The Rodríguez Santos Wheat Estancia and Mill

Alonso Rodríguez Santos was one of Caracas's two or three most active merchants during the first decades of the seventeenth century. When he died in 1624 his Caracas estate was appraised at about 50,000 pesos, of which more than 14,000 pesos were in the form of outstanding debts owed him by the town's vecinos.^[5] His worth in other Caribbean ports, which at his death could not be fixed exactly, was believed by his heirs to be considerable. As alcalde ordinario , encomendero, and owner of both cattle hatos and a wheat estancia, this merchant from Extremadura, like many other successful traders who immigrated to the Indies, converted his commercial profits into landed wealth with its accompanying social power and prestige.

Don Alonso had come to Caracas a widower, accompanied by his two adult sons, Juan Rodríguez Santos and Benito Arias

Montano. The eldest son, Juan Rodríguez Santos, like his father from Frenegal de la Sierra, Extremadura, evidently had little interest in the merchant profession. The Real Hacienda records show an occasional entry for shipment of hides to Spain in the name of Juan Rodríguez Santos, and he maintained small accounts with merchants in Seville, but he paid for the merchandise sent to him from Europe with the income from the rent of two houses in Spain, and not with agricultural products exported from Caracas.^[6] He preferred to sell the wheat grain and flour produced on his Caracas estancia in the Caracas market, to other vecinos or to those merchants who would then resell the flour in other ports, especially Cartagena. When Juan died a few years after his father in 1628, he left a large estancia of ninety-two fanegadas de sembradura , about 140 acres, east of the town on the banks of the Chacao stream.^[7] When the inventory and appraisal of this estate was made in 1631 the value of the estancia, including both farm and water-driven mill (but not its slaves, who were counted and evaluated separately), was placed at 6500 pesos.

Juan Rodríguez Santos's wife, Francisca de Escovedo, died in 1630, and the care of their orphaned children and the children's inheritance was briefly the responsibility of Benito Arias Montano, Juan's brother and Alonso Rodríguez Santos's second son from his Extremadura marriage. Arias remained in Caracas long enough to approve the marriage of his eldest niece, who was called María Arias Montano, to Bartolomé de Rivillapuerta. Arias then transferred the tutela to Rivillapuerta, who took charge of his wife's three brothers and two sisters in October 1631. Three of the five were his responsibility until November 1636, when his tutela ended: Juan de los Santos, Alonso Rodríguez Santos, and Paula Rodríguez Santos. These children were six, nine, and ten years old respectively in 1631. A third daughter orphaned by the deaths of Juan Rodríguez Santos and Francisca de Escovedo—called Germana de Rojas after her maternal grandmother—married Domingo de Liendo in April of 1633 and left Rivillapuerta's guardianship at that time. Finally, Diego Vásquez de Escovedo, Juan and Francisca's eldest son, who was named after his maternal grandfather, became eighteen in February of 1636 and left his brother-in-law's care in May of that year.^[8]

Rivillapuerta was also responsible for a second, quite different

group of individuals. The Rodríguez Santos–Escovedo children stood to inherit ninety-four slaves, including nineteen children nine years old and younger. Sixty-five of these slaves lived and worked at the Chacao wheat farm, fourteen provided domestic service in Caracas, and fifteen others labored on the family cattle hato east of the town. Of the ninety-four, thirty were adult women, and of these, fifteen lived at Chacao, each with a husband and most with children. Twelve single women, only one of whom had children, labored as domestics in the Rodríguez Santos townhouse. The remaining three women, one with a husband and all three with young children, were on the cattle hato. Of the forty-five adult men and boys, thirty-seven resided on the wheat estancia, and of these fourteen were married to female slaves belonging to the family (the fifteenth married woman, Phelipa Angola, was married to Antonico, "mulato libre ") and the rest were single. None of the adult male slaves worked in domestic service in Caracas, and the remaining eight men, one who was married and seven who were not, herded cattle on the family hato (see table 8).

The appraised value of these slaves, set in 1631 by the cabildo's alcaldes ordinarios, makes it possible to estimate the total worth of the Rodríguez Santos wheat enterprise. The sixty-five slaves, both adults and children, on the Chacao estancia were appraised at 13,908 pesos (see appendix A). Added to the 6500 pesos given as the value of the farm land and mill, the total worth of the estancia and slaves was slightly more than 20,000 pesos when Rivillapuerta assumed responsibility for its management.

The Chacao estancia slaves brought two wheat crops to harvest every year. The "winter" crop was sown at the beginning of the rainy season in May or June and was grown without need for irrigation and in spite of often excessive rainfall. As a result of wet conditions, the winter grain was of limited quantity and perhaps inferior in quality, but it was evidently important, both to supply the town's needs and to provide seed for the planting of the more bountiful "summer" crop. Sown after the rains had stopped and irrigated during the dry months, summer wheat was the cash crop that first gave the Caracas Valley a role in Spain's commercial empire.

Winter wheat counted only for from 10 to 30 percent of the Rodríguez Santos annual harvest. This wheat was always sold in the grain, never as flour, and its buyers were most often Caracas vecinos. It was never designated by Rivillapuerta as delivered to La Guaira, either "puesto La Guaira " or "puesto la mar ," for export.

By contrast, summer wheat was always sold as flour, except, as happened in 1632 and 1633, when a shortage of cotton bags made it necessary to sell a part of the summer harvest in the grain. The shortage of flour sacks is fortunate: since wheat was sold both as grain and as flour in these two years, the difference in price can be taken as an indication of the added value created by milling wheat into flour. Summer wheat in the grain sold at 24 reales the fanega in 1632 and at an average price of 33.5 reales the fanega in 1633; ground into flour, a fanega of wheat sold for 42 reales in 1632 and for 48 reales in 1633 (see table 9). When he had them, Rivillapuerta supplied cotton sacks, at a cost to him of about 6 reales for every fanega of wheat flour he sold; discounting this, it seems that milled wheat was worth between 20 and 30 percent more than the unprocessed grain.^[9] Besides the mill profits, under Rivillapuerta's direction earnings from the Rodríguez Santos estancia were increased by selling wheat and flour at higher prices to certain customers. Family, friends, and royal and ecclesiastical officials were favored with prices that were close to the cost of production, while out-of-town merchants, ship captains, and small retailers were charged more (see appendix B).

Cacao growers did not have the opportunity to increase the value of their harvests by processing their beans, nor did they have any influence over the price paid for them. Therefore, in order to compare the costs and income of wheat farming with the costs and

income of cacao agriculture it is necessary to calculate the basic value of the wheat as it left the field, both before it was milled and before it was differentially marketed. To do this the value assigned in the Rivillapuerta ledger to the wheat consumed in the Rodríguez Santos household ("gasté en case" ) is taken as a base price. To obtain a price for premilled summer wheat for the years 1634–1636, when all summer wheat was ground and only flour was sold, the value added by milling was estimated at 25 percent (based on the 1632–1633 data), and this percentage was discounted from the price of flour for these years.

Before milling and marketing, the estimated gross income of the wheat harvested on the Rodríguez Santos estancia from 1632 to 1636 is 14,118 pesos. This amount represents what would have been the income from all the winter and summer wheat sold in the grain at the favored-buyer or household price, plus 75 percent of the income from summer wheat flour for the five years, again estimating on the basis of the price given for flour consumed in the Rodríguez Santos household. Counting fifty-three working slaves (those nine years old and older) in the Chacao fields, the return to their masters from the labor of each can be estimated at about fifty pesos per year, only a fraction of what the average return from slaves working in the cacao groves produced per year, as we shall see. However, in the Rodríguez Santos case milling and selective pricing added more than 20 percent to the income on wheat taken from the fields: 17,306 pesos is the total gross income from the estancia reported by Rivillapuerta for the period from 1632 to 1636.

The net return was less. According to Rivillapuerta's ledgers, the cash outlay for wages and operating costs for the six years of his administration came to 4907 pesos (see appendix C). Wheat agriculture provided an income for a variety of Spanish laborers and professionals. The Rodríguez Santos labor bill was always paid in cash, with one exception. Bartolomé Escudero had served the family both as a sharecropper (labrador ) and slave overseer for three decades prior to 1637. For his work he was given a fixed share of the harvest, the grain from 5.5 fanegadas de sembradura (about 6 percent of the estancia total of 92 fanegadas). Perhaps because of his advancing age and loyal service (he was sixty-five years old in 1637), perhaps because the booming market for cacao beans was drawing free labor (both labradores and overseers) from the wheat

farms, Escudero had been given a one-half fanegada increase in 1627.^[10] This arrangement was generous. Escudero's share of the annual harvest is given in table 10; calculated at the price charged by Rivillapuerta in each of these years, Escudero's income from 1632 to 1636 would have been about 280 pesos annually. By contrast, cacao hacienda mayordomos were seldom paid more than 100 pesos per year for their work. In addition, Escudero had the irregular assistance of one and sometimes two Spanish laborers during several months of the year. These men were paid in case by Rivillapuerta at an annual rate of about seventy pesos each. (Presumably they would have been drawn to the higher salaries and other opportunities, such as smuggling, available on coastal cacao haciendas.) The combined earnings of Escudero and his salaried assistants represents from 8 to 10 percent of the gross income of the estancia for the five years for which there are harvest data (see table 10). Thus it seems that while the return from slave labor was lower on this wheat estancia than it was on the Liendo cacao estate, at the same time the cost of overseers and other Hispanic labor on the wheat farm was also much higher. As is demonstrated below, the Liendo would pay only about 4 percent of their gross income for mayordomos' wages.

Other Spanish labor paid for by Rivillapuerta included retainers to lawyers to defend the interests of his wards. For example, don Tomás Gregorio de Mora was given 100 pesos on December 12,

1633, to tend to the family's legal business in the coming year. In all, 796 pesos were spent in six years for legal work. Thirty pesos a year went to physician don Juan Baptista Navarro as a retainer to care for "the sick who suffer in my house, me, my wife, and the remainder of the family." Navarro did not tend to the medical needs of the slave community; another 20 pesos every year were paid to Honorato de Aguillón, a medical practitioner of uncertain status, "to cure the gente of the household and the negros of the estancia." The labor of a surgeon, however, whose craft of bloodletting may have been regarded as less intimate than other aspects of medical practice, did not require the same attention to distinctions of race and class. A third retainer, also for 20 pesos, was given to Francisco Martín Pacheco, surgeon, for his services to both slaves and Spaniards alike. Carpenter Francisco de Medina and mason Diego Rodríguez Carrero were paid 30 and 12 pesos respectively for repair work on the mill in 1636 and 1637. Several different clergymen received a total of 70 pesos for burial masses for slaves said from January 1632 to September 1636. From time to time a mulatto muledriver earned a few pesos hauling merchandise to and from La Guaira. There was occasional need for the services of a blacksmith, who forged the iron tools, particularly plows and hoes, needed in the wheat fields. Finally, on rare occasions, certain Indians were paid from the Rodríguez Santos coffers for a particular task at which they specialized: successful slave catchers were rewarded with a bounty of 6 pesos for the return of the family's fugitive human property. Other expenditures for the slaves were minimal: a total of 220 pesos in six years went to merchants for cloth to be used by slaves, who evidently made their own clothing, and for medicine for their welfare. These costs, much the greater part of which were paid for Hispanic service and labor, came to 4907 pesos for the six years of Rivillapuerta's tutela.

There are no harvest data for 1631, and discounting the costs for that year leaves a total of 4739 pesos in operating expenditures for the five years for which we have calculated 14,118 pesos as the base market value (at prices charged family and friends) of the Rodríguez Santos wheat as it left the fields. Thus, the net income from agriculture for the years 1632 through 1636 would have been the difference between these amounts, or 9379 pesos. To this is added an additional 3198 pesos, the profit obtained by milling and marketing, for an overall net from the estancia of 12,577 pesos for the five-

year period. This sum represents a mean annual net income of some 2515 pesos, and if the total appraised value in 1631 of the estancia land, mill, and slaves was 20,408 pesos (land and mill: 6500 pesos; slaves: 13,908 pesos), then we can estimate the average annual return on the capital value of the Rodríguez Santos estancia at about 12 percent.

