Канарские острова и их потомки в Америке.

Inhabitants of the Canary Islands and their descendants who immigrated to the Americas

Isleños (isˈleɲos) are the descendants of Canarian settlers and immigrants to present day Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Texas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and other parts of the Americas. In these places, the name isleño (Spanish for 'islander') was applied to the Canary Islanders to distinguish them from Spanish mainlanders known as "peninsulars" (lang es). Formerly used for the general category of people, it now refers to the specific cultural identity of Canary Islanders or their descendants throughout Latin America and in Louisiana, where they are still called isleños. Another name for Canary Islander in English is "Canarian." In Spanish, an alternative is canario or isleño canario. The term isleño is still used in Hispanic America, at least in those countries which had large Canarian populations, to distinguish a Canary Islander from a peninsular (continental Spaniard). By the early 19th century there were more people of Canarian extraction in the Americas than in the Canary Islands themselves, and the number of descendants of those first immigrants is exponentially larger than the number who originally migrated. The Americas were the destination of most Canarian immigrants, from their discovery by Europeans in the 15th century until the 20th century, when substantial numbers went to the Spanish colonies of Ifni, Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea in Africa during the first half of the century. Beginning in the 1970s, they began to immigrate to other European countries, although immigration to the Americas did not end until the early 1980s. The cultures of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Uruguay partially have all been influenced by Canarian culture, as have the dialects of Spanish spoken in all but Uruguay. Although almost all descendants of Canary Islanders who immigrated to the Americas from the 16th to the 20th century are incorporated socially and culturally within the larger populations, there remain a few communities that have preserved at least some of their ancestors' Canarian culture, as in Louisiana, San Antonio in Texas, Hatillo, Puerto Rico, and San Carlos de Tenerife (now a neighborhood of Santo Domingo) in the Dominican Republic

The Canary Islander immigration to the Americas began as early as 1492, with the first voyage of Columbus, and did not end until the early 1980s. The Spanish conquest of the Canary Islands had only recently occurred (1402–1496), when Columbus made a stopover in the Canary Islands for supplies in 1501. Also in 1501 (possibly 1502), Nicolás de Ovando left the Canary Islands with a group of people heading to the island of Hispaniola. Consequently, during the late 17th and 18th century, hundreds of Canarian families moved to Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, with others going to places like Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina or the south of the present United States. These families were sent to populate various parts of Latin America. The Tributo de Sangre was finally abolished in 1764. Despite that, many Canarians continued to migrate to the Americas to escape grinding poverty at home. After the liberation of the Latin American countries from Spanish rule (1811–1825), Spain retained only Cuba and Puerto Rico as colonies in the Americas. It abolished slavery in those colonies, and encouraged Canarian immigration. Most Canarian immigrants then immigrated to the two islands in the Caribbean, where their labor was exploited and they were paid very little. There were, however, also thousands of Canarians who immigrated to other countries including Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina. After the annexation of Cuba and Puerto Rico to the United States and the prohibition of Canarian immigration to Puerto Rico in 1898, immigration was directed primarily to Cuba, with certain flows to other countries (especially Argentina and Uruguay). After 1936, most Canarian immigrants went to Cuba and Venezuela until 1948, after which most of the islanders began immigrating to Venezuela. Since the 1970s Canarian emigration has decreased and from the early 1980s, with the improvement of the Canary Islands' economy (and Spain's in general, until the economic crisis of 2008), Canarian emigration has diminished. For the reasons already mentioned, there were specific problems on some islands that also boosted Canarian emigration. In Lanzarote, from the 16th to the 20th century, the people experienced terrible drought (1626–1632), epidemics, house and tithe taxes, invasions of locusts, and several volcanic eruptions in 1730, affecting over half the population, causing many of them to migrate, pirate attacks (Lanzarote suffered more pirate invasions than the other islands) and harsh weather conditions. Consequently, many people on Lanzarote migrated to other Canary Islands including (Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura) as well as to the Americas, including Uruguay, Argentina, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the southern United States.

