1. Kathy Waldron, "A Social History of a Primate City: The Case of Caracas, 1750-1810" (Ph.D. Diss., Indiana University, 1977), 84-85. François Depons, Viaje a la parte oriental de Tierre Firme en la América Meridional , 2 continue

vols. (first published in 1806), trans. Enrique Planchart, (Caracas, 1960) 1:232. [BACK]

2. This combination, which he fears may be a "theoretical monstrosity," is discussed with considerable sophistication for New Spain by Eric Van Young, "Mexican Rural History since Chevalier: The Historiography of the Colonial Hacienda," Latin American Research Review 18 (1983): 18-22. The link between town and rural hacienda is not emphasized by Van Young, who assumes that landowners practiced patriarchal or seigneurial status and authority in the countryside where they were constant residents. This may be appropriate for owners of Mexican haciendas, but Caracas cacao hacendados most often made such influence felt from and within their urban residences. [BACK]

3. This custodianship was known as the tutela . Most frequently the guardian was both tutor and curador ad litem of minor heirs, which meant that he or she was obliged to care for such minors, educate them, and defend them in legal cases that might be brought against their persons or their property. [BACK]

4. Moreover, the existing historiography of colonial Spanish America does not, to my knowledge, make any use whatsoever of tutela records. This may be due to their rarity. I am certain that these two cases are the only ones for seventeenth-century Caracas for which the set of documents, both guardian's accounts and estate inventories, are extent. Although unwieldy and of short term, they seem to me to be of considerable utility, as this chapter demonstrates. [BACK]

5. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1648 RU. [BACK]

7. The Rodríguez Santos estancia was comparable in size to New Spain wheat haciendas at the same time. In Mexico a transition from small farms to large haciendas, of 100 sown fanegas or more, had taken place during the second half of the sixteenth century. Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810 (Stanford, 1964), 322-325. [BACK]

8. Iturriza Guillén, Familias caraqueñas , 47, 778-779. [BACK]

9. According to Rivillapuerta's account, bags of one vara of lienzo , worth four reales, were filled with four arrobas of flour; since four arrobas were equivalent to two-thirds of one fanega of wheat in the grain (the Rodríguez Santos mill ground six arrobas from every fanega of grain), the added cost for bags was approximately six reales for every fanega ground and bagged.

Compare the estimate of milling earnings of 20 to 30 percent with the cabildo provision that millers receive in payment one-eighth (one almud per fanega) of the grain they ground for others in their mills, see n. 29, chap. 1. [BACK]

10. Escudero's age and the tenure of his service with the Rodríguez Santos is given in ARPC, Tierras, GRS 1637. [BACK]

11. They were criticized for selling bread in four-pound loaves for two reales rather than the stipulated five-pound loaves for that price; ACC, 5:191 (April 1, 1623) and 6:297 (November 18, 1628). [BACK]

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

13. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1638 R. break [BACK]

14. AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 14, July 29, 1628. Iturriza Guillén, Familias caraqueñas , 2:451-452. [BACK]

15. Universidad Central de Venezuela, La obra pía de Chuao, 1568-1825 (Caracas, 1968), 183-190. [BACK]

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

17. Cacao from coastal haciendas located downwind from La Guaira was only rarely brought to that port for sale and reshipment. The custom was for a buyer to make his purchase in Caracas from the hacienda owner, who then wrote a bill of sale that entitled the buyer to either a specified quantity or, more often, all the cacao available at the hacienda when the buyer arrived there. The mayordomo would then fill the order and take a signed receipt for the amount of cacao taken by the buyer, who would then continue on his way down the coast, perhaps stopping to take on cacao from other haciendas before proceeding to New Spain with his purchases. It was not uncommon for buyers to pay for their purchases only after they sold their cacao in New Spain, a payment that was made to the New Spain agent of the Caracas hacienda owner. In 1654 and 1655, with record low prices and no buyers in New Spain due to the currency shortage there, Pedro de Liendo paid five reales the fanega to bring Cepi cacao to La Guaira "to sell it and to give it a market because there was none in Cepi and the cacao was about to be lost, rotting in the storehouse." ARPC, Testamentarías, 1653-1655 CL. [BACK]

18. Most likely these names referred to cutaneous diseases common to slaves which were caused by nutritional deficiencies, most probably yaws, perhaps pellagra or beriberi. The term bubas is discussed in this context in Kenneth F. Kiple, The Carribean Slave: A Biological History (Cambridge, 1984), passim. [BACK]

19. ARPC, Testamentarías, 1653-1655 CL, fols. 385-388. [BACK]

20. There are no data for the year 1653. An estimate of income was made by multiplying the harvest average for recorded years by the current sale price of cacao (10 pesos). The estimated gross income for 1653 is thus 2137 pesos. [BACK]

21. In colonial Caracas the value of developed cacao property was determined by the number of cacao trees growing on a given hacienda. The custom was to evaluate every fruit-bearing tree at one peso; trees that had divided at the trunk and were about to bear fruit (known as horqueteados ) were worth half as much or four reales, while recently planted saplings ( resiembros ) were worth two reales. This method of appraisal was peculiar in that it did not vary over time with the price paid for cacao, and was not, therefore, strictly an assessment of the productive value of the cacao property. Mature trees growing in the rich alluvial soil of the Tuy River valley were usually appraised at one and one-half pesos each, but this was also fixed and did not fluctuate with prices or over time. A survey of cacao haciendas made in 1720 indicated that Tuy River cacao groves then had a much higher yield than did coastal arboledas , about 25 fanegas of beans per 1000 trees compared with 10 fanegas per 1000 trees on the coast; Pedro José Olavarriaga, Instrucción general y particular del estado presente de la provincia de Venezuela en los años de 1720 y 1721 , published by the Academia Nacional de la Historia (Caracas, 1965). Yet the cost of planting cacao in the interior was high, and a portion of the return from higher yields obtained there went continue

for planting and for transport of cacao beans to market. The one peso per tree assessment (and one and one-half peso per tree in the Tuy) probably provided a quick, rule-of-thumb evaluation of the cost of establishing and maintaining a given grove. It thus functioned as an estimate of the grove's market value, and that is how it is used here. The current price paid for cacao and the cost of slave labor were two factors that determined the income from cacao haciendas, but the fact that these variables had no effect on the appraised value of cacao property seems significant. Could it be that Caracas planters ignored such prices in their estimates of the value of their estates because they could do nothing about them? Was the calculation of estate value with current market prices of cacao and slaves too sophisticated for the accounting techniques of the times, or was it that prices of both cacao and slaves tended to fluctuate around a rather constant mean, and therefore had no significance for Caracas planters? [BACK]

22. AGN, Real Hacienda, leg. 14, July 29, 1628. [BACK]

23. The 1684 survey is located in AGI, Contaduría, leg. 1613; it was published in Revista de Historia (Caracas), 28 (August 1970): 63-81. [BACK]

24. ARPC, Tierras, 1681 BGHLV. Cacao holdings in 1720 are from Olavarriaga, Instrucción general . [BACK]