Repression

From his vantage point in Madrid the Marqués de la Ensenada saw no reason to share Arriaga's balanced view. It is likely that his response to the events in Caracas was colored by his concern with important changes that were taking place in the empire as a whole.

Ten years of war with England, the War of Jenkin's Ear, had come to an end with the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. During the first months of 1750, at the same time as the Arriaga reports from Caracas were placed before him, Ensenada was meeting in the Council of the Indies with ex-colonial ministers, economists, and merchants with experience in the Atlantic trade. Deeply concerned about European competition for the products of their American colonies, these men favored a conservative commercial policy directed from the Council of the Indies, and they argued in support of a return to the traditional fleet system. Firmly opposed to independent trade of the sort carried between Caracas and Veracruz, they were eager to see the resumption of the Guipuzcoana Company. They also favored the permanent elimination of the contract with the English South Sea Company, especially the slave asiento, which had been a source of controversy between Spain and England for decades.^[31] In October 1750, a commercial treaty between the two countries formally terminated the contract.^[32]

For most of Spanish America the end of the agreement with the South Sea Company had exclusively commercial importance. It meant, to the great relief of major export and import merchants, both in Spain and in the colonies, that the "annual ship" that the English had been allowed to send to the Indies would no longer sail.^[33] For Caracas, where the slaving aspect of the contract was more important than its commercial features, the abrogation of the asiento had a profound impact, heretofore entirely overlooked by historians, because there were no Spanish suppliers of slaves able to take the place of the English. More than two hundred slaves were sold by the asiento in Caracas in 1739, the last year before hostilities interrupted the trade, but it would be almost fifty years thereafter, when the English would again be allowed to trade in human cargoes with Spain's dominions, before that many slaves would enter the colony in a single year. The decision to eliminate the English contract meant, in effect, that cacao agriculture would increasingly depend on colony-born slaves and, when slavery proved insufficient, on free labor.

In their high-level deliberations in 1750 the Council of the Indies and the king's ministers most likely did not anticipate the difficulties Spanish traders would have in supplying slaves to the few colonies, like Caracas, which depended on them. Although several

of Ensenada's advisors were familiar with Caracas, there is no evidence that they foresaw the major transformation of the colony's labor base which an end to the English asiento implied.^[34] Similarly, there is nothing in the correspondence between the marqués and his counselors which suggests that they decided to take severe measures against the rebels of Caracas for any reason other than the most obvious one, that the Leonists had presented an armed challenge to the authority of the monarch. Yet it was known in Spain that in the Caracas province there was an abundance, for some an excess, of Canary Islanders, a people often seen as both contentious and lazy when viewed through the distorting filter of ethnic bias common to many peninsular Spaniards. Although it was not an articulated objective of the policies adopted for Caracas in 1750, it is plausible that Ensenada believed that any shortages of African slaves in the Caracas cacao groves caused by the end of the English asiento would be made up by free, especially free isleño, labor. Such an idea would have been doubly appealing, for by ending dependency on trade with the English for slaves, gainful employment would be provided for the colony's abundant Canary Islander immigrant population.

Whether or not this fundamental change in the nature of cacao labor was a conscious goal of the king's ministers in Spain, many of the Canary Islanders in Caracas did indeed view events there as purposefully directed at them. Beginning with the low prices of the 1740s, isleños like Juan Francisco de León and his sons could see their hopes of becoming slaveholders and hacienda owners in their own right diminishing, and they could begin to imagine a future in which they would labor, not on their own cacao arboledas, but as wage earners on the haciendas of the established Caracas elite instead. It was in opposition to this disturbing prospect that they had become willing to carry their protest to the edge of insurrection and beyond. In a letter written in 1751 to convince a canario compatriot of the need to join his father's cause, Nicolás de León wrote that the Basques were "trying to make slaves of all of us." He most likely meant "slaves" quite literally.^[35]

Several of Ensenada's advisors recommended a policy for Caracas that continued the attitude of clemency begun by Arriaga, but in the end those whose counsels he followed argued for a much more forceful course of action.^[36] This hard-line position favored

restoration of the Guipuzcoana Company as well as the arrest and punishment of the rebels and those who had encouraged them in secret. Three of Ensenada's advisors who favored repression had previous administrative experience with Caracas. One was Gabriel de Zuloaga, governor in Caracas from 1737 to 1747. Zuloaga was no friend of the Tuy Valley cacao planters, and during much of his term as governor he had carried on a determined legal battle with the isleños of Panaquire, questioning the legitimacy of their right to establish a church and permanent settlement on the site where they had planted their haciendas. Zuloaga angered mantuano and more modest immigrant hacendados alike with his firm resolve that to prevent seaborne smuggling all cacao harvested in the Tuy had to reach La Guaira by way of Caracas, that is, by muleback over the expensive and sometimes impassable overland routes.

