Venezuela's Demographic Origins

From Venezuela's Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart, by Carlos Lizarralde (Codex Novellus, 2024), Kindle pp. 16-18:

The War of Spanish Succession that ended in 1714 brought significant changes around the world and Phillip V, a French-born king, to Madrid. A new royal ideology wanted more central control throughout the empire in the Americas, less power for Creoles, and a stricter social order. A French-influenced bureaucracy also responded to their century’s obsession with organizing and classifying every aspect of society. In Spanish America, they would find a unique challenge. Most societies there had been aggressively jumping ethnic and racial lines for two centuries. This was especially evident in the Venezuelan territories. The population of New Spain—current-day Mexico—had always been primarily indigenous, and those of Cuba and Hispaniola were already mainly African. By the early 1700s sparsely populated Venezuela enjoyed more numerical balance between those of Spanish origin or descent, African origin or descent, and Amerindians, than other colonies.

Influenced by the new winds from Madrid, both Spanish-born inhabitants and Creoles in every Spanish colony became obsessed throughout the 1700s by the classification of every person’s ethnic descent. Those of African and Spanish descent had always been called Mulattos. Mestizos were those of Indian and Spanish origin. The classification became more formal, and especially in New Spain, more complex. In a 1763 painting, the offspring of Spanish and Mulatta were called Morisco. Children of Spanish and Morisca descent were called Albinos. The children of Spanish and Albina were labelled Torna atrás, or “go back,” presumably because the physical features of grandparents would visibly return by the third generation.

Fascinated by everyone’s ethnic descent, and charged with imposing greater social control, Spanish colonial administrators tightened the regulations of freedom, rights, and privileges for different groups. There were many caste-based restrictions on who could work where; who was allowed to rise within the army, the church, the world of commerce, colonial government; who could worship in particular churches and not others; who could wear certain clothes; who could travel with what permits and where could they go; who could own what and how much of it; or who could get what kind of education.

While an intricate classification dominated the Spanish Americas’ imagination, the civil administration of the marginal colonies in the Venezuelan territories lacked the resources to replicate much complexity. In practical terms, the Venezuelan caste system concerned seven groups of non-slaved people: 1) the Spanish-born; 2) those born in the Americas of Spanish origin or Creoles; 3) those born in the Canary Islands; 4) indigenous people integrated into colonial society; 5) those indigenous in some form of bondage; 6) those formerly enslaved and now free Africans or their descendants; and finally, 7) those of mixed-race, be they Mestizos, Zambos, or Mulattos and their descendants. The latter were increasingly known as Pardos.

Colloquially, the word “Pardo” designates anyone not of pure Spanish, Indigenous, or African descent, but rather a mixture of them. In a more literal sense, Pardos simply have brown skin.

Often enough, documents from the time group every person of mixed-race as a Pardo. The imaginary castes that divided everyone of mixed-race into dozens of categories became, in practice, mute. The regulations and restrictions regarding those of mixed-race increasingly focused on Pardos. The 1700s were also years of relative plenty in the Venezuelan territories. The prices of cocoa and sugar, indigo, and other plantation-economy products were booming on a global scale. While Venezuela never had the extensive or ideal lands for cultivating sugar that made Haiti, and later Cuba, spectacularly wealthy, the economy grew significantly compared to the hard times of the 1600s. As cities and towns across the country prospered, the population grew, and Pardos specifically grew as a share of the population. Little noticed at the time and barely mentioned by contemporary historians, the increasing percentage of the Pardo population would change everything.