Salvador, a Black public crier, appears in Caracas council records

Church officials in Coro proposed using church funds to buy 12 enslaved Africans from Maracaibo to advance building work. Their appeal framed Indigenous population decline as a labor shortage,...

The Caracas cabildo petitioned the Crown for permission to bring 1,000 enslaved Africans into the province. This is a record of local officials seeking a larger coerced workforce, not evidence that...

A prosecutor of the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo ordered the seizure of property belonging to former governors Pedro Fajardo and Alonso Suárez del Castillo. A related Caracas record involved a...

Royal officers investigated a slave ship lost near Capatárida on the Falcón coast. After an accident, only two enslaved Africans remained in the area; the ship continued to Maracaibo, where the...

A cabildo order told shopkeepers not to conduct business with enslaved Black and mulatto people. The notice was proclaimed by Juan, a mulatto in a city official's service. It records restrictions on...

During preparations to pacify Nirgua, Captain Juan Pérez Hurtado contributed three enslaved people. The cabildo record situates enslaved labor within colonial military expansion against Indigenous...

Caracas cabildo records discussed lots given to Black and mulatto residents and later listed lots they purchased. The minutes offer evidence of Black and mixed-race residents making claims to urban...

Caracas cabildo minutes recorded an enslaved Black woman belonging to Andrés García as suffering from Hansen’s disease, then called the disease of Saint Lazarus. The brief entry places a woman’s...

A Cocorote mine register recorded a birth on 9 August 1643 in a ledger titled “Memoria de los negros y negras que nacen en mi tiempo.” The child’s name is not preserved in the published summary. The...

Francisca González, identified as a free mulatta, petitioned Caracas’s cabildo for half a lot; the council granted it. Her successful claim shows a free woman of African descent negotiating for...