So disliked was this Basque governor that lively rumors circulated early in 1745 to the effect that a conspiracy had been formed to rid the province of both him and the Guipuzcoana Company. After León's rebellion, Zuloaga could see no reason not to use force to put Caracas in its place, and he argued that a temporizing policy would only encourage future uprisings. He suggested that a demonstration of royal authority would impress and subdue his former charges, for the typical Caraqueño, he derisively claimed, was timid and cowardly. Referring to the rumored plot to kill him in 1745, Zuloaga reported that he had taken up the challenge and gone to a designated spot "alone, with a friend and lackey, and never did they dare it." He thought that two hundred soldiers would be enough to control the entire province.^[37]

The second voice in favor of major reforms for Caracas was that of don Sebastián de Eslava, first viceroy of the viceroyalty of New Granada after its resurrection in 1739, and a contemporary of Zuloaga in the Indies service. Eslava, who had served as viceroy for nearly a decade, had been Zuloaga's immediate superior from 1739 to 1742, when Venezuela was part of the New Grandad viceroyalty. During those years Governor Zuloaga had struggled successfully to separate Venezuela from the administrative authority of Santa Fe de Bogotá. In his arguments at the time Zuloaga gave free rein to his limited opinion of the people he governed: given "the genius for intrigue of the natives of the Province of Venezuela," he wrote to the king, if their governor were to have his author-

ity and freedom of action limited by the distant viceroy, it would "encourage them to carry on with even greater freedom their impossible notions."^[38] Whether Eslava accepted Zuloaga's evaluation of Caraqueño attitudes is not known, and he did not have Zuloaga's direct experience with Caracas, but in 1750 Eslava was both a war hero and the most senior colonial administrator with experience on the Spanish Main,^[39] and his opinions therefore held considerable weight with the Marqués de la Ensenada, who solicited them on behalf of the Council of the Indies.

Eslava believed that a demonstration of the king's military strength was needed in Caracas, but his lack of firsthand knowledge of the province spared him the animosity that recent governors held for the Caracas elite, and the objectivity this afforded him may have been the source of Eslava's original and most important contribution to the high-level debate over the problems in the colony. He believed that there was no natural or lasting bond between the first-family planters of the colony and the low-class and contentious isleños, and he argued that it would be possible to gain the loyalty of the elite if the Guipuzcoana Company were made more Caraqueño and less Basque. To a certain extent this could be accomplished by a change in the Company's image, and Eslava suggested that the name of the enterprise be changed from the Real Compañía Guipuzoana de Caracas to simply the Compañía de Caracas . It would also be necessary to alter the structure of the monopoly somewhat, and Eslava proposed to Ensenada that, once the province had been pacified, the principal hacienda owners among the Caracas elite be encouraged to become shareholders and even members of the board of directors of a reformed Company. As a model he suggested the Havana Company, founded in 1740 to handle the export of Cuban tobacco, which had been organized to allow for the investment of Cuban capital, and he noted that Havana planters were satisfied with the commercial profits they received from their tobacco. In due course Eslava's proposal proved to be a successful strategy for Caracas as well.^[40]

