Leva de Vagos Caracas 1809

THE AMERICAS
68:3/Januar y 2012/347–375
COPYRIGHT BY THE ACADEMY OF
AMERICAN FRANCISCAN HISTORY
UNEXPECTED OPPOSITION:
Independence and the 1809
Leva de Vagos in the Province of Caracas
I
n late 1809 and early 1810, the city of Caracas witnessed an extraordinary
spectacle as over 350 men were marched into its prisons. Local provincial
authorities had apprehended these men as part of a leva de vagos, a cam-
paign to coercively recruit vagrants into the army.1 Such recruitment campaigns
were neither novel nor particularly controversial in the late Bourbon period.2
However, Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808 had unhinged the Spanish
world, inspiring a profound re-examination of values and traditions. In this con-
text, this new leva generated an unexpected opposition that stunned the new
captain general of Venezuela, field marshal Vicente Emparan y Orbe. The oppo-
sition, which was led by the Caracas audiencia—the province’s highest court—
ostensibly questioned the legality of the procedures being used to validate
charges of vagrancy, but beneath the surface, the resistance reflected a broad-
based coalition dedicated to the defense of a status quo that was unraveling
under the twin forces of Napoleon and the Junta Central.3 In this essay, I argue
that the Leva de Vagos of 1809 contributed decisively to the overthrow of
Emparan, paving the way for the creation of the Junta of Caracas in April 1810.
Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the Conference of Latin American History in San Diego and at
the X Jornadas de la Historia y Religión in Caracas. Thanks are due to John Womack Jr., John D. French,
Jonathan Uslaner, and Ingrid Bleynat for their insightful comments; Allan J. Keuthe and Petter M. Beattie for
their generous advice on military history; Adriana Calvo for her many maps; Tomás Straka for his gracious
invitation to the Jornadas; and the anonymous reviewer of The Americas.
1. In Spanish, the term leva is defined as the recruitment of soldiers. By the early nineteenth century,
most contemporaries came to understand the term as an abbreviation for “leva de vagos,” a particular type of
recruitment in which vagrants were coercively enlisted into the army; the leva de vagos was abolished in Spain
in 1817. In English, the term “impressment” is the best translation for this type of leva. Diccionario de la
lengua castellana, 4th ed. (Madrid: Viuda de D. Joaquín Ibarra, impresora de la Real Academia, 1803), p. 513.
2. Levas de vagos, for example, were common occurrences in contemporary New Spain, having evolved
into an excuse to “extort money from the laboring classes.” Christon I. Archer, “To Serve the King: Military
Recruitment in Late Colonial Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 55:2 (May 1975), p. 231.
3. The Junta Central (also known as Junta Central Suprema y Gubernativa del Reino) was a Spanish
resistance government established on September 25, 1808, and recognized by the entire Spanish empire. See
Ángel Martínez de Velasco, La formación de la Junta Central (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de
Navarra/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1972); Miguel Artola Gallego, La Espaãa de Fer-
nando VII (Madrid: Espasa, 1999), pp. 296–313.
347
348 UNEXPECTED OPPOSITION
The foundational texts of the Junta of Caracas, and later those of the Confed-
eracy of Venezuela, evidence the importance of the Leva de Vagos of 1809 to
the province of Caracas. The Junta’s founding declaration of April 19, 1810
upheld Spanish law with only three exceptions, the first of which was the orders
“that have been given on vagrants, since they are not in accordance to the laws
and practices that govern these dominions.”4 In 1811, in its Manifesto to the
World, the Confederacy of Venezuela listed the following as one of Emparan’s
unbearable abuses: “to chain and to sentence to labor in the public works, with-
out proper trial, a multitude of honest men [who were] torn from their homes
with the pretext of being vagrants.”5 For almost two centuries, these founda-
tional documents have been extensively copied and paraphrased by historians.
Yet, despite the many references to the Leva that provoked them, much about
the campaign has been rendered unintelligible by time and largely forgotten.6
Recovering the Leva de Vagos of 1809 illuminates the dynamics behind the
unraveling of the local Spanish government at the eve of independence.7 To pre-
4. Acta del cabildo de Caracas, April 19, 1810, in Documentos para la historia de la vida pública del
Libertador de Colombia, Perú y Bolivia, Vol. 2, eds. José Félix Blanco and Ramón Azpurúa (Caracas: Imprenta
de La Opinión Nacional, 1875), p. 392. Impressment also figured prominently in the history of U.S. inde-
pendence, with Jesse Lemisch noting that both Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Thomas Jefferson’s Dec-
laration of Independence identified coercive recruitment by the Royal Navy as an example of British tyranny.
Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America,” William
and Mary Quarterly 25:3 (July 1968), p. 394.
5. Manifiesto que hace al mundo la Confederación de Venezuela en la América Meridional, de las razones
en que ha fundando su absoluta independencia de la España, y de cualquiera otra dominacion extrangera (Cara-
cas: Imprenta de J. Baillio, 1811), p. 7. See also El Mercurio Venezolano (Caracas), February 1811, pp. 8–9.
6. There is no comprehensive account of the Leva de Vagos of 1809. Contemporary historians left only
a few details, with José Manuel Restrepo (1827) remarking that the Junta of Caracas returned the men appre-
hended as vagrants to their agricultural occupations and Francisco Javier Yanes (1840) describing the event as
“a general leva [affecting] the whole province.” José Manuel Restrepo, Historia de la revolución de la
República de Colombia, Vol. 1 (Besanzon: Imprenta de José Jacquin,1858), p. 540; Francisco Javier Yanes,
Compendio de la historia de Venezuela: desde su descubrimiento y conquista hasta que se declaró estado indepen-
diente (Caracas: Imprenta de A. Damiron, 1840), p. 74. Some of the most notable works copying or para-
phrasing the Confederacy of Venezuela on the Leva de Vagos are Rafael María Baralt and Ramón Díaz,
Resumen de la historia de Venezuela: desde el año de 1797 hasta el de 1830, Vol. 2 (Curaçao: Imprenta de A.
Bethencourt e Hijos, 1887), p. 41; Juan Vicente González, “Historia del poder civil en Colombia y Venezuela:
por medio de las biografías de Martín Tovar y José María Vargas” in Obras literarias de Juan Vicente González
(Caracas: Imprenta de La Opinión Nacional, 1887), p. 300; Andrés F. Ponte, La Revolución de Caracas y sus
próceres (Caracas: Imprenta Nacional, 1918), p. 62; and Caracciolo Parra Pérez, Historia de la Primera
República de Venezuela (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1992), p. 191. The paucity of contemporary accounts
led even Caracciolo Parra Pérez, who paraphrased references to the Leva de Vagos in 1939, to doubt the Con-
federacy of Venezuela’s characterization by arguing that these men were in fact urban misfits and that freeing
them was merely a “symbolic act” against Emparan. Parra Pérez, Historia de la Primera República, p. 206.
References to this leva disappear after 1960, even in the groundbreaking works of Ángel Grisanti, Manuel
Lucena Salmoral, and Clément Thibaud. Grisanti, Emparan y el golpe de estado de 1810 (Caracas: Tip. Lux,
1960); Lucena Salmoral, Características del comercio exterior de la provincia de Caracas durante el sexenio rev-
olucionario (1807–1812) (Madrid: Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana/Sociedad Estatal Quinto Cente-
nario/Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1990); and Clément Thibaud, Repúblicas en armas: los ejércitos bolivar-
ianos en la Guerra de Independencia de Colombia y Venezuela (Bogota: Planeta/IFEA, 2003).
7. Jaime Rodríguez O. and François-Xavier Guerra have emphasized the importance of the years 1808,
1809, and early 1810 to understanding Spanish American independence within the wider Spanish world. In
OLGA GONZALEZ-SILEN 349
serve Caracas within the empire, Emparan sought to gain American support for
the Junta Central by reforming the province. This leva, for example, not only
aimed at strengthening the Caracas military by recruiting new soldiers, but—
equally important—it also attempted to reaffirm the preeminence of the local
elites vis-à-vis other social groups by targeting the provincial free lower classes.
The recruitment effort, however, proved to have the opposite effect, weakening
the social and institutional ties that linked provincial life to the empire.8 Legal
challenges to individual apprehensions exposed the audiencia as an ineffective
mediator between vassals and the local authorities. In addition, the public suf-
fering surrounding the recruitment campaign antagonized the anonymous yet
powerful majority that formed the popular bulwark of the Spanish government.9
When the Caracas elite challenged Emparan’s leadership on April 19, 1810, it
seemed to many contemporaries that the fate of the humble vagrants validated
the elite’s accusation that the local Spanish government was becoming a tyranny.
