Crown permits twelve enslaved people for Cubagua pearl fishery

Sancho Ortiz de Urrutia and Juan de Urrutia received permission to take 30 enslaved Africans to Cubagua. The factor Antón López arrived in April, but protests by the island's alcalde limited...

The Spanish Crown approved a capitulation with Welser agents concerning the governance, conquest, and settlement of Venezuela. The agreement framed colonization as an armed commercial enterprise and...

An inventory of Pedro de Herrera's possessions on Cubagua listed an enslaved African woman with two children. The record exposes how colonial property accounts rendered a family as assets; it does not...

A Cubagua inventory associated with Miguel de Gaviria listed a Black child called Andresico. The surviving entry is brief and framed by ownership records; it offers a rare personal name while...

Francisco Portillo's Cubagua inventory noted an unnamed Black man aboard a vessel. The entry reflects the routine conversion of people into listed property in the pearl economy, while the archive...

A royal decree dated 27 October 1535 instructed officials to investigate illegal enslavement in the province of Venezuela, which the Crown viewed as a center of illicit Indigenous slavery. The measure...