Emigration to America

Tenerife has kept a close relationship with America since the beginning of the process of colonization of the New World including being part of the numerous expeditions, conquests or just immigrants so we have an important exchange of human traffic and plant and animal species as well.

The wine industry around 1670 saw the emigration of many families, especially to Cuba and Venezuela. The interest was further cultivated by the Crown who wished to settle empty areas of America in order to prevent its occupation by other powers as was the case with Jamaica for the English or French Guiana or the West for Spanish.

It is also important to note many left the island to the new destination of Columbia to grow cocoa and tobacco in Cuba and Venezuela. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century this emigration resulted in the almost complete depopulation of villages like Buenavista del Norte, and El Sauzal Vilaflor.

A memorial to this emigration from the island is on the outskirts of Santo Domingo in the town of San Carlos de Tenerife made in 1684. This town was founded with a clear strategic goal as it allowed the city to preserve the influences of the French in a predominantly Spanish island.

Between 1720 and 1730 the Canneries were transferred to the Crown with 176 families, including people from Tenerife and the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. In 1726, around 25 island families migrated to America to complete the founding City of Montevideo. Four years later in 1730, another group to found the City of San Antonio Texas in the United States.

In 1777 to 1783 the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife dismissed help request for the founders of St. Bernard, State of Louisiana, and some shipments bound for Florida.

The economic problems arising from shortages of raw materials and the distance from Europe, emigration to America, Cuba and Venezuela, continued in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. New policies were enacted to protect the economy of Canaria and the boom of the tourism industry, the migration was reversed and now Tenerife saw a return of people to the island including descendants and other immigrants influence by the germination to move there over the last five centuries