THE ROYAL ARMY AND THE VAGRANTS OF THE

PROVINCE OF CARACAS
The province of Caracas in 1810, with a population of 427,000, had experi-

enced profound social, economic, and political transformations in the late Bour-
bon period.10 In 1777, the crown created the captaincy-general of Venezuela
this essay, I build upon their insights to examine political, social, and military developments that affected the
Spanish province of Caracas. Jaime Rodríguez O., The Independence of Spanish America (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998); François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencia: ensayos sobre las revolu-
ciones hispánicas, 3rd ed. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000).
8. The emerging nation-states witnessed an unprecedented militarization of society in the last third of
the eighteenth century, with Alan Forrest, for example, highlighting the annual French conscriptions as a pow-
erful force in shaping revolutionary and imperial France. From 1808 onward, the French military expansion
would force the massive and often chaotic militarization of Spanish and Spanish American societies. Both Juan
Ortiz Escamilla for Mexico and Thibaud for Venezuela and Colombia have chronicled the rapid militarization
of local American societies under both royal and insurgent leadership. In this context, the Leva de Vagos of
1809 exemplifies an early attempt at expanding the Spanish American army to confront the French threat.
Alan Forrest, Conscripts and Deserters: The Army and French Society During the Revolution and Empire (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Charles J. Esdaile, The Spanish Army in the Peninsular War (Manches-
ter: Manchester University Press, 1988); Thibaud, Repúblicas en armas; and Juan Ortiz Escamilla, Guerra y
gobierno: los pueblos y la independencia de México (Seville: Universidad Internacional de Andalucía/Universi-
dad de Sevilla/Instituto Mora/Colegio de México, 1997).
9. Caracas’s urban masses became decisive players in local politics following the crisis unleashed by the
Napoleonic invasion of Spain, with the Leva de Vagos of 1809 providing grounds for a collective grievance
against Emparan. On the impact of impressment for the free lower classes, see Peter M. Beattie, The Tribute
of Blood: Army, Honor, Race and Nation in Brazil, 1864–1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).
Richard A. Warren has also argued for the importance of Mexico City’s urban masses during the independ-
ence period; see Vagrants and Citizens: Politics and the Masses in Mexico City from Colony to Republic (Wilm-
ington: Scholarly Resources, 2001).
10. John V. Lombardi, People and Places in Colonial Venezuela (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1976), p. 59. On the province of Caracas in the late Bourbon period, see Lombardi, People and Places; P.
Michael McKinley, Pre-Revolutionary Caracas: Politics, Economy, and Society, 1777–1811 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1985); and Lucena Salmoral, Características del comercio exterior.
out of the provinces of Caracas, Maracaibo, Cumana, Margarita, Trinidad, and

Guayana, with the city of Caracas recognized as the center of power. Soon after,
the province of Caracas gained an intendancy, an audiencia, a consulado, and a
tobacco estanco (royal monopoly) and became the seat of an archbishopric.
These institutional developments coincided with a growing and diversifying
export economy based on cacao, coffee, indigo, sugar, cotton, and hides.
Commodities, with the exception of hides, were mainly produced in small- and
mid-sized landholdings by a large free labor force and a relatively modest
number of slaves.11 The province’s mostly American-born, close-knit elite over-
saw the province’s increasing prosperity from their homes in the city of Caracas.
On the eve of independence, one historian has argued, the Caracas elite “was
experiencing a new assertiveness born of economic success, social pre-eminence
and an awareness of political strength.”12
The Napoleonic invasion of Spain would soon test the confidence of the Cara-
cas elite. In November 1808, some of the city’s most prominent men sent a
petition to the captain general colonel Juan de Casas seeking the establishment
of a junta suprema in Caracas.13 This petition was an implicit rejection of the
newly established Junta Central’s claim that it embodied the sovereignty of the
entire Spanish empire. Casas, in response, arrested some of the signatories of
the petition under charges of treason—an event that scandalized local society.
When news of the petition and the arrests reached Seville, however, the Junta
Central decided to table the inquest; it hoped both to co-opt the political and
economic support of the Caracas elite and preempt a feared revolution in
Caracas.14
To make further amends, the Junta Central began a significant renovation of

the Caracas government by appointing new functionaries who, it hoped,
11. On the province’s agricultural production, see McKinley, Pre-Revolutionary Caracas, pp. 46–62.
Almost half of the 64,462 slaves living in the province of Caracas were not engaged in agriculture. Lucena
Salmoral, Características del comercio exterior, p. 56.
