1. Don Prudencio Peníchez, corregidor of Petare and Baruta, to the governor, April 28, 1789, AGN, Gobernación y Capitanía General, leg. 41.

2. Mariano Martí, Documentos relativos a su visita pastoral de la diócesis de Caracas, 1771-1784 , 7 vols. (Caracas, 1969), 2:609-610.

3. Esteban Fernándes de León to the governor, Sabana de Ocumare, August 1, 1775, AGN, Gobernación y Capitanía General, leg. 38. The continue

response of the governor, José Carlos de Aguero, noted on the margin of the cited letter, indicates that there was nothing that could be done about the problem besides more vigilant policing. The governor's note does reveal that slaves could work on Saturdays for their own benefit:

I should say to you . . . that to avoid the theft of cacao, in response to the three points you mention as causes, do not let hacendados give to their slaves any more remuneration than the freedom to work for themselves on Saturday; . . . I say that the first point has a remedy, because every master should give to his slaves what they need or suffer punishment; with the respect to the illegal sale of clothing and other dry goods, I order you to collect all the licenses of this sort and oblige the holders to erect a public store if they want to sell those things; and as far as the aguardiente de caña is concerned, you must see to the total extinction of the distilleries.

4. " Justicia Mayor era el nombre técnico del delegado del gobernador fuera de Caracas. El que desempeñaba el cargo en las ciudades y villas se denominaba Teniente y Justicia Mayor . Se anteponía el nombre de Corregidor a quien ejecía funciones análogas en pueblos y comarcas de indios. El nombramiento de ambos corría de cuenta de Gobernador de la provincia, aunque había de estar refrendado por la Audiencia de Santo Domingo," Otto Pikaza, "Don Gabriel José de Zuloaga en la gobernación de Venezuela (1737-1747)," Anuario de Estudios Americanos (Seville), 19 (1962): 523.

5. Zuloaga was named governor and captain-general of Venezuela in August 1736, and took possession of the office in Caracas in October 1737. He was first given the right to appoint and to remove tenientes at his independent discretion by a real cédula dated November 7, 1739. AGI, Caracas, leg. 65. His arguments opposing the incorporation of Venezuela to the viceroyalty of New Granada, of which the matter of the tenientes was only a part, are in Zuloaga to the king, September 20, 1740, AGI, Caracas, leg. 66. The provision which provided that the Caracas governor be exempted from the authority of New Granada in the particular naming tenientes is in Crown to Zuloaga, February 12, 1742, AGI, Caracas, leg. 11.

6. Zuloaga to the king, January 1, 1745, AGI, Caracas, leg. 418.

7. The only evidence that would ever be forthcoming was given by Nicolás de León, Juan Francisco's son, who testified after his capture in 1752 that his father

had written to Don Luis Arias Altamirano [who was then maestre de campo], informing him of the new Teniente and the resistance put up by the people of the area, but there was no written response [from the mantuanos], and only by word of mouth did they tell us, especially the said Don Luis, that it was time to throw out that Teniente and all the Vizcayans who were dominating the land, and that it would be a good idea to go to Caracas, with everyone carrying arms, to ask for the suspension of the Royal Guipuzcoana Company, and to inform His Majesty [of the widespread opposition to the Company].

Statement of Nicolás de León, February 8, 1752, in Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Documentos relativos a la insurrección de Juan de León (Caracas, 1947), 188.

8. León to Castellanos, April 4, 1749, AGI, Caracas, leg. 418.

9. Castillo Lara, Apuntes , chap. 19. Not until 1773 would the Guipuz- soft

coana Company begin to load cacao in the Cabo Codera region at the mouth of the Tuy River; ibid., 521.

10. AGI, Caracas, leg. 421. León's letter of explanation, written in December 1751 after the exhausted fugitive had decided to surrender, is given as the prologue in Francisco Morales Padrón, Rebelión contra la Compañía de Caracas (Seville, 1955), 7-14.

11. AGI, Caracas, leg. 937. Born in 1682, Lorenzo Ponte was sixty-seven years old in 1749, one of only three sexagenarians among elite men in Caracas at that time. (The other two, Feliciano de Sojo Palacios Gedler and Gabriel Regalado Rada Arias, were both born in 1689). The third Marqués de Mijares, don Francisco Nicolás Mijares de Solórzano y Tovar, was born in 1693. Iturriza Guillén, Familias caraqueñas , 1:73 (Rada); 1:308 (Palacios); 2:529 (Mijares); 2:682 (Ponte).

12. Quoted in Castillo Lara, La aventura , 221.

13. AGI, Caracas, leg. 418.

14. AGI, Caracas, leg. 419.

15. AGI, Caracas, leg. 418.

16. Castillo Lara, La aventura , 231-233.

17. Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e Historia, Documentos relativos a la insurrección de Juan de León (Caracas, 1947), 39-40.

