Incomplete freedom case names three-year-old María and her mother

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...

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...

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,...

While seeking to capture the maroon leader Andresote, governor Sebastián García de la Torre issued a proclamation declaring him a traitor and offering 600 pesos and pardon to whoever killed him. The...

Caviedes, a pardo man enslaved by Joseph de Caviedes, said he saved half his assessed value through wages earned in rest time; his father supplied the other half. His master demanded 500 pesos. The...