Portuguese In The Canary Islands In The Seventeenth Century

PORTUGUESE IN THE CANARY ISLANDS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. A REPORT OF 1626 A little more than fifty years ago, Sergio F. Bonnet published the article entitled "Portuguese Families in La Laguna in the Seventeenth Century", which included the report sent to the Canarian Court, in compliance with his order, by the commissioner of La Laguna, a document that is in the Archive of the Canary Museum.1 Other historians have echoed such an account. Among them, Pérez Vidal reproduced, years later, that list, and lamented the loss of those allegedly sent by the other commissioners: "their results, if preserved, would be of great interest in determining the Portuguese demographic contribution to the population of the Archipelago at the time that now concerns us. But, unfortunately, they have gone astray."2 Actually, the Museo Canario also preserved, and still preserves, the register of Portuguese prepared by the curator of La Orotava, which we partially used some time ago.3 We now study, together with these two reports, those sent from Lanzarote, Gran Canaria, La Palma and Garachico, found in the National Historical Archive, and which probably constitute the rest of those then elaborated;4 because the lack of data on Fuerteventura, La Gomera and El Hierro, in the report sent by the Canarian inquisitors to the Council of the Inquisition, we believe that it must be interpreted as an expression that in these islands there were no Portuguese of recent immigration, which would not be surprising in islands that had few relations outside the Archipelago.5 What neither Bonnet nor Pérez Vidal knew is that the inquiry carried out in the Canary Islands by the Holy Office was not an idea of the Tribunal of the islands, nor did it respond to the routine updating of "its racial file", as the former thought; rather, it was part of a larger investigation. In fact, from 1605 onwards the Portuguese Jewish converts had the possibility of emigrating, with ups and downs, and many of them did so to Castile. Faced with the massive influx of Portuguese, mostly people "of the nation" fleeing the repression unleashed in the neighboring country, the Council of the Inquisition ordered the district courts in 1625 to census the natives of Portugal who had settled in the kingdom.6 The Court of the Canary Islands received this order by letter from the Supreme Court of 16 October of that year,7 and in compliance with that order instructed its commissioners to carry out the corresponding investigations. They were charged with discretion to inquire which Portuguese had settled "for a few years now," in what places, whence they had come, when, and how; what age and occupation they were; what their features and signs were, and whether their names had changed; whether they were married and to whom, and how many children they had, with the names of those who were over six years of age. Curiously, it was not expressly requested that each of them be indicated whether or not they were converts, but rather that it was intended to have a census of all the Portuguese who had recently arrived. Although it is true that it was also ordered that the commissioners should inquire, with the greatest secrecy, "whether any Portuguese of the nation" had left Portugal without the King's permission, and that, in that case, they should arrest them and seize their goods, "because the business is so serious and in which His Majesty is so served in it." The commissioners proceeded in the only way possible: by taking statements from those who knew the Lusitanian collective well; from which it follows that they were called to declare themselves Portuguese, or descendants of Portuguese, trustworthy, some of whom were relatives of the Holy Office.9 This raised a first question: who was considered Portuguese, that is, foreigners, not naturalized; and what scope was to be given to this "of a few years in this part". At the end of his statement, one of the several Portuguese called by the commissioner of La Orotava as informants, named Juan de Matos, specified: "these are the ones who have been here for a few years this witness knows have come, because for many years there have been a large number of Portuguese who have come".10 It was not, therefore, a question of taking a census of the entire community of Portuguese origin. The vast majority of those included in the various lists had been on the islands for less than ten years: in fact, only four (out of 59 whose length of stay is indicated) had been in the islands for more than eight years. There was, as has been said, an older immigration, but either it was understood that the inquiry did not extend to them, or, what is very likely, those who had arrived earlier were no longer regarded as foreigners. The ease of integration of the Portuguese, due to the cultural and linguistic proximity, the common religion and the existence of a large community of Portuguese origin, should have resulted in a de facto naturalization, by way of social integration and consensus, without the need for a particular and formal request and concession. For this reason, it is perhaps no coincidence that those four individuals who appear in the list with more than eight years of stay appear on the list of La Laguna, where there was a nucleus of merchants who in some cases came and went, spending