Fugitive Slaves and Imperial Jurisdiction in Eighteenth-Century Venezuela

In 1729 a slave named Juana Isabel Curazao escaped from the Dutch island of Curaçao to nearby Venezuela. There, she successfully petitioned for her freedom and received a plot of land in the newly created free black town of Curiepe, on the Caribbean coast. She was responding, in part, to a Spanish royal provision which offered freedom to runaway slaves who arrived in Venezuela from the colonial possessions of Protestant powers. Between 1680 and 1770 the Spanish Crown issued at least a dozen such provisions and royal decrees, offering manumission to fugitives who arrived in selected parts of Spanish America from the colonies of its rivals. The Crown encouraged runaways to settle in relatively unpopulated, marginal areas where imperial jurisdiction was tenuous at best, thus using them as pawns in its geopolitical maneuverings. Nowhere was this phenomenon so extensive, or so richly documented, as in Venezuela, where hundreds of enslaved Afro-Curaçaoans arrived throughout the eighteenth century. Many navigated Spanish colonial courts with the assistance of middle groups such as magistrates, notaries, clergy, and others. Sometimes they manipulated the conflicting interests of imperial and colonial authorities to their own ends. While many migrants disappeared into anonymity, extensive records in Dutch and Spanish archives allow us to follow individuals as they fled slavery to begin new lives as free men and women. This paper explores the interplay between imperial policy, slave agency, and colonial legal systems as it follows the paths of Juana Isabel, her descendants, and their neighbors in Curiepe. The evidence indicates that the interests of enslaved people seeking freedom intersected with the Spanish state’s attempts to consolidate and extend its sovereignty. Thus, one of the most marginalized groups of colonial denizens helped to shape Spanish policy and strengthen imperial jurisdiction in relatively marginal colonial areas.