Authorities capture a canoe carrying 13 fugitive enslaved people

After Spain returned clandestinely to Venezuela and was captured, a special colonial tribunal sentenced him to death. The sentence prescribed a public execution and the display of his severed head and...

Colonial officials uncovered a plot involving Francisco Javier Pirela, a pardo militia sublieutenant, and French privateers from Saint-Domingue. Historical accounts describe a planned uprising for...

Colonial authorities carried out the death sentence in Caracas’s Plaza Mayor, publicly hanging and dismembering España. His head and body parts were sent to La Guaira and other places named in the...

The intended date for the Maracaibo rising arrived, but the plot was thwarted before the plan could be carried out. The account describes Pirela confessing hours before the expected start, followed by...

Francisco de Miranda landed with an expedition at La Vela de Coro, seized Fort San Pedro, and raised a tricolor flag challenging Spanish colonial rule. The expedition withdrew within days after...

Caracas’s cabildo removed Spanish officials and formed a new governing body, beginning the revolutionary process that led to independence. Pardo representation appeared in the municipal act, but the...

The Supreme Junta of Caracas prohibited the international introduction and trade of enslaved people. The measure did not emancipate people already enslaved, end domestic sale, or dismantle...

The Congress of Venezuela declared independence from Spain. The declaration asserted sovereignty and criticized colonial conquest, but did not abolish slavery or free enslaved people. That omission...

The Federal Constitution prohibited the commercial introduction of enslaved people, reaffirming an 1810 Caracas decree. It did not abolish slavery inside Venezuela: people already enslaved remained...

Francisco de Miranda’s martial law, issued at La Victoria, called free men aged fifteen to fifty-five to take up arms. The rule excluded enslaved men while applying to free Black and mixed-race men....