During the 18th century, the Spanish crown sent several groups of Canary Islanders to their colonies in New Spain. Spain's goal was to colonize certain regions with Spanish settlers, and between 1731 and 1783, several Canarian communities were established in what is now the Southern United States. In 1731, 16 Canarian families arrived in San Antonio, Spanish Texas. Between 1757 and 1759, 154 families were sent to Spanish Florida. Between 1778 and 1783 another 2,100 Canarians arrived in Spanish Louisiana and founded the four communities of Galveztown, Valenzuela, Barataria, and San Bernardo. Of those settlements, Valenzuela and San Bernardo were the most successful as the other two were plagued with both disease and flooding. The large migration of Acadian refugees to Bayou Lafourche led to the rapid gallicization of the Valenzuela community while the community of San Bernardo (Saint Bernard) was able to preserve much of its unique culture and language into the 21st century. Many Isleños fought in the American Revolutionary War and the Battle of the Alamo. After the incorporation of Louisiana and Texas into the United States, they fought in the Civil War and both World Wars. The Isleños have been able to preserve some features of their culture except in Florida, where they had made improvements in its agriculture, but most of the Canarian settlers immigrated to Cuba when Florida was ceded to Great Britain in 1763 and still more left when, after being recovered by Spain, Florida was ceded to the United States in 1819. The dialect of Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands during the 18th century was still spoken by older Isleños until the 1950s in San Antonio but is still spoken in St. Bernard Parish.

Louisiana's Isleños have shared some aspects of Canarian culture for over 200 years with the Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican peoples in those Caribbean countries influenced by earlier waves of settlers from the Canary Islands, who first arrived in the Americas in the late 16th century.

Of the Latin American countries, Cuba was most affected by the immigration of Canary Islanders, and their presence influenced the development of the Cuban dialect and accent. Many words in traditional Cuban Spanish can be traced to the dialect spoken in the Canary Islands. Cuban Spanish is very close to Canarian Spanish, as Canarians have been immigrating to Cuba since the 16th century, especially during the 19th and (early) 20th centuries. Through cross immigration by Canarians and Cubans, many Canarian customs have become Cuban traditions and vice versa. Cuban music has been integrated into Canarian culture as well, including mambo, son, and punto Cubano. Cuban immigration to the Canary Islands has introduced, for example, the dish "moros y cristianos" (or simply "moros"), to the cuisine of the Canary Islands; especially on the island of La Palma. Canary Islanders were the driving force in the cigar industry in Cuba, where they were called "Vegueros." Many of the big cigar factories in Cuba were owned by Canary Islanders. After the Castro revolution, many Cubans and returning Canarians settled in the Canary Islands, among them cigar factory owners such as the Garcias. Through them the cigar industry made its way to the Canary Islands from Cuba, and it is now well established there. The island of La Palma has had the most Cuban influence out of the seven islands, and its accent is the closest of the island accents to the Cuban accent. Many of the typical Cuban variations of standard Spanish vocabulary derive from the Canarian lexicon. For example, the word "guagua" (bus) differs from the standard Spanish autobús; the former originated in the Canaries and is an onomatopoeic word imitative of the sound of a Klaxon horn (wah wah). The term of endearment socio is from the Canary Islands. An example of Canarian usage for a Spanish word is the verb fajarse (to fight). In standard Spanish the verb would be pelearse, while fajar exists as a non reflexive verb related to the hemming of a skirt. The Cuban dialect of Spanish shows a substantial influence of the Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands. Many names for food items come from the Canary Islands as well. The Cuban sauce mojo is based on the mojos of the Canary Islands, where the sauce was invented. Canarian ropa vieja was introduced to Cuba through Canarian immigration. Gofio is another Canarian food known to Cubans, along with many others.

