1. D. A. Brading, "Bourbon Spain and Its American Empire," in The Cambridge History of Latin America (Cambridge, 1984), 1:397-401. break [BACK]

2. Brading points out Arriaga's American experience in ibid., 397. Early in 1752 it was Arriaga, then serving as the intendant for Cádiz, who imprisoned Juan Francisco de León and the other accused insurgents when they arrived from Venezuela. In Caracas in 1750 he had pardoned these men for threats against the Guipuzcoana Company and their attack on La Guaira. In August 1752 Arriaga, then president of the Casa de la Contratación, wrote to inform the marquis de la Ensenada that León had died in the Hospital Real in Cádiz. Sucre, Gobernadores , 269-271. Arriaga to Ensenada, August 4, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421. It was Arriaga who suggested that Nicolás de León be sent to serve in the royal regiment at the African presidio of Orán; Arriaga to Ensenada, February 9, 1753, AGI, Caracas, 421. [BACK]

3. Arriaga to the king, January 14, 1750, AGI, Caracas, 421. [BACK]

4. Brading, "Bourbon Spain," 404. [BACK]

6. Solano to Arriaga, May 20, 1768, AGI, Caracas, 57. Juan Bolívar's petition was denied, and he was still contador interino in 1772; AGI, Santo Domingo, leg. 549. [BACK]

7. The stock issue, the price-setting policy, and the provision allowing Caracas cosecheros space for their cacao on Company ships were innovations. Perhaps none of these reforms was more significant than the decision agreed to by the Company's directors at their 1752 meeting in Guipúzcoa that a new issue of Company stock be made, doubling it in quantity, and that this stock be offered to Caracas residents. The proposal, which may have been more in the nature of a royal order, was made to the directors by the king's representative, ex-governor Julián de Arriaga. Information about this meeting comes from Jules Humbert, Spanish edition, Los orígenes venezolanos (Caracas, 1976), 112; original edition, Les origines vénézuéliennes (Bordeaux, 1905). Otherwise the reformed Company was simply obliged to return to the conditions of its original charter, which did not include the alternativa privilege or the right to restrict seaborne cacao transport. Notice of the reforms was published in Real cédula de fundación de la Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas y Reglas económicas de buen gobierno . . . con adición de las posteriores declaraciones de Su Majestad sobre varios puntos, hasta el año 1753 (Madrid, 1765). A copy of this document is in AGI, Caracas, leg. 950-B. Hussey gives a general account of these changes in Caracas Company , chap. 6. [BACK]

8. Arriaga to the king, January 14, 1750, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421. [BACK]

9. "Resolución del Rey sobre la Provincia de Caracas y su Compañía," March 6, 1751, AGI, Caracas, leg. 57. Arriaga had brought a total of 1200 soldiers and cavalry with him from Spain; AGI, Caracas, leg. 418. [BACK]

10. In 1751 the population of Caracas proper, limited to its several parishes and exclusive of its immediate rural hinterland, was 18,008 persons of all ages and sexes, not including the soldiers. "Recopilación o resumen Gral. 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," April 22, 1752, AGI Caracas, leg. 368. [BACK]

11. AGI, Caracas, leg. 57. break [BACK]

12. Ricardos to Ensenada, September 11, 1751, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421. [BACK]

13. Prior to this, alcaldes ordinarios had repeated in office only when they had been elected in midyear to finish the incomplete term of a predecessor, or when they had taken, as was their privilege, the responsibility of the governor in the event of his unexpected absence and the failure of a new appointee to arrive by the beginning of the next year when elections were held. Alcaldes were reelected for both of these reasons during the difficult years from 1725 to 1727. See Sucre, Gobernadores , 240-242. The alcaldes ordinarios elected from 1752 to 1754 were Francisco Palacios Gedler and Diego de Ibarra. Palacios had less reason to quarrel with the Guipuzcoana Company than did other Caracas elites; see the estimate of his family's cacao holdings in chap. 6. [BACK]

14. The expansion of cabildo offices is described in Waldron, "Social History," 203-219. No one has studied the records of the late eighteenth-century Caracas cabildo more closely than Waldron, who is certainly correct in her observation that the increased preoccupation with good government after midcentury

. . . reveals a shift away from concern with municipal regularity and towards a concern with the personal conduct of the city's inhabitants. Earlier, the cabildo focused on controlling the use of water, assuring an adequate supply of fresh meat, and maintaining streets and solares, but in the ensuing years, with the regulation of these matters well-established, a greater interest in the economic and social behavior of private citizens is detectable. (Ibid., 200-201)

