In colonial Spanish America, there were immensely complex systems of identity and power. One aspect of this is the distinction between the Peninsular Spaniards, that is those who were born in Spain and allowed to travel to the New World only after having proved their purity of blood, and the white Spaniards born in the New World. The latter were known as criollos and as a body were designated as mantuanos. By revealing cultural and religious manifestations, as once public and allegorical, of the partisan conflict between the mantuanos and Peninsular residents in the pre-independence era, the documentation that traces the historical development of the Fiesta de la Naval—a commemoration of the Christian victory over the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto (1571)—affords the source of information of the greatest symbolic significance for the study of the social, religious, and musical repercussions that sustained criollo power between 1687 and 1810. An appendix lists payments made between 1709 and 1812 the three categories of musicians: the gallery musicians of the Caracas cathedral; the military band of the black and mixed-race battalions of the province; the musicians from confraternities of pardo freemen. The nature and employment of each of these groups is described. The list of payments shows that the Fiesta de la Naval involved the whole of urban society and shifted the center of religious power away from the cathedral and toward the space occupied by the manutanos. The Fiesta was thus an example of Venezuelan cultural ownership and social and racial identify that formed part of the legitimization of the mantuanos power as opposed to the power of the Peninsular Spaniards.