Between 1678 and 1764 the Spanish policy of tributo de sangre stated that for every ton of cargo shipped from the Spanish colonies in the Americas to Spain, five Canarian families were sent to populate the colonies. The number of families sent to the Americas, however, often became ten. The first wave of Canarian emigration seems to have occurred in 1695 when Juan Fernández Franco de Medina, the new Governor of Puerto Rico, arrived with 20 Canarian families. This was followed by others in 1714, 1720, 1731, and 1797. Between 1720 and 1730, some 176 Canarian families, totaling 882 persons, immigrated to Puerto Rico, more than half of them married couples and their children, and the rest eventually found partners in Puerto Rico. The tributo de sangre ended in 1764, but poverty and overpopulation in the Canary Islands still caused many Canarians to immigrate to Puerto Rico and other parts of Latin America. After the Spanish American colonies won their independence (1811–1825), most Canarian immigrants went to Cuba and Puerto Rico, the only remaining Spanish possessions in the Americas, where their labor was exploited to replace that of slaves, who had been liberated with the abolishment of slavery. Following the Spanish–American War of 1898, Canarian immigration to the Americas continued. Successive waves of Canary Island immigration came to Puerto Rico, and entire villages were formed of relocated islanders. Between 1891 and 1895, Canary immigration to Puerto Rico was officially over 600 immigrants; if unrecorded or concealed immigration were taken into account, the number would be much larger. Canarian immigration to Puerto Rico in the 19th century is estimated at 2,733 people, mostly peasants desiring to farm their own land, who tended to settle in Puerto Rico in families or groups of families related to each other. Whole towns and villages in Puerto Rico were founded by Canarian immigrants, and their lasting influence of Canarian culture can still be heard in the Puerto Rican accent and seen in the cuatro, a small guitar with origins in the Canary Islands. The Canarian Islands have contributed more to the Puerto Rican population than any other Spanish region except Andalusia, and Canary Islanders, along with Andalusians, were the principal Spanish expatriate community there by the 19th century. The Isleños contributed substantially to the development of agriculture, as well as the provincial rural character of Puerto Rican society, preserving their ancestral customs, traditions, folk arts, dialect and festivals that remain features of Puerto Rican culture. They tended to settle in areas where other Isleños were already living, preferring certain rural districts and towns like Camuy, Hatillo and Barceloneta. They concentrated also in San Juan, Ponce, Lares, San Sebastián, Lajas, Mayagüez and Manatí. Many settled in small villages where they intermarried with other Puerto Ricans and with the Jíbaro peasants. Most of the Isleños arrived on the island married, often with many children, which helped to preserve their customs, traditions, religions, and accent. A group of geneticists from Puerto Rican universities conducted a study of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed through the mother, and found that the present population of Puerto Rico has in its genome a substantial component of genes from Guanches, the Canarian aborigines, especially those from the island of Tenerife. In some areas of the island, this Guanche component appears in over 50% of the sampled population, and in the western part, it appears in over 80%. There were 97 Canarian families who arrived in 1684 and founded San Carlos de Tenerife (in 1911, it became a neighborhood of the city of Santo Domingo). The Spanish authorities there concentrated resources on agriculture and livestock, and incorporated a municipality and a church dedicated to the city's patroness, Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria (Our Lady of Candelaria). The population increased with the arrival of 39 families in 1700 and another 49 in 1709. Canarian families who arrived that year had to bribe the governor to be permitted to remain there. In the first decades of the 18th century, another group of Canarians immigrated to Santiago de los Caballeros, where they formed a militia made up exclusively of Canarians, and another in Frontera, where the group founded Banica and Hincha in 1691 and 1702, respectively. In the latter two settlements the raising of livestock prospered thanks to the growing trade with Haiti. The lack of financial resources and the War of the Spanish Succession led to a decrease in Canarian immigration to the area. Afterwards, Canarian immigration increase significantly but came to a standstill again between 1742 and 1749 as a result of the war with England. The Canarians settled mainly on the border with Haiti to prevent French territorial expansion of the country, founding San Rafael de Angostura, San Miguel de la Atalaya, the Las Caobas and Dajabón) as well as ports in strategic locations in Monte Cristi Province with the arrival of 46 families between 1735 and 1736, Puerto Plata (1736), Samana (1756) and Sabana de la Mar (1760). After 1764, the Canarians were sent primarily to the Cibao. The thriving border towns there were abandoned in 1794, when the area become part of Haiti during the Haitian domination (1822–1844). Isleños on the now Haitian side of the border moved to the interior of the island, and some of them, especially of those from Cibao, moved to Cuba, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. The Isleños were, for a time, the fastest growing ethnic group in the Dominican Republic. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the flow of Canarians immigrating to the country slowed to a trickle. Pedro Santana, the first president of the Dominican Republic, rented several Venezuelan ships during the mid 19th century period of border disputes with Haiti to carry Isleños to the Dominican Republic, but most of the 2,000 who emigrated returned to Venezuela in 1862, when José Antonio Páez came to power. Many of the Canarians who settled in the Dominican Republic (including Jose Trujillo Monagas, originally from Gran Canaria and the grandfather of the later dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo), settled in the capital and in rural areas, especially in the east. During the first half of the 20th century, some groups of Canarians immigrated to the Dominican Republic, many of them Republican exiles who came during and after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). 300 Canarians arrived in 1955, when Trujillo encouraged Spanish immigration to his country to raise the white population, but most of them left and went to Venezuela because of the harsh conditions. Some of them remained in Constanza and in El Cibao. where some of these Canarians were among the founders of Cumaná. Diego de Ordaz, governor of Paria, took about 350 persons, and his successor, Jerome of Ortal, about 80 people, from Tenerife, whether they were native Canarians or just people settled in the islands. In 1681, 54 families from Tenerife were transported to the port of Cumaná, but this area was so unsafe that a few of them settled in villages already founded or went to the Llanos. The next year, another group of 31 families arrived from Tenerife as well. 25 Canarian families were transported to Guyana in 1717 to found a village, and they then migrated to the Llanos of Venezuela. In 1697, Maracaibo was founded with 40 Canarian families, which was followed in 1700 by another 29 in the town of Los Marqueses. Maracaibo received 25 Canarian families between 1732 and 1738, while in 1764 another 14 families arrived, to which were added another 300 families transported to Venezuela. This Canarian migration to Venezuela in the 18th century was one of two waves of migration from the Canary Islands to the Venezuelan region, the second of which occurred in the mid early 19th century. Venezuela experienced significant economic and political change between these centuries, and Canarians played key roles during the turbulent period of revolts and independence movements that resulted in these changes, roles largely inspired by the social, economic, and political conditions faced by the first wave of Canarian immigrants to the region. Beginning in the 1680s and continuing into the 18th century, Canarians arrived in Venezuela in large numbers. Facing the reality that the Canary Islands had neither the land nor the economic conditions to support an ever growing population, these migrants arrived in Venezuela in search of opportunity, most importantly in terms of land for agricultural production. However, Canarians faced social conditions that impeded their ability to develop strong economic footholds in the region. Firstly, the Caracas Company, a trading company established by the Spanish crown to incorporate the economy of Venezuela into that of the greater Spanish empire in the Americas, held a monopoly over trade and dictated the cost of produced and imported goods. Uruguay ranks fifth after Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in the number of people of Canarian descent among its population.

