Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Numerous Communications With Commercial Europe, With
The Caribbean Sea (Which We Have Described As A Mediterranean With
Many Outlets), Have Exercised A Powerful Influence On The Progress
Of Society In The Five Provinces Of Venezuela And In The Island Of
Cuba.
In no other part of Spanish America has civilization assumed
a more European character.
The great number of Indian cultivators
who inhabit Mexico and the interior of New Grenada, impart a
peculiar, I may almost say, an exotic aspect, on those vast
countries. Notwithstanding the increase of the black population, we
seem to be nearer to Cadiz and the United States, at Caracas and
the Havannah, than in any other part of the New World.
When, in the reign of Charles V, social distinctions and their
consequent rivalries were introduced from the mother-country to the
colonies, there arose in Cumana and in other commercial towns of
Terra Firma, exaggerated pretensions to nobility on the part of
some of the most illustrious families of Caracas, distinguished by
the designation of los Mantuanos. The progress of knowledge, and
the consequent change in manners, have, however, gradually and
pretty generally neutralized whatever is offensive in those
distinctions among the whites. In all the Spanish colonies there
exist two kinds of nobility. One is composed of creoles, whose
ancestors only from a very recent period filled great stations in
America. Their prerogatives are partly founded on the distinction
they enjoy in the mother-country; and they imagine they can retain
those distinctions beyond the sea, whatever may be the date of
their settlement in the colonies.
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