12. McKinley, Pre-revolutionary Caracas, p. 2.
13. On the so-called “conjura de los mantuanos,” see Conjuración de 1808 en Caracas para formar una
junta suprema gubernativa: documentos completos, Vols. 1 and 2 (Caracas: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía
e Historia, 1968); and Inés Quintero Montiel, La conjura de los Mantuanos: último acto de fidelidad a la
monarquía española (Caracas, 1808) (Caracas: Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, 2002).
14. Many enemies within the Spanish resistance, including the Council of Castile and other regional
Spanish juntas, besieged the Junta Central. In these internecine feuds, the Junta Central depended on Amer-
ican political recognition and economic resources to bolster its peninsular leadership. On the Caracas elite’s
contributions to the war effort, see Lucena Salmoral, “El ‘donativo patriótico’ hecho por Venezuela a España
para ayudar a sufragar los gastos de la guerra de independencia peninsular,” Boletín de la Academia Nacional
de la Historia 241 (January-March 1978): pp. 109–127; and Ángel Rafael Almarza, “Fidelidad y adhesión a
la monarquía. Los donativos patrióticos de la Capitanía General de Venezuela 1808–1810” (presentation, VII
Congreso de Investigación y Creación Intelectual de la UNIMET, Caracas, May 24–28, 2010), http://
ares.unimet.edu.ve/academic/VII-congreso/libro-vii/ponencias/almarza-angel.pdf (accessed October 6,
2011).
would better accommodate local interests.15 This effort began with the
appointment of Emparan as the new captain general of Venezuela in early
1809. Emparan, at the time, was considered the ideal functionary to balance
imperial and local interests, based on his reputation as a popular former gov-
ernor of the province of Cumana from 1792 to 1804.16 His proposed plan for
governing Caracas revealed both an extensive knowledge of local politics and
a reformist zeal for revitalizing the local Spanish government. In this plan,
Emparan envisioned a stronger Creole elite under the leadership of enlight-
ened Spanish officials who would attend to the grievances of Caracas’ elites,
past and present, by granting political and economic concessions. The main
grievances of the elites, Emparan informed the Junta Central, related to the
inefficiency of the audiencia and the threat posed by the gente de color, who had
publicly rebuked the elite for petitioning for a junta suprema in Caracas in
November 1808.17 Emparan’s prejudices against the court and the lower
classes would strongly shape his government.
Once in Caracas, Emparan was faced with strong currents of political and social
unrest and constant fears of a French naval invasion of the Venezuelan coast.18
The province’s defense consisted of a small regular army of around 950 military
men backed by a large number of milicias disciplinadas.19 These militias con-
sisted of battalions of white, pardo (free colored), and moreno (free black) vol-
unteers, who received some military training and were mobilized only in times
15. Olga Gonzalez-Silen, (forthcoming) The Unraveling of the Spanish Empire in the Province of Cara-
cas, 1808–1810 (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2012).
16. As early as 1878, Venezuelan historians identified “the Emparan paradox,” in which Emparan was
depicted by historians and contemporaries both as the responsive ruler of Cumana in the 1790s and early
1800s and as the despot of Caracas in 1809 and 1810. On Vicente Emparan y Orbe’s career in the captaincy-
general of Venezuela, see Arístides Rojas, Los hombres de la Revolución, 1810–1826. Cuadros históricos: el
canónigo José Cortés Madariaga, el general Emparan (Caracas: Imprenta de La Opinión Nacional, 1878);
Héctor Parra Márquez, El Mariscal Vicente Emparan, último gobernador y capitán general de Venezuela y su
dudosa conducta política (Caracas: Avila Gráfica, 1952); Grisanti, Emparan y el golpe de estado; and Idelfonso
Leal, “Don Vicente de Emparan: un personaje polémico del 19 de Abril de 1810,” Boletín de la Academia
Nacional de la Historia 250 (April-June 1980), pp. 343–346.
17. Captain general Vicente Emparan to the Junta Central, Seville, March 9, 1809, Archivo Histórico
Nacional, Madrid (hereafter AHN), Estado 60.
18. For example, the military commanders discussed protective measures after receiving reports that a
French squadron was seen near Barbados in December 1809. Measures proposed by the Junta de Guerra,
draft, Caracas, December 24, 1809, Archivo General de la Nación, Caracas (hereafter AGN), Gobernación y
Capitanía General (hereafter Gobernación), tome 215, item 51.
19. In the province of Caracas, the regular troops were organized into the Caracas battalion, the artillery
brigade, and the queen’s regiment, which was a rotating peninsular battalion, for a combined force of around
950 men. In December 1809, about 450 infantrymen were ready to take up arms with short notice in the city
of Caracas. Captain Luis de Ponte to Emparan, Caracas, December 25, 1809; Liutenant colonel Matías de
Letamendi, Caracas, December 26, 1809, AGN, Organización Militar de la Colonia, 1800–1810 (hereafter
Militar). On the Caracas army, see Estado militar de España (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1808), pp. 76, 164–67;
Gary Miller, “Status and Loyalty in Colonial Spanish America: A Social History of Regular Army Officers in
Venezuela, 1750–1810” (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1985), pp. 9–59; and Santiago Gerardo Suárez,
Las fuerzas armadas venezolanas en la colonia (Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1979).
of crisis.20 This military organization had been effective and cost-efficient before
1808, but it was to prove ill suited for an international conflict with no resolu-
tion in sight.21 The continuous alertness to a potential threat especially strained
the militias from Valencia and the Valleys of Aragua, which had protected the
city of Caracas from mid-1808 onward. Further, the continuous mobilization
of the militia from these faraway places burdened the royal treasury, removed
men from agriculture and commerce, encouraged desertion by posting militia-
men far from home, and fueled widespread popular discontent.22
Modernizing the Caracas army, Emparan believed, was critical to reducing

Caracas’ reliance on the militias and to strengthening the local government.23
His plan called for an increase in the number of regular soldiers, along with the
centralization of command and the purchase of new weapons and uniforms.24
For several reasons, the recruitment of soldiers would prove to be a challenge.
Prior to 1808, the crown had often transferred peninsular Spanish battalions to
Caracas; more than half the local military contingent was of European birth.25
20. The Crown began introducing “milicias disciplinadas” in Spanish America in the late 1760s as a
means to shift the burden of imperial defense to Spanish Americans. In 1773, this military reorganization
resulted in the province of Caracas gaining five militia battalions and ten unaffiliated companies for a total of
4,934 militiamen based in the city of Caracas, the city of Valencia, and the Valleys of Aragua. By 1806, the
Caracas militia counted between 5,000 and 6,000 militiamen. Despite these numbers, the effective force of
the Caracas militia is difficult to gauge because reports of troops were often unreliable, the levels of military
training varied widely, and many companies disappeared over time. Allan J. Keuthe, “Las milicias disciplinadas
en América,” in Soldados del rey: el ejército borbónico en América colonial en vísperas de la Independencia, eds.
Kuethe and Juan Marchena Fernández (Castellón de la Plana: Universitat Jaume I, 2005), pp. 101–126; Lucio
Mijares Pérez, “La organización de las milicias venezolanas en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII,” in Memoria
del Tercer Congreso Venezolano de Historia, Vol. 2 (Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1979), pp.
279–280; and José de Limonta, Libro de la razón general de la Real Hacienda del Departamento de Caracas
(Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1962), p. 286.
21. The Bourbon military reorganization, Gary Miller argues, was “a qualified success” in expanding
the local administration and in protecting the captaincy-general of Venezuela in the late eighteenth century.
Miller, “Status and Loyalty,” p. 47.
22. On the burdens of militia deployment to Caracas, see Eugenio Loyza, Ramón Hidalgo, and
Guillermo Ramos to captain general Juan de Casas, Caracas, May 9, 1809, AGN, Gobernación, tome 205,
item 14. There is some evidence that militia companies of the Valleys of Aragua and Valencia were involved in
a conspiracy to overthrow Emparan in early April 1810. Ponte, La revolución de Caracas, pp. 69–74.
23. While Emparan claimed the Leva de Vagos of 1809 was a measure to deal with attrition, the Cara-
cas military force in 1809 was similar in size to that of prior decades. Therefore, I argue that this leva is better
understood as an expansionist measure. Emparan to the minister of justice Benito Ramón de Hermida, Cara-
cas, March 6, 1810, Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla, Audiencia de Caracas (hereafter AGI, Caracas), leg.
108; Miller, “Status and Loyalty,” p. 32.
24. The Junta Central had appointed both a new sub-inspector of artillery and a commander of the mili-
tia, as proposed by Emparan. In early 1810, there were also efforts to purchase uniforms and weapons.
Emparan to the Junta Central, Seville, March 9, 1809, AHN, Estado 60; Intendant Vicente Basadre to
Emparan, Caracas, December 5, 1809, AGN, Intendencia de Ejército y Real Hacienda (hereafter Intenden-
cia), tome 304, item 141.
