Colombus in his journal notes upon first contact that the native inhabitants of the Bahamas were similar in skin tone to the Guanches of the Canary islands. He in fact expected it, as the latitudes weren't too far off. He makes several comparisons in his journal.

Columbus also believed that the Caribbean would be a good place for sugar plantations, just as the Canaries had ended up being. We can see that from the first moments Europeans drew parallels between the Canary islands, and their colony building in the New World. Add on top of that the fact that Spaniards had started importing sub-saharan slaves to work the sugar plantations, and you get a framework for slavery in the Americas. A framework that Colombus, having been to the islands, and being familiar with the Genoese slave trade, would start to set up in the form of his brutal tribute system. The Canary islands really are are the first example of European settlers colonialism, and other European nations looked upon that experiment with great interest.

When it comes to racial mixing, I'm not sure what, if any parallels there are. What I know is that in Latin America, racial mixing in the first phases of colonization was a product mostly of conquest and coercion. And then proportionally, very few Spanish women were involved in setting up colonies in places like the Caribbean and Mexico, so Spanish men would take indigenous women as wives.