Abstract

While foreigners played an important role in populating the Spanish Indies, prejudices against them and the periodical bans from staying in the territory reduced their visibility in the paperwork generated by government officials. Nonetheless, an inquisitive look into the correspondence of the governors of the Circum-Caribbean islands and provinces gives us a glance at their national diversity, numerical, economic, and commercial importance, beneficial to the scarce population in the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries in the region. Their integration into the Spanish society, where only governments kept track of their national origin, makes them a fourth element which nourished the formation of the Caribbean people, in addition to the Spaniards, Amerindians and Africans.