Portuguese colonization of the Americas by the general elections to its first "Câmara" (City Council) on August 22, 1532, is symbolically considered the birthplace of democracy in the Americas. From 1534 to 1536, 15 Captaincy colonies were created in Portuguese America. The captaincies were autonomous, and mostly private, colonies of the Portuguese Empire, each owned and run by a Captain-major. In 1549, due to their failure and limited success, the Captaincy Colonies of Brazil were united into the Governorate General of Brazil. The captaincy colonies were reorganized as provincial districts to the Governorate. The captaincies continued to be ruled by their hereditary captain-majors but they
Monarchies in the Americas status of an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1954, from which Aruba was split in 1986 as a separate constituent country of the larger kingdom. The former Netherlands Antilles again split as three areas in 2010. The monarch is represented in each region by the Governor of Aruba, Alfonso Boekhoudt, the Governor of Curaçao, Frits Goedgedrag, and the Governor of Sint Maarten, Eugene Holiday. The British Crown possesses a number of overseas territories in the Americas, for whom Queen Elizabeth II is monarch. In North America are Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands,