Pardos, Free Blacks, and Slave Rebellions in Venezuela during the Age of the Atlantic Revolutions

During the last decades of the 18th century, Venezuela witnessed the emergence of several popular rebellions and conspiracies organized against the colonial government. Many of these movements demanded the reduction or elimination of taxes and the Indian tribute, the transformation of the political system, and fundamental changes for the social order with the abolition of slavery and the declaration of equality among different socio-racial groups. While demanding concrete changes in the local contexts, many of these movements reproduced the political language of republican rights enshrined by the American, French, and Haitian revolutions. Obsessed with silencing and containing local echoes of Franco-Caribbean republican values, the Spanish Crown and colonial agents sought to defuse these political movements, which they viewed as destabilizing, seditious, and extremely dangerous. This proved to be an impossible task; Venezuela was located at the center of the Atlantic Revolutions and its population became too familiar with these political movements: hand-copied samizdat materials from the Caribbean flooded the cities and ports of Venezuela, hundreds of foreigners shared news of the French and Caribbean revolutions with locals, and Venezuelans of diverse social backgrounds met to read hard-to-come-by texts and to discuss the ideas they expounded. During the Age of Revolutions, these written and oral information networks served to efficiently spread anti-monarchical propaganda and abolitionist and egalitarian ideas that sometimes led to rebellions and political unrest.