The last of Ensenada's advisors who was both personally familiar with Caracas and in favor of a strong royal response to the turmoil there was Antonio José Alvarez y Abreu, Marqués de la Regalia. His first career assignment as a young man brought him to Caracas in 1715, and his activities in 1721 to help enforce the author-

ity of the viceroy of New Granada involved him in Caracas's most important political struggle of the early eighteenth century. Although he was born in Santa Cruz de la Palma, Islas Canarias , in 1688, Alvarez y Abreu was no canario commoner. From the convent of San Agustin in Tenerife he went on to graduate as bachiller from Salamanca in 1707, and in 1711 he received the licentiate in Madrid. In 1714, the young letrado was given a commission in a post newly created by order of Philip V, the Alcalde Visitador de la Veeduria General del Comercio entre Castilla y las Indias . The primary responsibilities of this office were to uncover individuals involved in contraband trade and to observe in secret the behavior of royal officials, including the governors. Associated with these duties Alvarez y Abreu was given broad powers to investigate and to arrest those he suspected of smuggling, fraud, or disoyalty to the new Bourbon regime. His authority was superior to that of the governors, and viceroys were required to give him their assistance. He was also commissioned to recommend goods and produce that would be best traded to and from the colonies, and to make suggestions for policy both for the better execution of royal justice and for the increased benefit of the royal treasury.^[41]

Alvarez y Abreu arrived at Caracas in February 1715. Ostensibly there by appointment of the bishop to serve as professor of law in the Colegio Seminario de Santa Rosa de Lima, a post that gave him the distinction of being the first law professor in Caracas (the Colegio de Santa Rosa would become the Universidad de Caracas in 1725), in fact the position was primarily a cover for Alvarez y Abreu's secret mission to observe commerce and the king's administrators. In April 1716 he married a widow, doña Teresa de Bertodano, daughter of the governor of the province, don Alberto Bertodano y Navarra, a decision that no doubt limited Alvarez y Abreu's impartiality as much as it served to protect the interests of his new father-in-law.^[42]

The events of the next several years would thoroughly enmesh the alcalde visitador in local politics and society. Bertodano became governor of Puerto Rico in June 1716 and was replaced in Caracas by don Marcos de Betancourt y Castro, like Alvarez y Abreu a native of the Canary Islands. In 1718, the province of Venezuela was transferred from the executive authority of Santo Domingo to the new viceroyalty of New Granada, and in 1720 two agents of the

viceroy arrived in Caracas from Santa Fe de Bogotá to carry on the war against contraband commerce. These jueces comisionarios , the Basques Pedro Martín de Beato and Pedro José de Olavarriaga, accused governor Betancourt of abetting the smuggling, and in quick response to their recommendation the viceroy in Santa Fe, don Jorge de Villalonga, ordered that Betancourt be imprisoned in the Caracas jail. Alvarez y Abreu was named his temporary replacement, but this caused much resentment among the local elite, for it violated the traditional preogatives of alcaldes ordinarios of the Caracas cabildo to execute the responsibilities of the governor in his absence. Threats of fines and military intervention forced the Caraqueños's compliance, and from March to December 1721 Alvarez y Abreu served a short term as interim governor. He was then replaced by a new, permanent magistrate, Diego Portales y Meneses, who, as was seen earlier, began with the support of most of the Caracas citizenry in what would be a bitter struggle with viceroy Villalonga by jailing Beato and Olavarriaga and expelling the alcalde visitador, Alvarez y Abreu, from the colony.

Upon his return to Spain, Alvarez y Abreu continued what would be an impressive administrative career. In recognition of his legal talent and his efforts in the area of commerce and commercial revenue, he was granted the title of Marqués de la Regalía in 1726. Before the end of the decade he was oidor in the Casa de Contratación in Cádiz. By 1730 he was a minister of the Council of the Indies, and in 1732 he assumed responsibility for the asiento de negros , held by the English, which he had witnessed personally during its initial years in Caracas. At the time of the outbreak of rebellion in Caracas he had risen to the position of dean of the Council of the Indies, and it was in this capacity that he responded to the request of the Marqués de la Ensenada for information about the Guipuzcoana Company and the Caracas tumult: "In all centuries and all nations experience has shown that no insurrection . . . has been pacified by suave means," he wrote. The Caracas cabildo was following a strategy common to insurrectionists, namely to conceal their rebellious objectives with the argument that their just complaints had been kept from the king by corrupt and deceitful ministers. The Prince of Orange had used this tactic until he launched the Revolt of the Netherlands against Philip II in 1581.

