“We northern Europeans have a strange extravagant prejudice against the Spanish people. I have been living on intimate terms with all the classes of society from the Capuchins to the Viceroy. I have become as familiar with the Spanish tongue as I am with my own…. All these people possess, in my mind, the elements of grand character … warm, convivial, of likable candor, or great simplicity of manner….” — Alexander von Humboldt, late fall, 1799 writing from Caracas, Venezuela
The above impressions only deepened when, soon thereafter, Humboldt and Bonpland made their way to the Llanos of Venezuela. A flat, almost treeless plain covered with short grass, stretching from the Orinoco deltas to the Andes, the Llanos are considered by experienced explorers to be the “most remarkable plains of the world.” They appeared to be one vast desolation. But no, cattle could be seen miles away, dotting the landscape, and homesteads, or hatos, were there as well. Ranchers lived many miles apart from each other, yet, the hospitality of the people never failed. At every hato they were cared for, fed sumptuously, and always treated to that grand finale, a pitch black coffee, “so strong as to keep the travelers awake half the night.”
When Humboldt visited, Venezuela, known as the Captaincy General of Venezuela, consisted of seven “United Provinces,” covering an enormous mass of land covering over 420,000 square miles (over a tenth of the size of the continental US), wedged between Colombia and Brazil. Her population was one million, of which about 125,000 were Indians and 200,000, Black. Humboldt was amazed that all population elements of Venezuela — the Black, the Indian, the Mestizo, and the Criollo majority (Spanish descendants) could “be fused into a living, cultural symphony.”
Three centuries before Humboldt, Christopher Columbus, on his third voyage in 1498, had stopped in Trinidad, named by the famed navigator for the Holy Trinity. He entered the Gulf of Paria and planted the Spanish flag on the Paria Peninsula in Venezuela. Later on he landed on the Venezuelan island of Margarita.
When in the gulf, he investigated the “Grande River” (the Orinoco) and seeing and experiencing the great torrents of fresh water flowing into the gulf, he understood that he had discovered another continent — “otro mundo”, because he saw that the vastness of the Orinoco and the water it cast onto the sea was far more than what an island can produce. He was convinced he had reached the outer regions of Paradise.
Since Christopher Columbus is little studied today, few know what our grandparents knew: he interpreted his travels and discoveries by the light of Scripture. He sometimes interpreted wrongly — especially in his calculations of the size of the earth — but his desire to do God’s work cannot be questioned.
On his return from this, his third voyage, the voyage in which he planted the Spanish flag in Venezuela and considered her to be the foyer to Paradise, he wrote to the king and queen of Spain. He was in chains as he wrote, for the Spanish soldier, Francisco de Bobadilla, who had been sent to Hispaniola by the sovereigns, was incensed when he saw that Columbus had hanged 5 rebellious Spanish soldiers in an attempt to restore order in what was becoming an anarchic situation. Upon arrival in Spain, he was immediately released and his honors restored. Bobadilla was unable to restore order and was recalled in 1502 but he and his fleet disappeared in a hurricane.
Columbus’ letter is most remarkable considering his chains and also his deteriorating health, including insomnia and rheumatoid arthritis, which many believe brought his death a few years later, shortly after his fourth and final voyage. The letter is written by a man absolutely confident and assured of his navigational abilities. Indeed, several of the men who sailed with him later expressed their amazement at his uncanny ability to know when and where to sail and his utmost confidence when on the seas. In fact, his final voyage resulted in shipwreck near Jamaica, but that was because he allowed his men to turn north too soon, against his better judgement.
In the letter, Columbus expressed his belief he had “found the outer regions of Paradise because the polestar rotation had given him the impression that the fleet was climbing. The weather had become extremely mild, and the flow of fresh water into the Gulf of Paria was, as he saw, enormous. All this could have one explanation only — they had mounted toward the temperate heights of the Earthly Paradise, heights from which the rivers of Paradise ran into the sea. Columbus had found all such signs of the outer regions … in his reading, and indeed they were widely known…. [Brittanica].”
On the basis of that letter, the Queen agreed to a fourth voyage in which, incredibly, Columbus came within a hair’s breadth of the Pacific Ocean. But that was not to be. He died shortly after his return, still convinced he had reached Asia sailing west.
But he had opened the doors to the Spanish colonization of much of America and to “three centuries of culture and civilization and progress”, to quote Simón Bolívar. That expression was affirmed by Alexander von Humboldt as he explored and analyzed the vast regions of Venezuela and Colombia while all the time deploring Spanish rule, and this, despite the fact that “enlightenment” France had refused to grant him passport for his travels and yet “obscurantist” Spain had. It was Spain who wanted more exploration and scientific inquiry, not France.
But Humboldt, whom i admire greatly, could not see beyond his prejudices. The same is the case with many.
A mere two decades after Humboldt’s and Bonpland’s visit, Venezuela had lost a third of her population in what can only be described as one vast bloodletting whose repercussions are still felt to this day. Bolívar had his way: he lamented that he had destroyed three centuries of progress.
