Royal accounts record money from the sale of Diego

Bishop Martín de Calatayud began a royal inspection of pearl fisheries on 16 June 1544. His visit examined the treatment and living conditions of Indigenous workers. He ordered better daily food and...

Juan Pérez de Tolosa began another inspection of pearl fisheries on 17 October 1548. During this visita he appointed Pedro de Gámez as a public defender for Indigenous people, empowered to report...

Bishop Miguel Gerónimo de Ballesteros asked the Crown to send 30 enslaved Africans to maintain Coro's acequia and dam, originally built by Indigenous labor. His request linked African enslavement to...

Fundación Empresas Polar’s chronology dates an enslaved African man named Miguel’s escape from punishment at the San Felipe de Buría mines to 30 November 1552. Its account describes his flight as...

A royal decree of 25 June 1558 prohibited the future use of Indigenous people in pearl fishing and specified that Africans could be used for the work. In practice, the measure shifted the burden of...

On 4 February 1573, Agustín de Ancona asked Caracas’s cabildo for permission to use his enslaved man Francisco as a miner with his own crew. The petition records both the extraction economy and the...

A royal cédula authorized the purchase in Cabo Verde and Guinea and transport of 150 enslaved Africans to Margarita's pearl fishery. The order shows the Crown's role in organizing coerced labor across...

The Crown authorized the transport of 25 additional enslaved Africans to Margarita for fortification construction. Their coerced labor was to serve colonial defense infrastructure; the surviving...

Maracaibo's council empowered Rodrigo de Argüelles to seek 250 enslaved people on credit for cattle raising and other production; Carora made a similar request. These were requests, not a verified...

Representatives of the province’s cabildos instructed procurator Simón de Bolívar to present 27 petitions to the Council of the Indies. These included a request to import 3,000 enslaved people from...