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2— Cacao in the Seventeenth Century: The First Boom

1. An earlier version of this chapter was published as "Encomienda, African Slavery, and Agriculture in Seventeenth-Century Caracas," Hispanic American Historical Review 61 (November 1981): 609-635. "Relación de Diego de Villanueva y Gibaja (1607)," in Antonio Arellano Moreno, ed., Relaciones geográficas de Venezuela (Caracas, 1964), 287-301. Few Caracas residents received goods on consignment from merchants in Seville. For a list, see AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 11, fols. 23-25. The illegal entry of slaves is discussed at length in Miguel Acosta Saignes, Vida de los esclavos negros en Venezuela (Caracas, 1967), chap. 3. Examples of slave ships allegedly blown off course on their way from Angola to the Canary Islands can be found in AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 10, September 22, 1613, and June 25, 1618. [BACK]

2. "Relación de Villanueva," in Arellano Moreno, ed., Relaciones geográficas , 280. Thirty leagues was Villanueva's statement of the distance from Caracas to San Sebastián; however, the San Sebastián site was changed five times during the seventeenth century, according to Lucas Guillermo Castillo Lara, Materiales para la historia provincial de Aragua (Caracas, 1977), 273-278. The Spanish league used in Caracas was most likely the legua común of 5.57 kilometers, judging from the measure of 24 leagues given in Villanueva's report as the distance from Caracas to the stable settlement of Nueva Valencia, a distance of approximately 125 kilometers. Thus the San Sebastián referred to by Villanueva was located about 160 or 170 kilometers south of Caracas. See Roland Chardon, "The Elusive Spanish League: A Problem of Measurement in Sixteenth-Century New Spain," Hispanic American Historical Review 60 (May 1980): 294-302. [BACK]

3. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1653-1655 CL; AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 14, July 29, 1628. The Ibarra-Ovalle dispute is in Archivo Arquidiocesano, Caracas (hereinafter cited AA), Episcopales, Obispo Gonzalo de Angulo. continue

Venezuelan historian Eduardo Arcila Fariás suggested that cacao grown on the coast originated in the Andes because cultivation of the plant was recorded in the mountain town of Mérida (Venezuela) in 1579; Eduardo Arcila Fariás, Economia colonial de Venezuela (Mexico City, 1946), 88. The designation árboles de Trujillo may refer to transplanted Andean cacao, but these trees appeared in the Caracas region after the initial boom was well underway. [BACK]

4. Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America 117, 241, 378. [BACK]

5. Arcila Farías first published his data on Caracas commerce in 1946 in Economía colonial , 96-101. He made no clear reference to the source of his information, but evidently he used the series entitled Libro común y general de la tesorería , AGN, Real Hacienda. The tax record in these volumes is the almojarifazgo , and therein lies a problem: Caracas vecinos, who shipped most of the region's cacao, enjoyed royal exemption from this duty during most of the first half of the seventeenth century. The original cédula granting this favor, dated April 16, 1608, was copied into the cabildo record in 1619; ACC, 4:127-128. Arcila Farías was aware of this exemption ( Economía colonial , 89, 463), but when he compiled his statistics on commerce, he ignored the fact that his source did not include the greater part of all cacao shipped, that which belonged to Caracas vecinos. Due to this error, Arcila Farías's often-cited data give the impression that cacao cultivation and trade developed gradually and steadily over the course of the seventeenth century. In fact, exports were more considerable during the thirty years before 1650 than during the thirty years thereafter. The same flawed data are given in Eduardo Arcila Farías, Comercio entre Venezuela y México en los siglos xvii y xviii (Mexico City, 1950), 71-73. [BACK]

6. The most thorough account of Portuguese Jews who traded Venezuelan cacao in New Spain is by Stanley Mark Hordes, "The Crypto-Jewish Community of New Spain, 1620-1649: A Collective Biography" (Ph.D. Diss., Tulane University, 1980), esp. 81-84, 92, 107-109, 131-132. Also see J. I. Israel, Race, Class, and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610-1670 (Oxford, 1975), 124-130. [BACK]