This was not the total family income. When Rivillapuerta assumed the tutela in 1631 he took charge of 7077 pesos in outstanding loans made to eight Caracas vecinos, and from 1633 to 1636 he lent an additional 3525 pesos of his wards' cash to seven other town residents. At 5-percent interest, these loans brought the Rodríguez Santos heirs an additional annual income of 530 pesos. Added to the estancia income, this interest brought the total annual profit of the Rodríguez Santos estate to more than 3000 pesos. While not, by any means, on a par with the fabled fortunes of the Indies, this sum was sufficient to keep the young heirs of Juan Rodríguez Santos and Francisca de Escovedo from want.

The expenditures made by Rivillapuerta for the needs and comforts of his wife's brothers and sisters averaged about 1000 pesos per year, more than was spent on the operation of the wheat estancia and mill in four of the six years for which information is available. During this period, while estate operating costs totaled 6543 pesos, 6369 pesos were spent on clothing and education for the five heirs of Juan Rodríguez Santos and Francisca de Escovedo (see appendix C). The eldest child, doña Germana, received the largest share of these funds, some 2355 pesos, of which 300 were spent on her wedding trousseau in 1632. Thereafter her share consisted of dowry payments paid annually to her husband Domingo de Liendo. No other child received goods or services worth 300 pesos in any one year, but the eldest son, Diego Vásquez de Escovedo, who was thirteen years old in 1631, was favored with expenditures that were nearly twice that provided for each of the remaining children (165 pesos annually on the average compared to 89 pesos for Paula, 84 for Juan, and 67 for Alonso). This difference was due to the fact that in 1635 and during the first months of 1636, as the young capitán don Diego was about to turn eighteen and leave Rivillapuerta's tutelage, he was provided with the accouterments considered necessary for a young gentleman and slaveholder: a silk cape, a fine Castilian hat, a gilt-handled sword, and the saddlery befitting his station.

It is significant that while Rivillapuerta spent more on all of the children as they grew older, the wheat harvests of 1635 and 1636 were only slightly more than half as productive as those in 1632 and 1633. That Rivillapuerta continued to lend cash to the town's vecinos and to provide progressively more for his wards while the wheat harvests declined suggests that balancing the family's accounts, at least on an annual or seasonal basis, was not a predominating concern. Probably their numerous slaves offered the Rodríguez Santos a sense of long-term security that lessened their concern for short-term vacillations in grain production. With a substantial investment in slave labor already made, they could be sure that in any year they would be able to reap the maximum harvest the weather would allow. They also had the opportunity to make up for bad harvests by charging more for the wheat they sold. At 1632 prices, the 1635 and 1636 harvests would not have generated enough income to cover operating costs and expenditures for the children but, as the wheat yield declined, Rivillapuerta compensated by raising the sale price of grain and flour. On several occasions the cabildo had admonished the Rodríguez Santos clan for selling wheat bread at a higher price than that set by the municipal council,^[11] but the price of wheat destined for export was not regulated by the council (although it had the authority to forbid exports altogether in times of local need), and the growers had a free hand to charge what they could get for their export crop. Bad harvests and the loss of Hispanic overseers and labradores to the better opportunities offered them on coastal cacao haciendas made wheat a scarce and expensive commodity,^[12] and yet those who continued to grow it, although they may have had to pay a premium for Hispanic labor, were able to compensate by charging higher prices. Rivillapuerta raised the price of milled summer wheat from 42 reales the fanega in 1632 to an average of 66.4 reales in 1635, and then to 73.2 reales in 1636. As a result, the Rodríguez Santos estancia, had its manager cared to make the calculation, would have been able to show a reserve of cash on hand for these years after all costs had been paid (see appendix D).