE ANCESTRY.

XI. 1. General Joaquin Crespo, President. 2. General Judas T. Pinango, a valiant leader of the Revolution, and an unmixed black. 3. General Jose Maria Heredia. 4. General Laurencio Silva, favorite of Bolivar, a dark Negro. 5. General Jose Antonio Paez, President, and one of Venezuela’s great heroes. (See Notes on the Illustrations.)

FAMOUS VENEZUELANS OF NEGRO-WHITE ANCESTRY.

XII. 1. General Manuel Piar, ablest commander of the war for independence. 2. General Francisco L. Alcantara, President. 3. General Luis F. Garcia Riveron. 4. General Antonio Narino, who also shows an Indian strain.

Still another great Venezuelan, who showed Negro ancestry, but was vigorous in denying it, was General Antonio Páer, conqueror of Boves, and who was also President, and still later minister to the United States. While in the United States, Paéz was commonly taken for a colored man, to his great chagrin. Paéz claimed that he was white on all four sides and with no Jewish strain. His father had once been refused permission to carry a gun on the ground that he was colored, but taking the matter to court, he had proved his white status, which, as was said, was no actual proof that he was white by “race.” Paéz had a mulatto mistress, Barbarita Nieves,⁹ who was his political brains. She bore him several sons, who were educated in the United States.

The most spectacular figure in the war for Venezuelan independence, however, was neither white nor mulatto, but a full-blooded black, Pedro Camejo, “El Negro Primero.” Mounted on a powerful horse and with his lance, he would charge into a whole troop of Spaniards. A monument stands to “El Negro Primero” in Caracas.¹⁰

Among the mulatto presidents of Venezuela named by Clinton and others are General Tadeo Monagas (1845-57), who freed the slaves in 1845; his brother, Jose Gregorio; Dr. Raimundo Andueza Palacio; and General Francisco Linares de Alcantara.¹¹

Still another president with Negro strain was the celebrated General Crespo. W. E. Curtis, a white American, who knew him says, “His face is a fine type of the mulatto.”¹²

Curtis, who lived in Venezuela in 1895, wrote, “While the color line is not entirely obliterated in Venezuela society it is not as strictly drawn as in the United States and the fact that a man has Negro blood in his veins does not debar him from either social or professional, or political honors…. It is a common thing to see a white woman with an octoroon or even a mulatto for a husband, and even more common to see a white husband with a tinted Venus for a wife at public halls, at the hotels and other places of resort. In political, commercial and social gatherings the three races—Spanish, Indian, and Negro—and the mixed bloods, mingle without distinction. It is an ordinary sight to find black and white faces side by side at the dining-tables of hotels and restaurants and in the schools and colleges the color of a child makes no difference in his standing or his treatment. Some of the most accomplished scholars in the country, some of the most eminent lawyers and jurists are of Negro blood; and in the clergy no race distinction is recognized. I have seen a colored theological student—and one can always be detected by the long black frock and shovel-hat he wears—walking arm-in-arm with a white comrade, and in the assignment of priests among the parishes, the bishop never thinks of race prejudice. The present bishop is reputed to have both Indian and Negro blood in his veins. A Sunday morning I dropped in upon a congregation of worshippers in one of the fashionable churches, and found a Negro priest singing mass. I could not distinguish a single colored person in the congregation, and all the attending acolytes were white. Some of the wealthiest planters in the country are full-blooded Negroes.”¹³

Race mixing was so thorough in Venezuela that today, except in a few spots, near the coast, a native Venezuelan unmixed black is a rarity. Of course, with the abolition of slavery, black immigration ceased, while a white one went on. The color of the present native population ranges from dark mulatto to octoroon with evidences of Indian ancestry in hair and certain tints of complexion.

The late Juan Vincente Gomez, dictator, and the most talked of Venezuelan of our times, was of mixed blood, being what was known as a cholo. One of his blood relatives, who came to the United States about 1922, lived in Harlem and was treated otherwise as a colored American. Gomez was one of the world’s wealthiest men, Venezuela being very rich in oil. His fortune was estimated at $200,000,000.

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¹ Pons, F., Travels in South America, Vol. 1, p. 162. 1807.

² Pons, Vol. 1, p. 176.

⁴ Pons, Vol. 2, p. 180. 1807.

⁵ Pons, Vol. 1, pp. 175-76.

⁶ Gil Fortoul, J., Historia Constitucional de Venezuela, Vol. 1, pp. 57-8. 1907.

⁷ Clinton, D. J., Bolivar: Man of Glory, p. 329. 1939.

⁸ Lemly, H. R., Bolivar, pp. 142-3. 1923.

Biographie Universelle, Vol. 40, p. 390. (see Sucre).

Ybarra, T. R., Bolivar, pp. 135-6. 1929.

Ferguson, E., Venezuela, p. 37. 1939.

⁹ Clinton, D. J., Gomez, Tyrant of the Andes, pp. 22-3. 1936.

¹⁰ Rojas, A., Estudios Historicos, Vol. 3, pp. 53-73. 1927.

¹¹ Clinton, D. J., p. 24. 1938.

¹² Curtis, W. E., Venezuela, p. 123. 1902.

¹³ Curtis, W. E., pp. 156-59.