periods of time outside the islands; making their settlement seem more precarious. That said, without forgetting, of course, the differences in criteria between some Commissioners and others. On the other hand, although there were people who had only been staying for a few months, the vast majority were between three and six years, which we think may also be due to the fact that newcomers, not acquaintances, or considered to be passing through, had not been included. Counting only the adults, the lists drawn up by the respective commissioners, or by the inquisitors in the case of the seat of the Tribunal, yielded the number of 95 Portuguese residents of recent settlement, a not inconsiderable figure, especially if one considers that most of them were heads of households, as will be said below; and if one takes into account the population size of the Archipelago. These data tell us that Portuguese immigration was active and relatively large at that time, no doubt the majority, compared to that from other countries. This, of course, is not in itself a surprise. Canarian historiography has highlighted the importance of the Portuguese colony from the origins of the conquest of the royal islands to the political rupture of 1640; However, the sources used generally provided only temporarily dispersed information, or only allowed for general and imprecise assessments. Thus, the search for Portuguese names in the inquisitorial documentation carried out by Serra and especially by Pérez Vidal, although it allowed the detection of phenomena and tendencies, could not go beyond an approximation to them, because, as Pérez Vidal warned, "only a small minority of the population fell into the meshes of the Holy Office"; to which it must be added that these two authors did not make use of the original documents, but of Gray Birch's Catalogue.11 Anaya and I made a study of the presence of the natives of the Azores and Madeira in denunciations and inquisitorial processes, in order to assess their presence in the Canary Islands and the contacts between the three Iberian archipelagos, apart from their problems with the Inquisition.12 At that time, we made a list of more than two hundred Azoreans and Madeirans mentioned in that documentation; which, of course, although it was an expression of the very strong relations between those islands, was not intended to be a census of them, but a sample that represented we do not know what percentage of the total of the origins of the two Portuguese archipelagos. As is well known, notarial protocols provide a wealth of information about the activities of different elements and groups, and have been used among us for the study of foreign groups;13 even specifically from the Portuguese.14 However, apart from the well-known problems of representativeness posed by the use of notarial documentation – not all of them went to notaries – those who have made use of such sources do not usually offer quantitative and temporal details: size of foreign colonies, rhythms, phases or cycles. The novelty, and valuable, of the documents we are studying today lies precisely in the fact that they are a nominative relationship that refers to a specific date, of which there are very few examples in the Canary Islands; and even in the whole of the Hispanic territories in the Modern Age, in which the registrations, censuses or registers of foreigners are rare, except for late dates. This is not, of course, intended to diminish the importance of other sources; but to highlight the value of this one, as a complement to the others, because of the synchronic nature of the information they provide us, and because of the richness of the same, which make these relationships, in the words of Bonnet, "a veritable gallery of portraits",15 for the identification and even meticulous description of the physical features of each of those included in them. We will always have to wonder about the reliability of this type of survey, which in this case leads to questioning the degree of information of the commissioners of the Holy Office, the control they exercised over their district, as well as their zeal. Of the deployment by the inquisitors, he says the fact that the commissioner of La Laguna was forced to repeat his report, for having omitted the place of origin of the census takers.16 It is to be assumed that the fields, the places furthest from the residence of the commissioners, would have escaped them in part, as the commissioner of Lanzarote came to acknowledge, in 1590, on the occasion of an order of the Court to take testimony from certain Madeirans: "being as distributed as they are on this island, with respect to being workers and foreigners and not very well known in it".17 Surely the centres of concentrated population were better dominated, but there is no lack of references to the Portuguese who lived in smaller, and even isolated, places, for example in vineyards. Obviously, the figures expressed by these registers must always be considered as minimum; But we may think that its gaps should not be very large. Of the 95 Portuguese involved, 75 lived in Tenerife; 10, in La Palma; 5, in Gran Canaria; and 5 in Lanzarote. A first observation, then, is that the first of the islands had a power of attraction enormously superior to all the others, as befitted its economic and demographic vitality, the foundation of its broader and more