18. Cited in Hector García Chuecos, Historia Documental de Venezuela (Caracas, 1957), 28.

19. Castillo Lara, La aventura , 243. The Company's violations of its original charter are discussed in chap. 6.

20. The best description of these events is in Castillo Lara, La aventura , 273-288. León's statement was made in a conversation with lieutenant governor Domingo Aguirre y Castillo, cited in José de Armas Chitty and Manuel Pinto C., eds., Juan Francisco de León: Diario de una Insurgencia (Caracas, 1971), 67.

21. Armas Chitty and Pinto C., eds., Juan Francisco de León , 80.

22. Ibid., 67.

21. Armas Chitty and Pinto C., eds., Juan Francisco de León , 80.

22. Ibid., 67.

23. This description of the attack on La Guaira and its immediate aftermath is based on the narrative account in Castillo Lara, La aventura , chaps. 13-14.

24. "Recopilación o resumen General de las almas que tiene esta Gobernación de Venezuela y Caracas según consta de las matrículas del año 1750 y 51 de todo el obispado," AGI, Caracas, leg. 367.

25. Castillo Lara, La aventura , 341.

26. ARPC, Civiles, 1749 T.

27. One Company ship, the San Joachin , made port in Spain in 1750. Its cargo of 4429 fanegas of cacao had most likely been purchased before frightened Company employees fled Caracas in April 1749. The record of Company shipping is given in Hussey, Caracas Company , 305-318.

28. Ibid., 135-136.

27. One Company ship, the San Joachin , made port in Spain in 1750. Its cargo of 4429 fanegas of cacao had most likely been purchased before frightened Company employees fled Caracas in April 1749. The record of Company shipping is given in Hussey, Caracas Company , 305-318.

28. Ibid., 135-136.

29. Ensenada was in charge of the ministries of War, Navy, and Indies, and Finance and State. W. N. Hargreaves-Mawdsley, Eighteenth-Century Spain, 1700-1788: A Political, Diplomatic and Institutional History (London: Macmillan, 1979), 80-94.

30. Arriaga to Ensenada, January 14 and March 29, 1750, quoted in "La politica del marqués de la Ensenada--asesorado por el ex-virrey Eslava-- hard

en relación con el levantamiento contra la Guipuzcoana," Demetrio Ramos Pérez, Estudios de Historia Venezolana (Caracas, 1976), 654-655.

31. Palmer, Human Cargoes , chap. 8.

32. Geoffrey J. Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, 1700-1789 (Bloomington and London, 1979), 210-220.

33. Ibid., 111-113, 116, 189, 205.

32. Geoffrey J. Walker, Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, 1700-1789 (Bloomington and London, 1979), 210-220.

33. Ibid., 111-113, 116, 189, 205.

34. José Campillo y Cossio died in 1744, but he had been in charge of the ministries of Marine, War, and the Indies in 1743 when he wrote in opposition to the slave trade and in favor of encouraging economic growth in the colonies by drawing Indians into the marketplace as a free peasantry, wage laborers who could consume the manufactures of the metropolis. Nuevo sistema de gobierno económico para la América (1743) (Madrid, 1789). Campillo is discussed in Peggy K. Liss, Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution, 1713-1826 (Baltimore and London, 1983), 55-56. If the ministers of empire thought that Indians could replace slaves, certainly they would have considered Canary Islander immigrant farmers as capable substitutes for slaves as well.

35. Letter of Nicolás de León, August 17, 1751, Documentos relativos a la insurrección de Juan Francisco de León (Caracas, 1947), 87-88.

36. Hussey identifies these two groups as "liberals," those who favored abolition of the Company and mercy toward the Caracas rebels, and "conservatives," those described here, whose harshness toward Caracas is understood as ''what would be expected of those trained in the absolutist school of civil or military command"; Caracas Company , 144-150.

37. Quoted in ibid., 148-149.

36. Hussey identifies these two groups as "liberals," those who favored abolition of the Company and mercy toward the Caracas rebels, and "conservatives," those described here, whose harshness toward Caracas is understood as ''what would be expected of those trained in the absolutist school of civil or military command"; Caracas Company , 144-150.

37. Quoted in ibid., 148-149.

38. Venezuela was separated from the viceroyalty of New Granada by order of a real cédula signed February 12, 1742. Zuloaga to the king, September 20, 1740, AGI, Caracas, leg. 66.

39. In 1741 he gained widespread fame for successfully defending Cartagena from the English admiral Edward Vernon, and he had earned a flawless reputation for his able management of the new viceroyalty during ten years of constant economic and diplomatic stress. Walker, Spanish Politics , 207-216.

40. Ramos, "La politica," 665. The principal purpose of Ramos's article is to affirm Eslava's central role in influencing Ensenada's policy. The Havana Company is summarized in Hussey, Caracas Company , 207-214.

41. Walker, Spanish Politics , 100. Analola Borges, Alvarez Abreu y su extraordinaria misión en Indias (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1963), passim.

