Given the dearth of studies on Italian influences in Latin America, Italia y los italianos en la historia y en la cultura de Venezuela should be a welcome addition for Latin Americanists. Unfortunately, Marisa Vannini de Gerulewicz defines her objectives so broadly that the result is superficial and without focus. She attempts to follow Italian influences on Venezuelan culture, as well as Italian immigration to Venezuela. Beginning with Columbus’ voyages, she stops just short of the massive Italian immigration during the 1950s.

In the first section Vannini shows the transmission of Italian culture to Venezuela in literature, music, art, law, and customs. She points to the magazine El Cojo Ilustrado, begun in 1896, as the main purveyor of Italian culture. This publication carried literary selections of Italian writers, reviewed operas presented in the nineteenth century, and reproduced works of Renaissance artists. In a few instances Vannini shows direct influence of Italian styles on Venezuelan writers, but generally the focus remains on the Italian artist. In Part Two she details contacts between Italy and Venezuela from the time of discovery through the nineteenth century. Of special importance for New World exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were advances in cartography at the University of Genoa. Vannini discusses letters in Italian archives written by Italians who had travelled to the New World and concludes that they are valuable sources for colonial historians.

The third and most significant section of this work treats Italian immigration to Venezuela. Here the author attempts too much by going back to the days of Columbus. There follows a chronological review of other Italians: the first mariners to land in Venezuela, merchants and missionaries of colonial days, revolutionaries involved in the independence struggle, and finally, the immigrants of the late nineteenth century. In trying to cover four centuries Vannini leaves no time for tackling the important questions of immigration history. Problems of assimilation, job dispersion, government policy, and family structure receive only summary attention.

This work remains little more than an impressionistic study of Italian influences, inadequate both in conception and execution. Lack of analysis, reliance on biographical sketches, and disjointed narrative make it an unrewarding book for intellectual and immigration historians.