powerful foreign relations. La Palma, also without surprises, would be in second place. Within Tenerife, the distribution was as follows: in La Orotava, 35; in La Laguna, 31; and in Garachico, 9. There are, therefore, two main areas, that of the Taoro valley and that of the Aguere valley, with a different type of occupation, as we shall say when dealing with origins and occupations; although, of course, it must be understood that those localities appear as the headquarters of their and not necessarily as places of residence of the census takers. The average age of those registered is thirty years old, and that is also the most repeated age. Thus, leaving aside the usual inaccuracies and roundings in this type of record, we find, once the average length of stay has been deducted, with an emigrant who is in his twenties; which, together with the traits of masculinity, and singleness at the time of emigrating, offers a totally typical profile. Of the 95 people registered, 86 were men and 9 were married women, who had come with their husbands or later. Almost four out of five men are listed as married, a proportion that could perhaps be exaggerated that could lead one to think that the commissioners knew and controlled families better, than single ones; and, for the same reason, we can also assume that, when the state is not recorded, they were single. In any case, this dominance of married people contrasts with the usual predominance of celibates in groups of foreigners; So I think that in this case it is an expression of the will to stay, of the renunciation of return, on the part of the majority. And, for the same reason, this seems to point more to a stable emigration than to one that proposed, from the beginning, to come to the Islands as a springboard for its leap to the Indies (without ignoring that naturalization through marriage could facilitate this transit). Two-thirds of the married people for whom we have data got married in the Islands: mostly, as far as we know, to Canarian women, but also to Portuguese women or daughters of Portuguese. In several cases, with Portuguese women who were widows of Portuguese. This speaks to the existence of a process of social integration through marriage, but also of a phenomenon of endogamy. There are examples of artisans married to the daughters of other artisans of the same trade, which presents the marital relationship, perhaps, as a way of entering the trade or linking up between colleagues, and possibly a means of transmitting the knowledge and techniques of the same. Only nine, as has been said, had brought their wives, and another nine had them in Portugal. Therefore, emigration had mostly affected single people; A high percentage of them had married later, in a short space of time, on the islands. Some of those who kept their wives away came and went to Portugal with some frequency, mostly for reasons of trade. In other cases, the desire to marry in the Islands gave rise, as was common among emigrants, to cases of bigamy. Two of those married in the Canary Islands were said to be married in Portugal, and the same was said of another who tried to marry. The inquisitorial investigation carried out to compile the register of Portuguese people would have uncovered these situations. The references to the children are, although numerous, not very precise, since the number of them is not usually given; and their names in rare cases, when they were older. Although the number of married couples who emigrated together seems small, there are reports of siblings and cousins who did so, as well as of the subsequent call and reception of other relatives, friends and countrymen, a phenomenon that is otherwise well known in other migratory processes. This tendency towards rapprochement and relationship, at least initially, between compatriots immersed in a foreign environment would surely have consequences in terms of the survival of the Portuguese language and culture, from which it is based on the In the long run, it would lead to a greater capacity to influence island society. In bigamy proceedings, in which the main witnesses were usually the defendant's countrymen, it is common to find that, upon arrival in the Canary Islands, several compatriots who had emigrated together at first lived in company, in the same house, only to separate after some time. In one of them, the witnesses, companions of the accused on the voyage to the Islands, recounted how they came crying on the boat that brought them from their land.18 The nostalgia of the migrant, who does not forget his homeland or break easily with it, has a place in these processes of attraction and regroupment. In terms of geographical origin, 42% came from the Portuguese archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, especially from the former (three times more than the latter). More than a fifth of the total number of Portuguese immigrants had come from the island of São Miguel alone. In second place (34%) was Porto and its area of influence; and further afield, Lisbon and its region (17%). The importance of the two great ports, especially the northernmost one, is therefore notorious. The rest of the Portuguese territory was poorly represented, and in particular the south, the Algarve and the Alentejo, contrary to what one might think given its proximity and, in the first case, its overseas vocation. This had already been