7. In 1638 a Portuguese agent in Angola reported that slave traders were packing ships with 700 and 800 Africans rather than the customary 400, with the result that "at sea it causes the death of many hundreds of them because of the excessive crowding and lack of water." Quoted in Herbert S. Klein, The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton, 1978), 200, n. 47. In these circumstances, Caracas's proximity to Africa and its situation as the first significant port after the Atlantic crossing where slave cargoes might be absorbed on a regular basis made it a welcome sighting for ships' captains and crews, and, of course, for the slaves as well. The hypothesis that slaves were used as a medium of exchange to acquire readily sold, highly profitable cacao, and that they were purchased in Caracas by individuals who had only limited immediate labor needs (many were encomenderos), but who needed a market for their cacao beans, supports the argument of Brazilian historian Fernando Novais, who would have it that the slave trade created African slavery in the New World, and not the reverse. Fernando Novais, Estrutura e Dinâmica do Antigo Sistema Colonial (Séculos XVI-XVIII) , Caderno CEBRAP, no. 17 (São Paulo, 1974). break [BACK]

8. Eduardo Arcila Farías, El régimen de la encomienda en Venezuela (Seville, 1957), chaps. 8, 9. [BACK]

9. Sucre, Gobernadores , 115-118. [BACK]

10. The ca. 1635 document is in AGN, Fundación de Trujillo, leg. 10, fols. 335-346. The sources listed in n. 50 below were used to fix a date for this document. It was published, dated tentatively but erroneously as sixteenth century, by Guillermo Morón, Historia de Venzuela , 5 vols. (Caracas, 1971), 4:631-638. In 1609 the local definition of Indian tributary was established as all men between the ages of twelve and sixty and all women between the ages of ten and sixty inclusive: "Ordenanza de encomiendas de Sancho de Alquiza y de fray Antonio de Alcega de 30 de noviembre de 1609," published in Arcila Farías, El régimen , 342-351. [BACK]

11. AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 12, fols. 166-167. [BACK]

12. Cornelius Osgood, Excavations at Tocorón, Venezuela (New Haven, Conn., 1943), 49. For the literature on pre-Hispanic Venezuelan culture and civilization, see Mario Sanoja and Iraida Vargas, Antiguas formaciones y modos de producción venezolanos (Caracas,, 1974). Climatic information is from J. Sánchez C. and J. García B., "Regiones meso-climáticas en el centro y oriente de Venezuela," Agronomía Tropical (Caracas), 18 (October 1968): 429-439. A basic source for identifying Venezuelan place names is the Gacetilla de nombres geográficos (Caracas, 1974); Marco-Aurelio Vila, Antecedentes coloniales de centros poblados de Venezuela (Caracas, 1978), is also helpful. [BACK]

13. The trade between Caracas and San Sebastián was too slight in 1609 to interest Hispanic mule-skinners, and an exception to the general prohibition of Indian teamsters was made by Alquiza and Alcega in their ordenanza of that year. So that San Sebastián encomenderos would not keep these drivers at work nearer the coast, the ordenanza required that Indian muleteers return from Caracas within fifteen days; Arcila Farías, El régimen , 347. At least until midcentury there was no permanent road between Caracas and San Sebastián. The cattle ranchers of the district offered encomendero Luis de Castro 1000 pesos to open a trail from Paracotos to the Tuy River, midway between the towns; ARPC, Escribanías, April 22, 1649. Evidence of Indian slavery is in ACC, Episcopales, Obispo Mauro de Tovar. [BACK]

14. Travel in the Aragua Valley is described in Mariano Martí, Documentos relativos a su visita pastoral de la diócesis de Caracas, 1771-1784 , 7 vols. (Caracas, 1969), 2:286-429. Shipping costs in 1841 are compared in John V. Lombardi, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela, 1820-1854 (Westport, Conn., 1971), 116, n. 27. [BACK]

15. ACC, 6:147 (October 9, 1626). [BACK]

16. MacLeod, Spanish Central America , 117. In Yucatan the average encomienda income fell from 1390 pesos in 1607 to 659 pesos in 1666; Manuela Cristina García Bernal, Yucatán: Población y encomienda bajo los Austrias (Seville, 1972), 418-419. [BACK]

17. The actual meaning in the Caracas context of this designation of gentility is not considered here. That the title held significance, although usage varied with time and place, is argued by James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerers of Peru (Austin, 1972), 31-33, 111, 208. [BACK]

18. Ovalle's will is in ARPC, Testamentarías, 1650-1653 sin letra . The Blanco Ponte family is traced in Iturriza Guillén, Familias caraqueñas , 1:161- hard

180. The first reference to the Blanco Ponte family in the Caracas documentation is ACC, leg. 4, fol. 310 (September 9, 1619). Trade between the Canaries and the Indies is explored in detail in Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique (1504-1650) , 8 vols. (Paris, 1955-1958), vol. 8, pt. 1, 424-430. [BACK]

19. Pedro de Liendo's will is in Universidad Central de Venezuela, La obra pía de Chuao, 1568-1825 (Caracas, 1968), 190-194. The Liendos and don José Rengifo Pimentel are also included in Iturriza Guillén's genealogical study, Familias caraqueñas , 2:451-452, 726. Multiple holdings of encomiendas were not unusual in seventeenth-century Caracas; Arcila Farías, El régimen , 170-172. [BACK]

20. ARPC, Testamentarias, 1650-1653 sin letra ; Ovalle's wife's dowry, 12,565 pesos of 10 reales, is in ARPC, Escribanías, February 21, 1602. His brother Antonio was corregidor in Santo Domingo; ARPC, Escribanías, November 12, 1637. In the absence of other heirs, Ovalle's nephew Juan inherited the valuable Choroní estate, much to the disgust of his wife's Caracas family. Ovalle heads the list of foreigners in "Relación de los estrangeros (April 12, 1607)," Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereinafter cited AGI), Santo Domingo, leg. 193. [BACK]

21. AA, Episcopales, Obispo Gonzalo de Angulo. [BACK]

22. His donation of 1000 reales to aid the expedition against the Indian rebels in Nirgua, at a time when few benefits were to be had from such military activity, could not have been overlooked by his Spanish peers, whose contributions were 10, 25, or 40 reales; ACC, 5:389. [BACK]

23. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1650-1653 sin letra . [BACK]

24. Antonio de Herrera's Historia was a common item in colonial Venezuelan libraries; see Ildefonso Leal, Libros y bibliotecas en Venezuela colonial , 2 vols. (Caracas, 1978), 1:cix-cx. Ovalle's small collection does not appear in Leal's extensive inventory. [BACK]

25. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1650-1653 sin letra . [BACK]

26. No peso value was assigned to the slaves on the Ovalle estate in the inventory of 1653, but the average value of slaves recorded in other inventories taken at about the same time was 250 pesos or more; ARPC, Testamentarías, 1648 RU; 1653-1655 CL. [BACK]

27. La obra pía de Chuao , 191-194. [BACK]

28. Total sale was 7693 pesos; ARPC, Escribanías, September 21 and 24, 1640. [BACK]

29. The genealogies of these women's families are traced in Iturriza Guillén, Familias caraqueñas . The 1000 pesos were loaned by the Rodríguez Santos family, wheat farmers and merchants; ARPC, Testamentarías, 1638 R, fols. 457-459. [BACK]

30. Alonso Rodríguez Santos's will is in ARPC, Testamentarías, 1648 RU. Francisco Castillo de Consuegra's will is in ARPC, Testamentarías, 1614-1634 CEFMSU. [BACK]

31. Baltasar de Escoverdo, ARPC, Testamentarías, 1634-1637 MDPACVG; Agustín Pereira, ARPC, Testamentarías, 1656-1657 sin letra ; ARPC, Escribanías, January 21 and December 23, 1630, May 3 and October 3, 1634. [BACK]

32. Chap. 3 contains a detailed analysis of the Liendo estate; see table 13 there which includes harvest and price data. break [BACK]

33. ARPC, Escribanías, January 15, 1630; Testamentarías, 1653-1655 CL. The Liendo slaves, with ages and their inventoried peso values, are listed in Appendix E. [BACK]

34. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1656-1657 sin letra , will of Elvira de Campos, states that 1800 fanegas of cacao worth an estimated 50,000 pesos were harvested from the 22,000-tree coastal hacienda of Juan Navarro during an unspecified number of years before 1637.

35. Ibid. The Navarro groves were completely destroyed by the alhorra . In 1684 a Caracas escribano wrote: "It should be noted that in the year 1635 there began the alhorra in the arboledas de cacao that existed then in the valleys of the costa de la mar arriva y abajo and others of the tierra adentro and because many haciendas were lost it was necessary for some vecinos to plant again, and [although] the said alhorra lasted ten years more or less, it still continues [to afflict] the árboles de la tierra ." AGI, Contaduria, leg. 1613. [BACK]

34. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1656-1657 sin letra , will of Elvira de Campos, states that 1800 fanegas of cacao worth an estimated 50,000 pesos were harvested from the 22,000-tree coastal hacienda of Juan Navarro during an unspecified number of years before 1637.

35. Ibid. The Navarro groves were completely destroyed by the alhorra . In 1684 a Caracas escribano wrote: "It should be noted that in the year 1635 there began the alhorra in the arboledas de cacao that existed then in the valleys of the costa de la mar arriva y abajo and others of the tierra adentro and because many haciendas were lost it was necessary for some vecinos to plant again, and [although] the said alhorra lasted ten years more or less, it still continues [to afflict] the árboles de la tierra ." AGI, Contaduria, leg. 1613. [BACK]

36. The best description of the earthquake is Bishop Mauro de Tovar to the king, August 14, 1641, AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 218. The bishop's colorful career is described in Andrés F. Ponte, Fray Mauro de Tovar (Caracas, 1945), and in Manuel Guillermo Díaz, El agresivo obispado caraqueño de don Fray Mauro de Tovar (Caracas, 1956). [BACK]

37. MacLeod, Spanish Central America , 251.

38. Ibid., 242-244. [BACK]

37. MacLeod, Spanish Central America , 251.

38. Ibid., 242-244. [BACK]

39. Archivo del Consejo Municipal del Distrito Federal, Caracas (hereinafter cited as ACM), Actas del cabildo, Originales, 1669-1672, August 6, 1670. [BACK]

40. MacLeod, Spanish Central America , 280-287. [BACK]

41. Several millions of pesos were confiscated by the inquisitors according to Hordes, "The Crypto-Jewish Community," 153. [BACK]

42. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1653-1655 CL. [BACK]

43. ARPC, Escribanías, Tomás de Ponte, August 5, 1653, fols. 110-116. Occasionally the slave trade itself depended on Mexican credit: Almeyda sold an additional nine slaves to don Manuel Felipe Tovar, knight of the Order of Santiago, for 2790 pesos, 2400 pesos of which were to be paid him in Mexico by Tovar's agent, Luis Pérez de Castro, vecino and alguacil of Veracruz. Escribanías, Juan López Villanueva, June 13 and July 14, 1653, fols. 68-70. [BACK]

44. Lucas Guillermo Castillo Lara, Las acciones militares del gobernador Ruy Fernández de Fuenmayor (1637-1644) (Caracas, 1978), 35, 52-58. [BACK]

45. ACM, Actas del cabildo, Originales, 1669-1672, May 21, June 20, 1671. If the mal 'olanda were the same disease later described as the mal de Loanda , then it probably meant scurvy, an infirmity associated with over-loading and undersupplying the slave ships. See Joseph C. Miller, "Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade: Statistical Evidence on Causality," The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11 (Winter 1981): 412-413. [BACK]

46. MacLeod, Spanish Central America , 363. [BACK]

47. New appointments to the cabildo are in ACM, Actas del Cabildo, Originales, 1673-1676, February 6, May 16, 1675. [BACK]

48. The construction of the new seminary is in ACM, Actas del Cabildo, Originales, 1673-1676, October 25, 1673; the jail is mentioned on September 2, 1674; and the fort was discussed in the sessions of November 16, 27, and December 1, 1673. [BACK]

49. This document is in AGI, Contaduría, leg. 1613; it was published in continue

Revista de Historia (Caracas), 28 (August 1970); 63-81. The effort was made to auction the collection of the alcabala on two occasions, September 25, 1673, and again on June 5, 1675, but no one was willing to bid. ACM, Actas del cabildo, Originales, 1673-1676. [BACK]

50. Only four of the thirty-eight encomenderos who held encomiendas with an annual renta of 1000 pesos or more have not been identified by place of birth and with a descending kindred network. The genealogical studies used are those by Carlos Iturriza Guillén, Algunas familias caraqueñas , already cited, and Algunas familias valencianas (Caracas, 1955). José Antonio de Sangroniz y Castro, Familias coloniales de Venezuela (Caracas, 1943) is serviceable, but lacks the detail and completeness of Iturriza Guillén's work. The marriage registry for the cathedral parish has been published by the Instituto Venezolano de Genealogía, Matrimonios y velaciones de españoles y criollos blancos celebrados en la catedral de Caracas desde 1615 hasta 1831 (Caracas, 1974). [BACK]

51. An idea of the size of the slave labor force comes from an estimate of 16,000 slaves in the Caracas region made by Bishop González de Acuña in 1674; Bishop Antonio González de Acuña to the king, June 15, 1675, in Guillermo Figuera, ed., Documentos para la historia de la iglesia colonial en Venezuela , 2 vols. (Caracas, 1965, 1967), 2:101-104. [BACK]

52. Leopoldo de la Rosa, "La emigración canaria a Venezuela en los siglos xvii y xviii," Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos (Tenerife), 20 (1976): 617-631. [BACK]

53. The concentration of canarios in the Candelaria parish is revealed in the "Matrículas de las parroquias de Caracas y demás pueblos de su diócesis, 1759," a manuscript census located in the Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas. [BACK]

54. Castillo Lara, Materiales para la historia de Aragua , 240-244. [BACK]

55. Guillermo Figuera, ed., Documentos para la historia de la iglesia , 2:119-120. [BACK]

56. The 1690 encomienda census is in AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 197-B. A copy is in the Archivo de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, Caracas (hereinafter cited AANH), Traslados, Sección Caracas, vol. 138. [BACK]

57. All encomienda Indians, whether defined as tributaries or not, were counted in 1690. [BACK]

58. Classified "zambos" by the Ynforme compilers, these children of Indian and African parentage were considered Indians for tax purposes. [BACK]

59. There were virtually no Indians remaining on the coast by 1719. AANH, Misiones de Capuchinos, Trinidad, Guayana y los Llanos de Venezuela, leg. 2, no. 36, fol. 81. [BACK]

60. ARPC, Civiles, 1730. [BACK]

61. Mario Góngora, "Urban Social Stratification in Colonial Chile," The Hispanic American Historical Review 55 (August 1975): 430-431. [BACK]

62. Peter J. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700 (Cambridge, 1971), 208-220.

63. Ibid., 229. [BACK]

62. Peter J. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546-1700 (Cambridge, 1971), 208-220.

63. Ibid., 229. [BACK]


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