Who Signed

Of the ninety-three who signed, seventy-six (twenty-one women and fifty-five men) can be identified and linked to a reconstituted elite family whose genealogy for several generations is known. These linkages make it possible to construct age and marriage profiles for these people. All of the elite women who signed were unmarried in 1744, eleven were widows, eight others would never marry, and the remaining two would marry after 1744. It is significant that no married woman whose husband was then alive signed the memorial. In clear contrast, most of the men who signed were husbands and fathers; only eight of the fifty-five identified elite men were not then married and would never marry. Of the remaining forty-seven, twenty-four were married and their spouses were also living in 1744, and twenty-three were either widowers in 1744 or single men who had not yet married but would do so subsequently. Although the data is not complete in every case, it is evident that the elite protesters were mature individuals, with an average age in 1744 of 39.0 years for the men (number of cases with known birth date is forty-two of the fifty-five) and 45.6 years for the women (number of known birth dates, nineteen of twenty-one).^[17]

The census of cacao haciendas also taken in 1744 (for the purpose of allocating tercio buque space on the repartimiento basis) makes it possible to determine how much cacao was owned by elite protesters and elite nonprotesters alike. Only half of the seventy-six identified elite signatories were actually owners of cacao haciendas in 1744; in all, thirty-eight individuals, seven of them women, held a total of 781,500 cacao trees on 64 haciendas, or 15.3 percent of the total number of cacao trees (5,102,221) on 11.5 percent of the total number of Caracas-province haciendas (556) according to the

1744 census of cacao estates. The cacao properties owned by these thirty-eight signatories comprised slightly more than one-third of the cacao holdings of all elites. The thirty-eight owned 37.7 percent of all the trees held by elite hacendados in 1744 (781,500 of 2,071,392 elite-owned trees), and virtually the same percentage, 36.8 percent, of the haciendas owned by elites (64 of 174). In general then, the thirty-eight elite cacao hacendados who made formal protest against the Guipuzcoana Company in 1744 owned about 15 percent of all the cacao trees then grown in the Caracas province, and they owned about one-third of the cacao trees that belonged to people who were members of established elite families.^[18] It would be in error, however, to suppose that the owners of the remaining two-thirds of elite-owned trees who did not sign the 1744 document were supporters of the Guipuzcoana Company.

Social conventions kept some elite cacao hacendados from signing. Evidently it was deemed inappropriate or unnecessary for women or adult children to put their names on the memorial if they were married or if their fathers were alive in 1744. For example, one woman who did not sign was Ana Josefa Ibarra y Ibarra, owner of 36,000 cacao trees on two haciendas in the coastal valley of Borburata. Her mother, María Petronila Ibarra, who had 14,000 trees in the coastal valley of Patanemo, was one of the widows whose signatures headed the list. Two of doña Ana's brothers signed, one had a small hacienda of 5000 trees in Patanemo, the other owned no cacao. At first glance it is curious that Ana's sister Antonia, who likewise owned no cacao in 1744, did sign, but closer examination reveals that Antonia was also a widow in 1744, and her signature follows her mother's on the list. It turns out that Ana Josefa Ibarra, who held more cacao in her own name than her mother and all of her siblings together, did not protest against the Guipuzcoana Company in her own name, probably because she was married. Her husband, her first-cousin Diego Ibarra y Herrera, owner of 13,000 trees on one hacienda in Borburata, was one of the memorial's signatories. Presumably, even though his wife's cacao holdings were three times greater than his, the signature of Diego Ibarra represented Ana Josefa Ibarra as well.

There were other women whose protests were made by their men. Noblewoman doña María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro Istúriz owned 10,000 cacao trees on the banks of the Capaya River in the

flood plain of the lower Tuy River. Her brother, the Marqués de Toro, with 90,000 trees on seven haciendas, the owner of more cacao than any other individual in 1744, was among the first men to sign the memorial. Her husband, the second Conde de San Javier, was the principal organizer of the campaign against the Guipuzcoana monopoly. The Caracas elite gathered in the house of doña María to put their names on the appeal for help that they would send to Spain, but the condesa did not sign it. José Rada Arias and Isabel Soto Ibarra had married in 1717. He signed the memorial but did not have a cacao hacienda; she had an estate of 8000 trees in 1744 but did not sign. Fernando Rada Liendo married his cousin Josefa Clara Liendo Blanco in 1738. He signed the memorial but did not own a cacao hacienda; she did not sign but was holder of 10,000 trees on the coast upwind of La Guaira. In 1737 Pedro Gedler Ponte also married his cousin, María Jacinta Bolívar Ponte. In 1744 each of them was owner of a cacao estate in the Tuy Valley; he had 10,000 trees and she had 12,000. But while his signature appears on the protest document, hers does not.