observed by Pérez Vidal, who correctly pointed out the interest of determining the origin of immigrants: first as a contribution, in our humble case, to the processes of Portuguese expansion and emigration; but secondly because it informs us about the historical relations of the Archipelago, an important point when studying cultural elements or phenomena of Portuguese origin.19 Madeira's contribution is disappointing, given its close links with our islands, and in particular with Lanzarote. In fact, in our aforementioned study on Madeirans and Azoreans before the Canarian Inquisition, the former were more numerous than the latter.20 We cannot rule out conjunctural changes, with alterations in the intensity of the flows; but, in any case, we also noticed at that time that the Madeiran emigration had a swallow-like character that did not occur in the more definitive Azores, and also that through Lanzarote, and via Madeira, people from the islands of Abajo entered the Archipelago. and even mainland Portuguese, who then moved to the western islands, where they settled. With regard to the activities carried out by the census takers, one third were dedicated to commerce, at its various levels; More than a fifth were artisans, and almost as many were workers. The traditional Lusitanian contribution to the world of trades continued: silversmiths, goldsmiths, candle makers, swordsmiths, mat makers, cord makers, confectioners, carpenters, coopers... We should add sailors, soldiers, innkeepers, painters (two) and a doctor. Perhaps significantly – as far as the recruitment of the Canarian clergy is concerned – no religious. If it is valuable, in itself, to establish origins, places of settlement and professions, it is much more interesting to analyze the combination of these variables. Thus, those established in La Laguna are all of peninsular origin and it is here where two thirds of the merchants are concentrated, and among them all those who appear with wide ranging commercial relations. Fernán Pinto and his son Joan were in Flanders, where they had exchanges, as well as with Brazil; Antonio de Fonseca negotiated with Portugal, Hamburg and Flanders; Diego López de Lerda and his brother Hierónimo López traded with Lisbon and Porto, and loaded for Brazil; Antonio Díaz de Moura trafficked in this land American; Hierónimo de Sosa exported wines; Antonio Hernandez appeared to be trafficking in Porto. Of the brothers Thomas and Diego Perera, who became aldermen, only their trade with Portugal was noted, but they already appeared as important merchants, on whom depended other Portuguese merchants and shopkeepers, as well as servants of this nation. La Laguna was thus presented as the seat of this group of Lusitanians engaged in an important mercantile traffic. In La Orotava and its region resided all the islanders (from the Azores and Madeira) identified as such in Tenerife, and their occupations were of a different nature: here were all those who were considered "workers" or "day laborers", as well as laborers, laborers, medianero (one) and butler (one) of vineyards. Thus, while the merchants were of peninsular origin and settled in the capital of the island, the Portuguese archipelagos provided labour to the wine-growing region of the north. For the other islands, where the number of Portuguese was small, it is of little significance to establish such links between origin and profession. On La Palma, certainly, the two merchants registered were also from the Iberian Peninsula; On the other hand, in Lanzarote, where there were people from the Azores, Madeira and the south of Portugal, several were engaged in trade. The commissioners gave little information about the religious status of the census takers, a matter on which, moreover, they had not been emphasized. The commissioner of Lanzarote said that two of the residents were labelled as Jews "even the children"; the one from La Palma wrote that one of the census takers was a new Christian; that of La Laguna, that a Diego López de Lerda was reputed to be an old Christian. Nothing else. But the truth is that several of the Portuguese settled in La Laguna would be denounced, it is true that some years later, they were Jews: Fernán Pinto and his sons, Diego Gómez, Antonio de Fonseca, Antonio Díaz de Moura, Hierónimo de Sosa, Juan de Heredia, all of them merchants, and, according to Lucien Wolf, some who had fled from Portugal. and most of them belonged to families of Portuguese pigs who maintained personal and commercial relations throughout Western Europe.21 Thus, it seems clear that the Islands, and particularly Tenerife, received in the 1620s, if not earlier, a contingent of Jewish converts of Portuguese origin who left their country, in different personal circumstances, to come and settle and to establish, in several cases, extensive international connections. Some, as in the case of Duarte Henríquez, studied by Professor Anaya, had in their hands the control of vital springs of the Canarian economy. The acceptance of his presence must have been great in the more affluent social sectors and it is our impression that the Holy Office, although it knew, looked the other way. When he intervened, it was in the face of fait accompli, because a part of those Jewish converts decided to leave and openly declare themselves Jews. Others remained, integrated, and even prospered, without much difficulty.