Waldron errs, however, in assuming that this shift was a kind of natural evolution away from Spanish control due to population and economic growth of Caracas: "During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the city remained no more than a town it was quite possible to manage the daily affairs of Caracas from laws originating in Spain. In the eighteenth century, however, when the city grew most rapidly and expanded its activities significantly, it was no longer feasible or desirable to rely on Spain for direction." Ibid., 199-200. To the contrary, as undesirable as it was for Caraqueños, the increase in town government in the 1750s was precisely the result of the increased interest of the crown in controlling the behavior of its Caracas subjects. [BACK]

15. José Luis de Cisneros, Descripción exacta de la Provincia de Benezuela (Valencia, 1764; facsimile edition, Caracas, 1950), 43. [BACK]

16. See, for example, Sucre, Gobernadores , 273; Núñez, La ciudad , 17, 245; and Waldron, "Social History," 205-206. The foremost historian of colonial Venezuelan architecture, Graziano Gasparini, gives no explanation of Ricardos's motives in his Caracas: La ciudad colonial y Guzmancista (Caracas, 1978), 59: "Para la historia de la ciudad, el nombre de Ricardos está ligado a las tiendas que mandó construir en 1755 alreadedor de la Plaza Mayor, las cuales--poco más de un siglo después--fueron demolidas por orden de Guzmán Blanco a fin de convertir la Plaza Mayor en Plaza Bolívar." [BACK]

17. Waldron notes that it was very unusual for the cabildo to undertake an enterprise as costly as this, but she is unaware of the role of Ricardos when she states that "Given the large amount of money involved it is evident that the city believed the improvement of its plaza and market facilities essential." Waldron, "Social History," 205-206. break [BACK]

18. Report of Lorenzo Rosel de Lugo to Ricardos, January 31, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 421. [BACK]

19. Ricardos to Ensenada, May 1, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 368. [BACK]

20. "Instrucción pública" promulgated by Ricardos, November 15, 1752; and revision of the tax schedules issued April 28, 1753, AGI, Caracas, leg. 368. [BACK]

21. Ricardos to Ensenada, May 1, 1752, AGI, Caracas, leg. 368. [BACK]

22. In 1751 the cabildo voted public funds to build three new carnicerías , bringing the total number to four. Waldron suggests that this major increase in slaughterhouses might have been done "to keep abreast of population growth and the physical extension of the city"; "Social History," 249. It would seem more likely, however, that the cabildo was persuaded to quadruple its processing facilities so that meat could be more efficiently taxed. In its own estimate of the productive capacity of the province, done to illustrate to the Crown that 150,000 pesos in revenue could not be gotten from the reformed alcabala, the cabildo assumed that 137,000 head of cattle were consumed province-wide per year, but it was acknowledged that this figure was far from certain, "due to the irregularity of the butchering and sale [of cattle] in the countryside at a distance from the community because of the lack of mataderos and carnicerías .'' Cabildo to Ensenada, April 28, 1753, AGI, Caracas, leg. 368. [BACK]

23. The Guipuzcoana Company blamed Dutch smugglers, who could undersell them by as much as 35 percent and whose ships could not be stopped by their inferior coast-guard vessels, for the busy contraband trade which caused the Company to operate at a deficit of 350,000 pesos for the period January 1752 to November 1755. Hussey, Caracas Company , 180-183. The prohibition on shipping cacao by sea from sites located upwind from La Guaira, while it forced cacao growers to send their beans to port overland by expensive muletrain, was intended to stop contraband on the coast. Permission to renew seaborne transport of cacao, granted as part of the reform which returned to Guipuzcoana Company to the conditions of its original charter, may have given new impetus to smuggling. [BACK]

24. Auto of Ricardos, April 28, 1753; Cabildo to Ensenada, May 28, 1753, AGI, Caracas, leg. 368. [BACK]

25. Arriaga to Ensenada, September 11, 1753, AGI, Caracas, leg. 368. [BACK]

26. A summary of the credits and debits of the Real Hacienda for the province of Caracas for 1771 and 1772 are in AGI, Caracas, leg. 33. The record for the last months of 1777 and 1778 are published in Mario Briceño-Iragorry, ed., Orígenes de la Hacienda en Venezuela ( documentos inéditos de la época colonial ) (Caracas, 1942), 187-208. The revised alcabala taxes are identified by Ricardos's name in the entries in both cases, although there is a discrepancy as to when the policy was decreed. The 1772 document reads: "Por el Real Derecho de Alcabala de tierra que según instrucción formada por don Felipe Ricardos, Gob. y Capitán General que fue de esta Provincia en veinte y cinco de abril de mil setecientos cincuenta y tres con facultad y aprobación Real . . ."; in 1778 the date for the origin of the policy is some months earlier: "Este Ramo se cobra por Real Orden de 15 de noviembre de 1752, conforme a la Instrucción formada por el Excmo. Sr. Dn. Felipe Ricardos, Gobernador y Capitán General que fué de esta Provincia con facultades reales." break [BACK]