25. In contrast with most Spanish American armies, the Caracas battalion was composed of a majority
of European soldiers (58.9 percent in 1803 and 64 percent in 1807). Juan Marchena Fernández, Oficiales y
soldados en el ejército de América (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1983), pp. 274–278,
296–306; Miller, “Status and Loyalty,” p. 34; and “Review of the Caracas Battalion,” Caracas, March 1807,
AGN, Militar.
The large number of Spanish soldiers had largely buffered the people of Cara-
cas from the demands of military recruitment.26 With the war in Spain preclud-
ing any transfer of peninsular soldiers and a poor record of volunteer enlistment
in Caracas, Emparan was left with few options. Since the peninsular quinta (lot-
tery conscription) was prohibited in Spanish America, the leva de vagos was the
only sanctioned method for recruiting a large number of regular troops in a
short period of time.27
For Emparan, the forcible recruitment of vagrants also offered an appealing

vehicle for addressing elite complaints about the province’s unruly lower
classes.28 Converting vagrants into laborers and soldiers was a persistent pre-
occupation of enlightened bureaucrats searching for the sources of Spanish
backwardness.29 In the city of Caracas, Spanish officials and the local elite
gave expression to these concerns with the creation in the late 1780s of the
casa de la misericordia, a charitable and proto-penal institution charged with
setting the free poor to work.30 While the Leva de Vagos of 1809 began as an
effort to recruit vagrants into the army, Emparan was soon faced with a
thorny dilemma: the leva netted a large number of provincial men unfit for
the army. Rather than freeing them, Emparan transformed the original
recruitment campaign into a larger, more comprehensive anti-vagrancy cam-
paign by sentencing men unfit for the army to forced labor in public works.
The spectacle of government force targeting the free lower classes seemed an
effective display of the Junta Central’s vaunted balance of imperial and local
interests.
On September 1, 1809, Emparan began the recruitment campaign by ordering

the provincial tenientes justicias mayores (the local equivalents of alcaldes
26. Although there are no studies of contemporary recruitment practices, Emparan claimed that former
captains general relied on banderas de reclutas (recruitment missions led by officials), with disappointing
results. Emparan to minister of war Antonio Cornel, letter draft, Caracas, December 21, 1809, AGN, Gober-
nación, tome 215, item 20.
27. Peter M. Beattie warns about historians’ usual conflation of the terms “impressment,” as in a leva
de vagos, and “conscription”—two very different types of military recruitment. He defines “conscription” as
“an enrollment of mostly law-abiding male youths from which recruits would be selected for service on the
basis of a lottery.” Beattie, The Tribute of Blood, p. xxi. On peninsular recruitment in the late eighteenth cen-
tury, see María Vicenta Candela Marco, De labradores a soldados: un estudio social de las quintas del siglo XVIII
en Castellón de la Plana (Castellón de la Plana: Universitat Jaume I/Servicio de Publicaciones de la
Diputación de Castellón, 2006), pp. 43–50.
28. Emparan also drew from his prior experience in Cumana, where a local cabildo had praised him for
pacifying the llanos (lowlands) by suppressing the local gangs of cattle rustlers. The San Juan Bautista de
Aragua cabildo to the crown, June 27, 1796, AGI, Caracas, leg. 122.
29. See Rosa María Pérez Estévez, El problema de los vagos en la España del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Con-
federación Española de Cajas de Ahorros, 1976), pp. 293–336; and Silvia Marina Arrom, Containing the Poor:
The Mexico City Poor House, 1774–1871 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).
30. Frédérique Langue,“Desterrar el vicio y serenar las conciencias: mendicidad y pobreza en la Cara-
cas del siglo XVIII,” Revista de Indias 54:201 (May-August 1994), pp. 355–381.
