Caracas's cabildo seeks hundreds of enslaved workers amid disease and land expansion

A Caracas cabildo land register, described as a “sensuario a solares,” names nineteen Black, mulatto, and morena women. Some are explicitly identified as free; the record does not establish that every...

A Cocorote mine register recorded the death of Antonio Cachanga, an enslaved Black man, on 4 July 1662. The entry notes three yards of coarse cloth used for his burial shroud. Its attention to the...

On 27 August 1663, a Cocorote register recorded the death of Juan Bran, an enslaved man, and the cotton cloth used for his shroud. The entry preserves his name but little else about his life. Paired...

The Cocorote mine register records that Miguel, described as a married enslaved man, died on 16 October 1663. It lists the cotton cloth used for his burial. The record briefly makes visible a family...

Caracas cabildo minutes record an official asking for the whereabouts of Francisco de Aguirre Villela. Manuel, described as his enslaved mulatto, replied that his master was in the countryside. The...

A Caracas cabildo record copied a will attributed to Rafael de Flettes. It directed his executors to sell six enslaved people judicially, for cash or on credit, and place the proceeds into a rent...

A debt or annuity instrument issued in El Tocuyo listed Baltasar, aged fourteen, and Luis, aged forty, as enslaved Black men among the security for an obligation benefiting the local hospital. Their...

An El Tocuyo dowry inventory for the marriage of Captain Antonio Ruiz Valero and María Ribero de Lozada included Juan, a sixteen-year-old Black boy, and Jacinta, a ten-year-old mulatta girl, both...

Caracas councilors proposed closing pulperías after the nine o’clock bell, citing enslaved and Indigenous service workers who brought produce to trade at night. The account also says shopkeepers...

An incomplete file titled “Liberation of an enslaved woman” names María, a mulatta child about three years old, and identifies her mother Francisca as mulatta. The surviving description does not...