27. In good baroque style, the first letters of each line were arranged as an acrostic to form the word "RICARDOS," and they were carved perpendicular to the horizontal so that their meaning could not be missed. A rather free translation of the tablet follows:

THE VERY EXCELLENT SENOR DON PHELIPE RICARDOS
LIEUTENANT GENERAL OF THE ROYAL ARMIES OF HIS MAJESTY GOVERNOR

CAPTAIN GENERAL OF THIS PROVINCE OF VENEZUELA
CALL ON FAME WITH SHOUTING HORN
IN UNKNOWN CLIMES AND RESOUNDING VOICES
PROCLAIM RICARDOS A TRUE HERO
REALIZING RAPID VICTORIES
RENDER HIM THIS CITY WITH FITTING CARE
DUE THANKS FOR YOUR NEW PLEASURES
TODAY IN THIS NEW STREET THERE IS SO MUCH IMPROVEMENT
OF YOUR PROPERTIES WITH THE INCREASING REVENUES

YEAR 1754

Of course the governor's message did not mention that the increasing revenues went to pay for a standing army in the city. This inscription is quoted or a photograph of the tablet is shown in Sucre, Gobernadores , 274; Núñez, La ciudad , 18; and Gasparini, Caracas , 60, but only as a curiosity. None of these authors make any critical comment about the Ricardos poem. [BACK]

28. Remírez to Arriaga, March 14, 1761. Twice before Remírez had written to the king on this matter, first in response to a royal order to reduce tobacco farming (issued on July 25, 1757) on April 6, 1758, and again on March 25, 1759; AGI, Caracas, leg. 57. [BACK]

29. AGI, Caracas, leg. 367. [BACK]

30. Arriaga to Remírez, October 24, 1758, AGI, Caracas, leg. 57. That association with the rebellion left no lasting stain on the Rodríguez de Toro family may have been due in part to the fact that Bernardo José Rodríguez de Toro, the younger brother of the deceased marquis, was oidor in the Audiencia of New Spain, a post that had been purchased for him for 15,000 pesos in 1741, the year before the death of his father, the first Marqués de Toro. Mark A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler, Biographical Dictionary of Audiencia Ministers in the Americas, 1687-1821 (Westport, Conn., 1982), 297. This was the highest position in Spain's imperial bureaucracy ever obtained by a Caracas native son. There is no record of the outcome of a second request made by the widow Ascanio in 1760. She wrote to the king that she had been given legal guardianship by her husband of their ten children, and that without royal help she would be unable to keep their house "in the decency and character" with which his majesty had endowed it. Her request was to be allowed to make five voyages to Veracruz and one to Spain with cacao, paying only one-third the royal duties in each case. She also asked to be allowed to send the same ship to colonias amigas to buy 100 slaves for her haciendas and those of her children, and she asked that her son be allowed to assume the title and mayorazgo of the marquisate without paying the media anata tax. Theresa de Ascanio, Marquesa de Toro, to the king, May 25, 1760, AGI, Caracas, continue

leg. 367. The grant of the title of count to Martín de Tovar is discussed in Núñez, La ciudad , 259. [BACK]

31. Unlike societies where inheritance divisions were discretionary and obedient children could expect material rewards in a father's will for their services, this extended period of waiting in the father's home did not provide a commensurate increase in paternal authority, for in elite Caracas homes slaves did the work and the bipartible inheritance rule ensured an equal share for every heir. [BACK]

32. Born in 1682, don Lorenzo was probably the only elite man in Caracas in 1759 who had clear, firsthand recollections of the first years of the War of Spanish Succession and the short-lived movement in 1702 and 1703 led by some of the Caracas elite, including his father, to reject the sovereignty of the Bourbon Philip of Anjou in favor of the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria. The details of this event remain obscure; see Analola Borges, La casa de Austria en Venezuela durante la guerra de sucesión española (1702-1715) (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1963). In April 1759, the oldest elite woman died, Francisca Tovar Mijares, aged eighty-eight; she had already married twice, in 1691 and again in 1698, before the death of Charles II brought an end to Habsburg rule in the Spanish world. [BACK]

33. AGI, Caracas, leg. 57. He died August 10, 1759. [BACK]

34. The Company of Noble Adventurers was initiated by don José Solano y Bote, governor of Caracas from 1763 to 1771; Sucre, Gobernadores , 279-281. "Compañía de Nobles Aventureros Acaballo de la ciudad de Santiago de León de Caracas, formada de sus hijos nobles," 25 July 1768, AGI, Caracas, leg. 850. break [BACK]