Historians say that any event to which there are still eyewitnesses is recent history. All houses canaries live with the stories of loved ones who left for Cuba or Venezuela on illegal boats, without papers, sometimes even without a thermal engine, trusting in the sails and faithful trade winds. All these stories have forged a whole relationship with the sea, with others, and it has imprinted itself in the way of speaking, in the recipes and in the folías or malagueñas. An exchange takes place back and forth; since we know that the Canarians, in their migratory process, brought to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean a whole language or political ideas that contributed to changing the destiny of entire nations. Migration movements occur in times of extreme necessity, where the idea of embarking on a journey on a fishing boat is better than staying on one’s own land. What would be desirable would be a world in which the North does not continue to abuse neocolonial relations and where no one would be forced to emigrate. But, once this happens, what History tells us is that the greatest wealth arises and, if nothing, the only positive aspect of globalization: exchange and cultural enrichment, because far from what we have been told, civilizations tend to be built from below, from daily decisions that are made by talking, in relationships, by cooking, by having fun, by the most intimate beliefs, those which survive even laws, decrees, factions or edicts.
The discovery of some graffiti on the canoes which had been taken to Arinaga (Gran Canaria) to be destroyed invites us to reflect. On their stern, we can read the names of Telemachus and Elvira, formerly sailing ships which crossed the Atlantic when those who migrated were the Canaries who, tired of waiting for it to rain, seeing the hunger to which they were condemned, decided that the horizon was it will not be a trap, nor the bars of a prison.
The word cayuco itself is a linguistic loan from the Taino Indians, “just like a canoe, a peanut or a barbecue”, begins by clarifying Professor Manuel Vicente Hernández, doctor of history from the University of La Laguna. “The name was given here, in the Canary Islands, because cayuco is called a vessel larger than a boat, canoe or boat, and smaller than a ship.”
Hernández, who in his academic production has addressed the theme of Canarian migrations in publications such as Canarian emigration to Venezuela throughout history (Le Canarien, 2023), tells this editorial that the impulse of the Canarians to follow the trade winds dates back to the 16th century and that these migratory movements only stopped in the 1980s.
The historian warns that the geographical location of the Canary Islands is “very particular”. The flow of trade winds and sea currents tends to carry ships across the Atlantic, in a more natural way than they would tend to head towards Senegal or the Iberian Peninsula. “Our currents go there.”
The Canary Islands had been trading with America since the 16th century. It was therefore a fundamental strategic site and, in times of famine or economic crisis, people looked for alternatives on the other side of the sea. It was basically family emigration, which was calls migratory chains, and this is essential to understand the great influence of the Canarians on Caribbean culture.
“For example,” says Hernández, “in the middle of the 17th century there was a great crisis in the Canary Islands, after independence from Portugal. We must therefore look for new alternatives. And at that time, the last third of the 17th century, it was a time of expansion in Cuba and Venezuela.
Migrations with the presence of women and ideas of return trips
The fact that the migrations were family and could have access to plots of land allowed them to devote themselves to the cultivation of cocoa, livestock, in the case of Venezuela, or tobacco in the Cuban case, and to seek their future.
Furthermore, in these cases, emigration was a decision motivated by necessity and it was mainly the poorest families who took to the sea, “in fact, many women with children, abandoned by their husband, or who have become pregnant and with public shame Before the wedding, they registered there. And this was done especially in terms of migration, for example to the poorest places that the Spanish Crown wanted to populate, because otherwise they would be lost as in the case of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Each migratory period of Canarians towards Latin America and the Caribbean has been marked by the economic situation but also by the political situation of the destination countries; thus, for example, the migrations of the 19th century took place in conditions similar to slavery.
“In the 19th century, a system called contratas was created, which was practiced in both Cuba and Puerto Rico, which remained Spanish throughout the 19th century, and in the new republics, particularly Venezuela and the Uruguay, which “were those which had the most relations with the Canary Islands.