The Marqués de la Regalía also argued that it was common for

nobles to urge the plebeians of their dominions to take up arms for causes that were of principal benefit to the nobility. to illustrate this point Alvarez y Abreu used an example from contemporary history, one that was no doubt fresh in the minds of his fellow councilors and their king. The war in Italy had been the major diplomatic interest of Philip V during his last years, and Ensenada himself, as secretary to the king's son the Infante Felipe, had played an active part in the campaigns, especially the conquest of the Duchy of Savoy, which he directed in 1743. In December 1746 the Republic of Genoa, allied with Spain but then occupied by the Austro-Sardinian enemy, rose up against its foreign oppressors in a popular struggle that was understood to have begun when a boy threw a rock at an Austrian soldier. It was also understood that the battle that liberated the Italian republic was inspired by the Genoese elite, but carried out, with considerable loss of life, by the commoners. This was a comparison that Alvarez y Abreu knew Ensenada would appreciate, and he arrogantly wrote that were the Caracas elite "better educated people," he would accuse them of consciously following the example of the Genoese gentry by inciting León and his followers among the provincial rabble to revolt.^[43]

The marquis Ensenada, ex-governor Zuloaga, ex-viceroy Eslava, and ex-governor and minister Alvarez y Abreu were all in agreement on two points: first, force should be used to bring Juan Francisco de León and the visible rebels to obedience, and second, in order to punish the elites who were the surreptitious authors of the uprising, the institutions and symbols of Caracas's prestige and authority, the officer of governor, the bishopric, and the university, should be transferred to Valencia, a much smaller town of markedly inferior status.^[44] There would be second thoughts about stripping Caracas of its provincial importance, but the decision to use force against León was ordered by the Marqués de la Ensenada to proceed without reservation. Precise instructions were written for the man selected by Ensenada to replace Arriaga as governor and to finish the pacification of Caracas, Brigadier General Felipe Ricardos.

Ricardos had served in the Italian dynastic wars of Philip V and had been promoted to brigadier in 1741. His promotion may have been related to his marriage to the daughter of the Duke of Montemar, who led Spain's armies in the reconquest of Orán from

the Moors in 1732, and who became military commander of Spain's Italian army from 1733 until 1742. So brilliant was Montemar's performance that he was given the Order of the Golden Fleece for his actions in North Africa and the title of duke, the status of grandee, and a large pension for his successes in Italy. The accession of Ferdinand VI in 1746 had marked the end of dynastic adventurism abroad, and two years later the nations of Europe sought to resolve their differences in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1748 the young officer Ricardos was named military governor of the island of Málaga. It was from this post, which must have seemed excessively quiet to him, that this veteran of the recent Italian wars, the son-in-law of Spain's most illustrious soldier, was called in 1750 to restore order and the Guipuzcoana Company to Caracas.^[45] His arrival in May 1751 meant the beginning of a royal military presence without precedent in the history of the town and province.

Ricardos was given precise instructions from Ensenada and he carried them out exactly. With regard to the Company, he was to see that it resumed operations in accord with its original charter. In effect this meant that the alternativa system was abandoned and several ships could take on cargo at the same time, which in turn meant that the colony's cacao planters were free to ship all of their beans to Veracruz on ships other than those of the Company. The only limit to the open trade to Mexico was the responsibility given to Ricardos to guarantee that a sufficient quantity of cacao was sent annually to Spain to meet the demand there. The very controversial matter of the price paid for beans was resolved by arranging for the price to be set every year by a committee comprised of the governor, a regidor of the cabildo, and the Guipuzcoana Company factor.

With regard to the rebels and architects of the rebellion, Ricardos was ordered to arrest Juan Francisco de León and his sons and to send them to Spain. This was to take place even if León offered no new resistance to the reestablishment of the Company. Several members of the Caracas gentry who were known to have encouraged the insurrection, Juan Félix Blanco, Miguel Blanco Uribe, and Juan Nicolás Ponte, were arrested and transported to Spain. Other elites to be deported for the same reason, but to no specified location, were the Maestre del Campo Luis Arias Altamirano, his brother Francisco Arias, Pedro Blanco de Ponte, Francisco de Paula

Toro y Istúriz (the second Marqués del Toro), and Francisco Nicolás Mijares y Tovar (the third Marqués de Mijares). Domingo Aguirre del Castillo, lieutenant to governors Castellanos and Arriaga, and Manuel de Sosa Betancourt, isleño archdeacon of the cathedral, were also to be arrested for their support of León. These men were to be apprehended and judgments were to be made against them without any delay or impediment. Finally, the general pardons issued by former governors to everyone involved in the tumult of 1749 were declared to be without effect.^[46]

The easiest part of Ricardos's mission was to secure the submission of Caracas. His troops numbered 600 soldiers and officers, half as many as had come with Arriaga, but many of Arriaga's soldiers had deserted, some of them subsequently joining León's movement.^[47] In contrast, Ricardos's men were experienced veterans of the Italian wars, they were better disciplined and, importantly, better paid. While most of this force was sent in pursuit of León and the other rebels in the valleys of Aragua and the Tuy, Ricardos moved against the elite of Caracas. Within days of his arrival in the town in June 1751 he informed the cabildo that the Guipuzcoana Company was again in operation by royal order.

Charged with fomenting rebellion in Caracas, the Conde de San Javier and Francisco de Ponte, representatives of the town at the royal court, were arrested in Madrid. Then followed the arrests of some of Caracas's foremost citizens. Lieutenant governor Domingo de Aguirre y Castillo, Juan Nicolás de Ponte, and Juan Félix Blanco de Villegas were seized and sent straightaway to Spain. In July Ricardos ordered other heads of gentry households confined to their haciendas in the countryside, a moderate move intended to avoid the backlash that might have occurred had more severe treatment been given them.^[48] As he wrote to Ensenada, Ricardos felt that "by applying themselves to field labor for a time they will improve their estates, help pay for the expenses of the Republic, and forget about the Company and the Province. And then, when things are more stable, there will be no problem in allowing them to return, thus by this prudent means we will prevent complaints and rumors from the younger people (para evitar conversaciones de la juventud )."^[49]

Temporary deportation and imprisonment were the limits of the physical punishment suffered by the Caracas elite. The measures

taken were sufficient for the purpose of reestablishing order, and Ricardos did not want to give the elite further cause to resist the royal authority that he represented. More severe sanctions might have been forthcoming were it not for the fact that it proved impossible to demonstrate direct involvement of prominent individuals in the León protest. Luis Arias Altamirano was the only member of Caracas elite society who was named by witnesses as an active supporter of the insurgency. After his capture Nicolás de León testified that in 1749, when the Vizcayan Martín de Echeverría arrived in Panaquire and challenged his father's authority, Juan Francisco de León had sent him to ask for advice from maestre de campo Arias. On that occasion Arias had counseled Nicolás to tell his father that he should expel Echeverría "and all the Vizcayans who were dominating this land," and that he should march to Caracas and call for the suspension of the Guipuzcoana Company with all the armed men he could gather together.^[50] But Arias, who had been allowed to leave his hacienda and return to his home in Caracas because of a serious illness, died in July 1752, after a year's confinement, and his case was closed by Ricardos, "because he is now being judged by the All Powerful, and in honor of his widow, a señora principal in this city, his many children of tender age, and the honor of his family, which has served the King."

Within a month of the death of Luis Arias Altamirano all of the other elites held under house arrest in Caracas or on their haciendas were freed, for reasons like those given by Ricardos for the release of regidor Pedro Blanco de Ponte: "because no evidence of guilt has been found in his case, . . . and having served a long term in confinement he is in need of rest and recuperation." Those who had been held in Spain were released later, Juan Nicolás de Ponte in September 1752 and the Conde de San Javier and his cousin Francisco de Ponte early in 1753.^[51]

With those of lesser social status Ricardos had no need to use the same moderation. His soldiers hunted Juan Francisco de León for more than six months without success before León and his son, abandoned by supporters both noble and humble and exhausted by the constant pursuit of royal patrols and colonial militiamen, surrendered in January 1752. While León remained a fugitive, Ricardos laid the heavy hand of royal justice on the rebellious province. A dozen men were condemned to death before Ricardos had

been two months in Caracas. The first to die was José Morillo, deserter from the Victoria Regiment of Governor Arriaga and an active León sympathizer, who was captured in Caucagua and summarily executed there by Ricardos's order.

Much more effective for the impression made on public opinion were the executions carried out in Caracas on 3 September 1751. The first sweep through the Tuy in search of León resulted in the arrest of several isleños, blacks, and Indians who had marched with him to Caracas and to La Guaira in 1749. Sent to Ricardos in Caracas, the governor first ordered them to be shot or hanged, and then, deciding that the Indians were "easy to seduce and subject to great imbecility," he reduced their sentence to whipping and eight years of prison. No clemency, however, was shown to Juan "Muchingo," free mulatto; Raimundo Romero, zambo; and Andrés Rodríguez Betancourt, isleño. The Canary Islander met a relatively privileged death before a firing squad and was given an immediate burial, but the two men of color were hung and their severed heads, "as an example and for the embarrassment of the population," were placed on public view, one nailed to the door of the fugitive León's house in the Candelaria barrio, and the other placed on a post along the side of the camino real leading from Caracas to the Tuy.^[52]

Governor Ricardos brought the will of the king before the province's residents with unmistakable clarity. The executions had a shuddering impact on Caracas society; for all the violence that was threatened by the Leonist rebels, no one had died in the demonstrations against the Guipuzcoana Company or in the military action taken against Castellanos and the soldiers of the La Guaira fort. In addition to the house arrest of a dozen elites, scores of other men who had carried arms with León were jailed during 1751. The will to resist the Guipuzcoana, or to protest its presence or even its policies, disappeared from Caracas. Ricardos's only difficulty proved to be the capture of Juan Francisco de León, and this was because, forced to flee with his son and only a few men after a final, desperate attempt to challenge Ricardos and the Company failed, León proved impossible to find in the Tuy region he knew so well. Before he became a fugitive, however, León was obliged to be a rebel one last time.

When Ricardos arrived at La Guaira, León was in Panaquire,

tending his cacao groves. He heard of the arrests and learned that the general pardon given by Arriaga had no validity. He was advised that Ricardos had sent troops from La Guaira by sea to enter the Tuy at its mouth, to proceed upriver, and to take him prisoner. A decision was made to march, as before, to Caracas, and in mid-August about 80 men went from Panaquire to Caucagua, the most populous settlement in the region. Gathering recruits en route from the largest haciendas in the province, some 200 men took possession of Caucagua, disarming the few soldiers stationed there and wounding the teniente de justicia in the process.^[53] In the meantime, the royalist plan to take León by surprise resulted in a surprise for the Spanish force instead. At Boca del Tuy they encountered a Dutch fleet of some seventeen ships which had gathered there to trade in contraband cacao. The Dutch smugglers were operating in close collaboration with Tuy planters and were fully informed about the events in Caracas. Although Holland and Spain were not at war, the Dutch seized and disarmed the Spaniards. Later Ricardos was told that the attitude of the Dutch had gone from hostile to furious (insulting the Spaniards as "Vizcayan dogs" and threatening to throw them into the sea) when it became known that they had come to capture Juan Francisco de León.^[54]

Ricardo's reaction to the news of the Caucagua uprising and the Dutch presence at Boca del Tuy was to prepare for war. All the milita units at his command were ordered to mobilize, all boys and men aged fourteen to sixty were ordered into militia service, requests for additional troops were sent to Havana and Cumaná, and would-be collaborators and accomplices were threatened with capital punishment. The population at large was forbidden "to say or write anything, in either public or private conversation, nor to make any sign or even the most remote form of demonstration against the Royal resolution of His Majesty with regard to the permanence and subsistence of the Company."^[55] When Ricardos's troops reached Caucagua several prisoners were taken, including the isleño González Betancourt and the zambo Raimundo Romero, later executed in Caracas, but León and the other rebels had fled the village before the governor's men arrived.

León's flight took him downriver to the Dutch ships. He stopped first at Panaquire where he gathered money and several of his slaves. All the residents of Panaquire, except one old man and

the priest, fled with León in seven or eight large canoas , arriving at Boca del Tuy on August 24, four days after the rebels had been forced from Caucagua.^[56] One of the Spanish soldiers held captive at Boca del Tuy, a Vizcayan named Martín de Sansinenea, observed the arrival of the flotilla of canoes from Panaquire. He also watched more than thirty canoes move back and forth from the beach to the Dutch ships with hides and cacao, and on August 27 he witnessed six ships with León and his company on board weigh anchor and sail out to sea. Once the insurgents had left, their escape from the Tuy successfully executed according to what he believed was a prearranged plan, Sansinenea and the other Spanish soldiers were released by their Dutch captors and allowed to return to Caracas. Sansinenea told Ricardos that one of the vessels, armed with twelve cannon, was referred to as "León's ship" by the Hollanders because it had been armed and its crew paid for by León.^[57]

León's destination was believed to be Curaçao, the Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela which, together with Bonaire and Aruba, had been held by Holland since the 1630s. Ricardos sent a spy to Curaçao in September, both to look for León and to report on the results of the efforts he was making to stop contraband trading between the Dutch islands and the mainland. Shortly after his arrival in Caracas Ricardos had ordered the destruction of the settlement at the Bay of Chuao, the removal of the huts that had served as homes and a church for the residents, all of whom were believed to be active smugglers. Ricardo's secret agent, one Manuel de Agreda, reported that in Curaçao "the loss of Chuao was sorely felt, because its commerce had been worth thirty to forty thousand pesos in silver a month, [the Dutch] saying that they have lost their Potosí." The agent informed Ricardos that smuggling continued to be active on the islands, that many single- and some double-masted Dutch ships (balanderas and goletas ) manned almost exclusively by Spanish sailors could be observed arriving with Venezuelan cacao, that more than two hundred Spaniards were resident on Bonaire Island, and a similar number made a living by smuggling on Curaçao.^[58] Clearly the suspension of Guipuzcoana Company activities forced by the rebellion of 1749 had not suspended cacao trading altogether, and it is probable that the contraband activity had flourished on the Dutch islands for some time, at least since the early 1740s when the Company began to pay record low prices.

With regard to León, Agreda learned that he had not gone to Curaçao, but rather he had sailed east along the coast from Boca del Tuy and had been put ashore near Píritu, a village near the mouth of the Unare River about seventy-five miles distant from the Tuy.

For the next four months, León and a small band of about thirty men wandered about in the savanna and plains of the Unare Basin, a region designated Píritu by the Franciscan fathers, who had developed a strong presence there. Unlike the Franciscans near Caracas, most of whom were Venezuelan-born creoles who might have had some sympathy for the León cause, the Píritu missionaries were peninsular-born and they rejected the fugitives' request for sustenance, informing instead the authorities who were pursuing them of their whereabouts.^[59] Since Píritu was beyond the jurisdiction of Caracas authorities, belonging to the district of Barcelona, the westernmost part of the Province of Cumaná, Ricardos requested help from the teniente de justicia of Barcelona. Permission was granted by the governor of Cumaná on September 17 and, until the end of 1751, the teniente of Barcelona, Martín de Coronado, searched from hacienda to hacienda and from mission to mission in his district. The trail was always warm. Several rebels and suspected accomplices were arrested, but León was never sighted.^[60]

Three other contingents of soldiers sent on Ricardos's order were equally unsuccessful. Each of the two sent from Caracas, the veteran royal soldiers led by capitán Antonio González and a combined force of Caracas and Aragua militia headed by Sergeant-Major José de Bolívar, was eager to better the other by capturing León, but neither was successful. Equally without result was the effort of Martín de Tovar Blanco, a member of a distinguished Caracas family (he would become the first Conde de Tovar in 1771) and the owner of substantial cattle herds in the region, who was asked by Governor Ricardos to participate in the search.^[61] Then, in December 1751, the manhunt ended as Juan Francisco de León and his son Nicolás decided to surrender and to seek royal clemency.

In a long letter to Ricardos, which he left nailed to the door of the house of the new teniente in Panaquire,^[62] León defended his actions at the same time that he asked the governor to pardon him for them. Nearly everyone in the colony had opposed the Company, he wrote. The people of Panaquire refused to allow him to accept the Company's agent as teniente de justicia there, and he had re-

ceived letters from the entire province asking him to lead the protest against the Guipuzcoana monopoly. In Caracas he had not made any attempt to drive Governor Castellanos from office, and although he had led 8500 men to La Guaira to bring him back, his men had not so much as wounded anyone in the effort. Like everyone else, he had received a general pardon from governor Arriaga, a pardon that was not honored by Ricardos, who arrested even prominent citizens of Caracas. He had determined to march once again in protest to the city when he and his followers were forced from Caucagua by royal soldiers, and he had been running for his life ever since. There was simply no reason, he wrote, "to pursue me like I have been pursued, to have dishonored me, to have taken from me all the fruit of my personal labor, that of my children and my wife, and that of the rest of the poor people of this valley of Panaquire."

He asked Ricardos how he should have attempted to gain redress for the gross injustices of the Basques, "being the Governor vizcayan and tenientes vizcayans and [Guipuzcoana Company] factors vizcayans." León declared that his actions were in resistance to the total and immoral domination that the Basques exercised in Caracas, and he had decided to surrender because he believed Ricardos would not find him guilty of unpardonable crimes. Finally, he declared that he no longer believed that the monopoly had to be removed from the province, it was in fact a good thing, but only if it had no direct hand in the administration of justice in the colony: "And if the Real Compañía is not what they say it is, Your Lordship could reform it, because, if the Company would comply with what it offered our King to do, it would be of benefit to the Province, [but only as long as] none of them are Judges."^[63]

Ricardos had planned to execute León, his son Nicolás, and the other fugitives, "to make the most frightening example of their crimes by hanging them in the public plaza, a punishment and spectacle which would serve as an example to others and reduce everyone to docile obedience." But their voluntary surrender and appeal for mercy made such a demonstration unnecessary.^[64] The governor knew that a public hanging of the repentant isleño caudillo in the plaza had the potentiality of igniting the pacified province into rebellion once again. It may be that León counted on this and saw in surrender a chance to save his life. Regardless,

Ricardos placed León and his son aboard a Guipuzcoana Company ship, the Santa Bárbara , in complete secrecy. The Caracas public had been led to believe that the vessel would sail for Veracruz with a simple shipment of cacao, but in fact it was bound for Spain, its cargo of accused insurrectionaries destined for judgment before the president of the Council of the Indies in Cádiz.^[65]

Governor Ricardos was not content to merely rid the colony of León. He very much wanted to make an example of the popular rebel. On February 5, only days after León turned himself over to the authorities, Ricardos declared that he had requested the king's permission to tear down León's house on the Candelaria plaza, to spread the ruins with salt, and to place a metal plaque denouncing him and his crimes on a post in front of where the house had stood. Permission was granted in July, some months after León had been deported, but the destruction was not carried out until September, after word had reached Caracas of the caudillo's death, reportedly of smallpox, which occurred in August 1752.^[66] A copper placard bearing the following inscription was erected where the house had stood:

This is the Justice of the King our Señor , ordered to be done by the Excellent señor Don Phelipe Ricardos Lieutenant General of the Armies of His Majesty his Governor and Captain General in this Province of Caracas, to Francisco León, owner of this house, for obstinacy, a rebel and traitor to the Royal Crown, and therefore a Criminal. May the destruction and spreading of salt stand to the perpetual memory of his Infamy.^[67]

During the course of the year 1752 Ricardos and Ensenada also determined the fate of the settlement and haciendas at Panaquire. The slaves and cacao property of León, his sons, and others of his followers had been confiscated in August and September of 1751, while the rebels were in Píritu. In his desire to punish and make indelible examples of the potency of the royal will, Ricardos was sympathetic to the king's order, which Ensenada sent to him in September 1752, to destroy Panaquire and to resettle its inhabitants elsewhere in the province. Ricardos waited for more than a year with this order in hand before, in April 1754, he sent the teniente de justicia of Caucagua and a contingent of soldiers to Panaquire to notify the inhabitants that they had to leave the valley. Having gained his basic objective of submission to the royal will, however,

the governor preferred not to enforce execution of the king's command. By 1754 Ricardos had probably decided not to drive the isleños from Panaquire, for at the same time he ordered them to move he also wrote to Ensenada that the destruction of the cacao haciendas would be a serious loss to the royal treasury. In September 1754, on the basis of Ricardos's recommendation, the Council of the Indies advised the king that, except for the payment by landowners of a new composición fee to confirm or reconfirm the titles to their property, Panaquire should be left as it was.^[68]