Dowry inventory assigns enslaved children as property

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...

Councilors cited the deaths of enslaved people from disease and the loss of Indigenous labor while proposing that the Crown license 500 or 1,000 more enslaved Africans. The record links epidemic...

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...

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...

Francisco de Suñiga, identified as a free moreno, accompanied the capture of Spanish smugglers in Choroní. The case concerned contraband that included dealings in enslaved Africans and foreigners. His...

A report to the Crown discussed a dispute involving an enslaved Black man captured by an enemy and then escaped from that captor. The catalog description preserves neither the man’s name nor the final...

A royal cédula established the Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas and granted it privileged trade between Spain and Venezuela. The company later helped organize the colonial export economy,...