42. The reasons for Alvarez y Abreu's presence in Caracas were probably public knowledge by this time; he is listed in the cathedral marriage register as "Alcalde Visitador, Abogado de los Reales Consejos." Marriage between families of royal officials on temporary assignment did not violate the prohibitions against marriage between the king's administrators and women of local elite families. In June 1716 the Basque accountant of the Caracas royal treasury, Juan de Vega Arredondo, married a second daughter of the governor, María Josefa de Bertodano, making him and licenciado Alvarez y Abreu brothers-in-law. Instituto Venezolano de Genealogía, Matrimonios y velaciones , 367-369. Alberto Bertodano is in Sucre, Gobernadores , 216-218.

43. Hargreaves-Mawdsley, Eighteenth-Century Spain , 78-87. Alvarez y Abreu's letter to Ensenada is quoted in Hussey, Caracas Company , 146. break

44. Castillo Lara, La aventura , 391.

45. Sucre states that Ricardos was married to doña Leonor Carrillo y Albonorz, daughter of the Duke of Montemar, Gobernadores , 275. Montemar's career is traced in Hargreaves-Mawdsley, Eighteenth-Century Spain , 67-79. Ensenada had served as Commisary of the Navy during the Orán expedition, and he was made a marquis for his part in the defeat of Naples in 1734-1735; ibid., 80.

46. AGI, Caracas, leg. 57.

47. Castillo Lara, La aventura , p. 387.

48. These men were maestre de campo Luis Arias Altamirano, alcalde ordinario for 1751, regidor Pedro Blanco de Ponte, Alejandro and Miguel Blanco Uribe, Antonio Blanco Uribe, Pío Blanco de Ponte, and Miguel de Monasterios. These were mature men in their forties and fifties who had been leaders of the protest against the Guipuzcoana Company for a decade.

49. Ricardos to the king, April 30, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421.

50. Testimony of Nicolás de León, February 8, 1752, Documentos relativos a la insurrección de Juan Francisco de León , 188.

51. Ricardos to Ensenada, October 20, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421.

52. Ricardos to Ensenada, September 11, 1751, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421.

53. Castillo Lara, La aventura , 430-439.

54. Ibid., 468-470.

53. Castillo Lara, La aventura , 430-439.

54. Ibid., 468-470.

55. Archivo de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, Caracas, Colección Villanueva, 130, fol. 224.

56. Letter of Antonio Díaz Padrón to Ricardos, August 26, 1751, in Documentos relativos a la insurrección de Juan Francisco de León , 93-94.

57. Archivo de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, Caracas, Colección Villanueva, 133, fol. 172.

58. Cited in Castillo Lara, La aventura , 494-495.

59. Testimony of Nicolás de León, February 8, 1752, Documentos relativos a la insurrección de Juan Francisco de León , 192; AGI, Caracas, leg. 421. John V. Lombardi, Venezuela: The Search for Order, the Dream of Progress (New York, 1982), 87-88.

60. Castillo Lara, La aventura , chap. 20, passim.

61. Neither Bolívar nor Tovar signed the 1744 memorial protesting the policies of the Guipuzcoana Company; AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 787.

62. Morales Padrón, Rebelión contra la Compañía de Caracas , 7-14.

63. Ibid., 10.

62. Morales Padrón, Rebelión contra la Compañía de Caracas , 7-14.

63. Ibid., 10.

64. Ricardos to Ensenada, April 30, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421.

65. León and his son surrendered in late January 1752, some weeks after he wrote his apology and defense. While in the Caracas jail Nicolás spoke of the support given them by maestre de campos Luis Arias Altamirano, who was already dead, but otherwise they refused to name their mantuano supporters. The Santa Bárbara left La Guaira on March 28, 1752. Ricardos to the king, 29 June 1751, AGI, Caracas, leg. 57; and Ricardos to Ensenada, October 20, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421.

66. Ricardos to Ensenada, March 2, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421. Archivo General de la Nación, Insurrección de Juan Francisco de León, vol. 2, fol. 293. Ensenada was informed of León's death by Julián de Arriaga, August 4, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421.

67. Archivo General de la Nación, Insurrección de Juan Francisco de León, Vol. 2, fol. 293. The Spanish text of the plaque is as follows: break

Esta es la Justicia del Rey nuestro Señor, mandada hacer por el Excmo. señor Don Phe. Ricardos Tne. General de los Exceros. de Su Majestad su Govr. y Cap. General desta prova. de Caracas, con Francisco León, amo de esta casa, por pertinaz, rebelde y traidor a la Real Corona y por ello Reo. Que se derribe y siembre de sal pa. perpetua memoria de su Infa.

68. AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 714. The settlement remained, and according to a census taken in 1758, the year after Felipe Ricardos had been replaced as governor of Caracas, there were 14 households in Panaquire and a total resident population of 264 individuals, of whom 233 were black slaves. "Matrículas de las parróquias de Caracas y demás pueblos de su diócesis, 1759," manuscript census located in the Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela, Caracas.

69. La Gazeta de Caracas , September 20, 1811. The subsequent history of this copper tablet is given in Aristides Rojas, Estudios históricos: Orígenes Venezolanos (Caracas, 1891), 267-273.