Descendants of Canary Islanders are a small community in Mexico, but their presence is notable especially in the business world and in the tourism industry. A few Canarian families emigrated to Mexico in the 17th century (as in the case of the Azuaje families). In the 18th century, when the Spanish crown encouraged Canarian emigration to the Americas through the Tributo de sangre (Blood Tribute), many of them settled in Yucatán, where by the 18th century they controlled the trade network that distributed goods throughout the peninsula; their descendants are still counted among the most influential families of direct Spanish descent in Mexico. During the 20th century, another group of Canarians settled in Mexico in the early 1930s, and as with Galician and other Spanish immigrants of the time, there were high rates of illiteracy and impoverishment among them, but they adapted relatively quickly. While the Spanish Civil War was still being fought in Spain, the prominent Canarian intellectual Agustin Millares Carlo from Las Palmas became an expatriate in Mexico in 1938. University professor Jorge Hernández Millares, who did important work in the subject of geography, went into exile in Mexico after the war. Two Spanish expeditions to Panama were led by Canarians. The first was organized by Pedrarias Dávila, who recruited fifty good swimmers from Gomera to dive for pearls in 1514. The men, however, were dispersed when they came ashore. Another expedition was led in 1519 by López de Sosa, who was appointed by the Spanish government to replace Dávila and recruited 200 of his neighbors on Gran Canaria to participate in the conquest of Central America. In 1534, Bartolomé García Muxica, founder of Nombre de Dios, Panama, brought a group of Canary Islanders to the country. A Canarian from Lanzarote island, Jose Martinez, was among the first Spanish settlers to arrive in Costa Rica in the 16th century. In 1903, a fleet arrived in Budi Lake, Chile, with 88 Canarian families—400 persons—that currently have more than 1,000 descendants. They responded to the government's call to populate this region and signed contracts for the benefit of a private company. Some were arrested while trying to escape their servitude, and the indigenous Mapuche people took pity on the plight of these Canarians who were established on their former lands. The Indians welcomed them and joined their demonstrations in the so called "revolt of the Canarians", and many Canarians intermarried with Mapuches. A study by W. F. Piazza notes that parish records from 1814 to 1818 show 20 families from Lanzarote living there. Rixo Alvarez speaks of the expeditions of Polycarp Medinilla, a Portuguese based in Lanzarote, and Agustín González Brito, from Arrecife. The settlers from Lanzarote were forced to disembark in Rio de Janeiro. During the last years of the 19th century, some propaganda leaflets were printed to promote the immigration to Brazil of Canarians to work as laborers. How effective they were is unknown. There were other publications distributed in the Canary Islands that opposed the emigration movement, and the Canarian press depicted a very negative view of the quality of life for migrants in Brazil. where they were permanently settled, as well as others who emigrated directly to Brazil from the Canary Islands. A few Canarians on vessels headed to Venezuela were shipwrecked on the Brazilian coast in the 1960s. Due to proximity of Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire to South America and the establishment of economic ties between the Netherlands (the ruler of Curaçao) and Viceroyalty of New Granada (which includes present day countries of Colombia and Venezuela), Canarian settlers from nearby Venezuela lived on the islands; children from affluent Canarian Venezuelan families were educated on the islands. In the 19th century, Curaçaoans such as Manuel Piar and Luis Brión were prominently engaged in the wars of independence of Venezuela and Colombia. Political refugees from the mainland (such as Simon Bolivar) regrouped in Curaçao. While many Canarians returned to Venezuela after its independence, many of them remained in Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire.