Historians of prenational Venezuelan history can stop feeling like step-children, for the editors in charge of compiling and publishing the nation’s documents have decided to include those which pertain to the rich earlier period. Previous volumes, in this series of sesquicentennial publications, covering later periods, have been discussed in this journal by Jane DeGrummond (HAHR, February 1962, November 1962, and February 1965). If only because Venezuela was the first South American territory to be explored and settled by Spain, we should have a series of fundamental documents in print so as to make some beginning toward a systematic if not a “scientific” history of the country. Certainly, the syntheses now available are seriously inadequate. For that matter every other Latin American country should consider publishing such a series.
The first of the two volumes under review begins appropriately with Columbus’ letter describing his third voyage. The admiral sailed from San Lucar harbor on May 30, 1498, and discovered the northeast coast of Venezuela in August of that year. His letter, which exhibits distinct paranoiac tendencies, is little more than a whining apologia and defense. This is followed by more illuminating chapters from Fernando Columbus’ Life. The Vespucci letter of September 4, 1504, apparently an identical account of the expedition which Columbus made, is printed along with an engaging historical preface by the editor concerning the “enigma” of Vespucci, who had accompanied Alonso de Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa in 1499 on the first expedition to explore the entire Caribbean coast.
The bulk of the first volume consists of chapters from Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Historia. Las Casas made what Lewis Hanke terms the “first serious attempt at planned colonization in the New World.” The good padre was trying to prove that the basis for successful colonization was an agricultural community working with the Indians, not enslaving them. His chapters relate the tribulations which he encountered in Spain, his protracted fight with Oviedo and ultimate “triumph,” and the sad fate which befell the colony. The volume concludes with Martín Fernández de Navarrete’s account of the discoveries made on Tierra Firme after Columbus’ voyage and a potpourri of appendices including the Bull of Alexander VI, the requerimiento, the Laws of Burgos, and other legislation and royal ordinances.
In 1528 Charles V, who was hard-pressed by his creditors, the Welsers of Augsburg, gave them all of Venezuela. Thus Germans, not Spaniards, guided the destiny of Venezuela, or at least the western part, from 1528 to 1546. The second volume, number 55 in the series, contains chapters from Girolamo Benzoni’s Historia del Mondo Nuovo relating to Cumaná, the Welsers, and Cubagua. The last of these, an island off the northeast coast, was the source of the pearl treasure and the site of the first European settlement in Venezuelan territory (1500), which was destroyed by a hurricane and earthquake in 1543. In addition there are almost one hundred pages of Nicolás Federmann’s “Historia Indiana.” In 1538 Federmann marched to the Colombian Andes, where he encountered Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and Sebastián de Benalcázar. This meeting resulted in a dispute which Charles V resolved by revoking the indefinite lease which he had given to the Fuggers and Welsers in 1528 as security for the loans made to the Crown.
Probably the most fascinating inclusion in the second volume is a letter written by a young German, Titus Neukomm, who had accompanied Federmann. It contains important historical information as well as detailed descriptions of the rites and customs of the Indians by an ingenuous and alert young man.
The utility of these volumes could have been enhanced by an index. They contain the raw material of history and should be in every library which purports to be a research center. However, librarians should be forewarned to have the books rebound before putting them on the shelves.