This patriarchy of protest was extended to the children of the signatories. In only four cases did representatives of two generations of the same family sign the memorial. In three of these cases the younger signers were the adult children of elderly widows. There was only one man whose name was accompanied by the signatures of his children: don Lorenzo Ponte Villegas, sixty-two years old in 1744, allowed his three eldest sons to sign the memorial. Ponte Villegas was a major cacao hacendado, with 79,000 trees on six haciendas, but none of his children, including the adult sons who signed in 1744, owned cacao haciendas in that year. This was not exceptional. The fact that, with the exception of Ponte Villegas and his sons, adult sons and daughters did not sign the document if their fathers signed reflects the status of these sons and daughters as cacao hacienda owners: in general they had no cacao in 1744. A total of twenty-seven of the fifty-five identified elite men who signed the 1744 document were married or widowed men with living children in that year. Two-thirds of these men had married in the mid-1730s or later and therefore their children were still adolescents in 1744, but nine men had married during the period 1699 to 1728, and most of their children were adults in 1744. Not one of these adult offspring signed the protest statement, how-

ever, and none of them owned cacao property in that year. Unlike their mothers, who did not sign but may have possessed haciendas in their own right, these adult sons and daughters of elite cacao hacendados had neither political voice nor cacao estates of their own while their fathers were still alive.

This all means that the signatures on the 1744 memorial signified determined opposition to the Company, not only on the part of those who actually signed, but also on behalf of the signatories' wives and their offspring, both children and adults. Yet, few of these represented kin had cacao haciendas; only the five wives mentioned above, who held a total of 76,000 trees, can be added with certainty to the names of hacienda owners who spoke out against the Company. There were many other mantuanos in 1744 who did not sign the document and were neither the wives nor the children of those who did. Is it probable that they opposed the Guipuzcoana Company, or should we suppose that they were either its supporters or had simply chosen to maintain a neutral position in the struggle?

An additional six individuals, owners of 187,000 cacao trees on ten haciendas, were most likely allies of those who signed, although they did not themselves sign the protest memorial. Doña Ana Carrasquer Rada was one of the "eleven widows" who wrote to the Council of the Indies in 1741, and her three cacao estates were inventoried in her name during the course of 1744. She died in September, however, before she could sign the memorial, which was written in November of that year. Fernando Aguado Lovera and Miguel Aristeguieta Lovera were hacendados who did not sign in 1744, but when the rebellion began in 1749 they made surreptitious cash contributions to the cause against the Guipuzcoana Company.^[19] Three other hacienda owners might be considered allies because of their close familial relationship with signatories: the widow doña María Ponte Marín, because her brother-in-law signed, as did her son, Pedro Francisco Gedler, a principal organizer of the movement against the Company; Antonio Liendo Blanco, because his brother and sister signed, as did his mother's sister and several of his maternal cousins; and finally, Juan Lovera Bolívar, because his brother signed, may have opposed the Company as well.

Altogether the identified and presumed opponents of the Guipuzcoana Company held more than a million cacao trees, about 20

percent of all the trees bearing fruit in the Caracas province in 1744.^[20] No other person of elite status can be directly or indirectly linked to the protest, which is surprising in light of the fact that historians heretofore have assumed that the local elite was united in its desire to limit or end the Basque monopoly.^[21] Several score planters, many of them much like the outspoken opponents of the Company in terms of their prestige and many generations' presence in Caracas, made no discernible effort to have the Company's control over the colony's economy limited or removed. A total of fifty-eight planters, owners of 722,924 trees on seventy-eight haciendas, have been identified as elite Caraqueños who neither signed the protest letter nor expressed their dissatisfaction with the monopoly in any other form. What were the differences between these two groups of mantuanos which might elucidate why some protested the Company and others did not?