ABSTRACT

The vast region 'discovered' by the wealth-seeking Europeans, through tentative probing of the Caribbean in the waning years of the fifteenth century and significant explorations of the mainland by the 1520s, proved to be a very heterogeneous New World. As pointed out by Wiarda: 'Strikingly, and very much unlike the United States, the colonial legacy of Spanish-Portuguese institutions survived the independence movements of the Latin American territories in the early nineteenth century and the initial stirrings of modernization and lingered on into the early twentieth century'. Christopher Columbus's initial voyage in 1492 did not immediately lead to major efforts at Spanish settlement. The late colonial period brought changes not entirely to the liking of that part of the elite with historical roots in the country, rather than close ties to Spain. During the colonial era kinship ties were very important because force and intimidation were applied and the courts were frequently instruments of punishing enemies and rewarding friends and relatives.