The contract consisted of a contract that was drawn up in the Canary Islands, before entire families traveled, “and then they sold you at auction to the landowners. And you had to pay the price of the ticket which was deducted from your salary. Hernández explains that many Canarians rebelled against this fate by fleeing to the interior of Venezuela and starting from scratch with a piece of land.
This is the famous case of someone called “El Tornillo”, originally from Los Sauces, a rural area of El Paso, in La Palma, who emigrated with everything he had and installed in the Quíbor region, a basically desert area. that the Canarians had already occupied there since the 17th century, and established an entire agricultural and livestock empire there, taking advantage of the faecal waters of the municipality. This is just one example of how the Canaries have been looking for their alternatives for the future. “It is not the same thing in the 18th or 19th century, when they were essentially farmers and breeders, as in the emigration of the 1950s, when the service sector also appeared, a certain industrialization, the Canarians were also there, but the most important The particularity of the Canarians has always been two very important things that they brought compared to the rest of the emigrations one is a builder of cities, a farmer and secondly, the very strong presence of women; Compared to the emigrations, for example from the peninsula, of which 90% were men, the Canary Islands brought a high percentage of women And this also explains why they had such an influence on the culture of the Spanish Caribbean or on the. word.”
And ideas came and went as well. Political ideas, new democratic, nationalist or republican impulses. “We Canarians have in common with the Americans that we are a Creole territory, conquered by Spain and, therefore, we have a mentality of children of Spaniards coming from a mixed-race society and that is why all our movements and ideas play a fundamental role in America because in the end and in the end we have been constantly emigrating.
Precarious boats
The case of El Telémaco tells us of terrible sailing conditions that, despite the advantage brought by the trade winds, people traveled in overcrowded conditions, sometimes being forced to drink salt water, coexisting with diseases. Its occupants, after surviving the unspeakable in the Atlantic, were even sent to concentration camps, “where we know that at least eight died, even though they knew that in the long run the government of Pérez Jiménez had to accept them, and in fact the Pressure from a very large number of emigrant Canarians came to open the doors and negotiate with Franco.
In the case of El Elvira, they were also traveling in crowded conditions, “because it was a fishing boat, or even a boat, a semi-yacht, which carried more than a hundred people, and the “fresh water took up a lot of space.” , just like food. The occupants of this precarious boat ended up in Carúpano, Venezuela.
The return to the islands and popular culture
But there is a very important difference between the 20th century emigration and the rest of the emigrations that should be noted: the 20th century emigration is an emigration with a high return rate.
Both that of Cuba, which reached the crash of the 29th, which was very high, that the Venezuelan border was closed with the government of Juan Vicente Gómez. “And after the 1930s, emigration to Venezuela began. » This explains why the cultural imprints of Cuba and Venezuela are so great today in the archipelago, because historically this return was the other day.
“But they come from people who wanted to leave their people without having restored their heritage. This is for example the case of the famous Nicolás Estévez Borges who lived all his life in Havana and founded the San Francisco de Paula women’s hospital and donated a silver cross to his hometown of Icón watermark of 49 kilograms, which is still preserved there. . And he never came back.
Currently we wonder how the villages of Senegal and Mauritania will explain that young people go on a trip to Europe and are swallowed up by the sea, or we never hear from them, but we know how the Canarian families experienced this silence, especially women who found themselves in a sort of civil void in the eyes of all.
Since divorce was not legally permitted, they cried until it was officially proven that their husband had died at sea. “And it was an extremely complicated problem,” explains Hernández, “because often men were heading into Venezuela or Cuba and who knew where they were. “Popular culture knows that the sea is death.”
The Cuban point, the tenth in Venezuela, is a round trip, “which contains so many elements of melancholy. Like the folía, which has the same name in Venezuela. Or our malagueña, which is the old fandango. La folía, music locked in Canarian popular culture, contains all the pains of the history of a people. The Canarian emigrants killed time during the trip by singing songs and playing at the stake. Praying that the wind will be favorable and that the Atlantic hurricane season does not arrive early and longing to:
All the canaries
they want to come back
to the beloved land
who saw them born.
You followed Venezuela.