mayores) to round up vagrants for military service in the city of Caracas.31 The
text of the recruitment order opened with a bleak picture of colonial society,
stating that “Robbery, perfidy, drunkenness, murder, lust, and gambling are the
traits that nowadays distinguish a large number of men in this society.” Emparan
then urged the tenientes to devote themselves to “exterminating” these men
and invited vecinos to assist the tenientes by guarding the apprehended men
until those with lesser offenses could be sent to the city of Caracas and those
with serious offenses could be returned to their hometowns to face criminal
trials. Compliance with Emparan’s order was assured by the threat that any
teniente who failed to cooperate would not only be deposed, but also be con-
sidered “an enemy of Society.”32
Emparan’s original recruitment order was remarkable in both its omissions and
ambitions. At a time of heightened Spanish patriotism, he chose not to empha-
size the French threat to the Spanish Caribbean that would have linked military
expansion with the defense of the homeland and provided a rationale for the
people to support the recruitment.33 Instead, the recruitment order reads as a
moral manifesto to cleanse the province of Caracas, with one teniente later
describing it as an order to “to leave this territory clean and free of this moth.”34
Whereas the real ordenanza (royal ordinance) on levas de vagos of May 1775
defined vagrants as single men who either lacked an occupation or engaged in
moral offenses such as drinking, gambling, and carousing, Emparan’s recruit-
ment order conflated thieves and murderers with vagrants. In addition, the
recruitment order failed to provide guidance to tenientes on how to conduct
the leva, neglecting (among other things) to note that only single white men
between the ages of 16 and 40 and of proper height were suitable for the reg-
ular army.35 After witnessing the chaos sown by his vague, confusing recruit-
ment order, Emparan belatedly, and to little avail, was forced in mid-October
1809 to issue specific guidelines for recruiting vagrants.36
31. For a nuanced analysis of the broad Spanish notion of “vagrants,” see Pérez Estévez, El problema
de los vagos, pp. 55–81. In this essay, I label as vagrants all the men apprehended during the Leva de Vagos of
1809, while acknowledging that most men were denied the legal recourse of challenging the charges of
vagrancy.
32. Emparan to the Caracas tenientes, Caracas, September 1,1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
33. This recruitment order contrasts with the passionate one issued by the Junta Central in November
1808, which ordered a mass conscription, with few exemptions, from military service in order to defend reli-
gion, honor, and freedom. “Real orden para el reemplazo del ejército,” November 18, 1808, in Javier Tambo
Moros and Alfredo J. Martínez Tirao, Antonio Cornel y Ferraz. Ilustrado, militar y político (Zaragoza: n.p.,
2010), pp. 222–227.
34. José Antonio Felipes Borges to Emparan, Valencia, October 13, 1809, Archivo de la Academia
Nacional de la Historia (hereafter AANH), Caracas, Sección Civiles (hereafter Civ.) 17-6783-14.
35. “Real ordenanza para las levas anuales en todos los pueblos del Reyno,” May 7, 1775, in Novísima
Recopilación, Book 12, Title 31, Law 7.
36. When it became apparent that the recruitment order was widely misunderstood, Emparan ordered
his general counsel to draft a second order that adhered closely to the real ordenanza of May 1775. At the
The original recruitment order encouraged tenientes to improvise the logistics

of imprisoning, transporting, guarding, and feeding the vagrants.37 Financing
these operations proved particularly complicated. One teniente explained that
he would apprehend vagrants only after figuring out which funds would pay for
the cost of transporting them to the city of Caracas. Some tenientes, he further
explained, had even returned vagrants headed to the city of Caracas to their
places of residence—an embarrassing situation that could diminish the
teniente’s “authority” in town.38 Another teniente opened a subscripción (public
donation) to repay a local man who had advanced the funds for the local leva
with the expectation of reimbursement.39 Other tenientes borrowed from
meager public sources to pay for the expenses. In October 1809, Emparan reas-
sured the tenientes that the Caracas treasury would reimburse the costs associ-
ated with the recruitment campaign in the near future—a promise he would
repeat five months later.40
The apprehensions of hundreds of vagrants by these tenientes generated a

wealth of documentation that reveals a nuanced group profile and provides a
rare glimpse into non-elite actors in a historiography mostly focused on the
elites.41 Most vagrants were mature single men. In a sample of 99 vagrants
housed in the royal jail, the average age was 27, with three-quarters not mar-
ried.42 Most of the men were engaged in agriculture and belonged to the free
lower classes. Of the sample, 59 men listed their occupations as labradores
(independent farmers) and 33 others as jornaleros (day-laborers), with a hand-
time, Emparan had already decided to sentence vagrants unfit for the army to forced labor in the public
works. The second recruitment order included this new goal by adding first-time petty cattle rustlers to its
traditional definition of vagrants, with the caveat that these criminals were to be sentenced only to the
public works. Later, the crown attorney deemed this addition as a modification of the real ordenanza.
“Instruccion á que se arreglarán los Justicias de esta Provincia en execución de la circular dirigida sobre
vagos, y demás,” asesor general (legal counsel) José Vicente de Anca, Caracas, October 15, 1809, AGI,
Caracas, leg. 172.
37. Tenientes were responsible for preserving peace, presiding over civil and criminal cases, and imple-
menting imperial policy at the local level. Gilberto Quintero, El Teniente Justicia Mayor en la administración
colonial venezolana: aproximación a su estudio histórico jurídico (Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia,
1996).
38. José Ignacio Yepes to Emparan, El Tocuyo, November 9, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6823-1.
39. Felipes Borges to Emparan, Valencia, October 13, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6783-14.
40. Emparan to the royal treasury, draft, Caracas, March 22, 1810, AGN, Gobernación, tome 219,
item 101.
41. I have created a database that accounts for 373 men apprehended during the Leva de Vagos of 1809
by culling data from lists of vagrants, personal and official communications, and letters to the Junta Central.
These documents are found in AGI, Caracas, leg. 172; AANH, sections Civiles and Criminales (1809–1810);
and AGN, Gobernación (1809–1810). Eric Van Young’s profile of Mexican insurgents was an inspiration to
my search for non-elite actors in the criminal archives and for organizing the sources into a database. Eric Van
Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810–1821
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
42. In a sample of 99 vagrants for whom age is known, the youngest vagrant was 15 years old and the
oldest was 59 years old. Most men, nearly 80 percent, were 30 years old or younger.
ful of artisans and even three merchants.43 There is a possibility that some of
these men belonged to their local militias; indeed, there is documentation
showing that at least two tenientes knowingly apprehended white and pardo
militiamen to be sent to Caracas.44
Military recruitment in Spanish America targeted only white men (or those who
could pass for white), thereby inverting the everyday racial dynamics that prized
whiteness.45 The Leva de Vagos of 1809, however, unexpectedly ensnared a
large number of nonwhite males, with over half of the 325 apprehended men
for whom race was indicated identified as nonwhite (see Table 1).46 The
roundup of ostensibly ineligible nonwhite men resulted largely from the
tenientes’ inexperience with military recruitment, the original recruitment
order’s lack of guidance, and Emparan’s threat to depose tenientes who did not
send a sufficient number of vagrants to the city of Caracas. Inadvertently, and
with sweeping ramifications, this leva expanded significantly the range of people
traditionally affected by military recruitment. It would now encompass the
whole spectrum of the provincial lower classes.
Local racial dynamics profoundly shaped the Leva de Vagos of 1809, particu-
larly given the absence of official guidance in Emparan’s original order on the
desired whiteness of recruits.47 Four examples illustrate the wide variety of ways
43. “Lista de los presos que han entrado á la Real Carcél de Corte,” ordered by the audiencia, Caracas,
October-November 1809 AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
44. On the fuero militar in Spanish America, see Lyle N. MacAlister, The fuero militar in New Spain,
1764–1800 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1957); and Ana Margarita Gómez, “The Evolution of
Military Justice in Late Colonial Guatemala, 1762–1821,” A Contracorriente 4:2 (2007), pp. 31–53, http://
www.ncsu.edu/acontracorriente/ (accessed March 30, 2010). Some tenientes challenged the fuero militar
during the Leva de Vagos of 1809 by arresting disruptive militiamen. Francisco de la Peña to Felipes Borges,
Valencia, October 12, 1809; Felipes Borges to De la Peña, Valencia, October 13, 1809; Anca to Emparan,
Caracas, October 19,1809; Clemente Bristapaja to Emparan, Guigüe, September 27, 1809, AANH, Sección
Criminales (hereafter Crim.) 242–244.
45. In the caste system, racial categories were constantly negotiated among historical actors, based on a
combination of factors, such as phenotype, reputation, and economic considerations. Royal officials in Span-
ish America, Juan Marchena Fernández notes, often lowered the threshold of whiteness for the sake of mili-
tary recruitment, with soldiers often described as “de infima (very low) calidad.” The Leva de Vagos of 1809
strongly evidences the negotiation of racial boundaries, with 18 cases in which sources described vagrants
using two racial categories, such as white/pardo, Indian/white, Indian/pardo, and Indian/mestizo. In this
essay, I describe men as white if they volunteered or were sentenced to military service—two courses of action,
in theory, available only to white men. Marchena Fernández, “Sin temor de Rey ni de Dios: violencia, cor-
rupción y crisis de autoridad en la Cartagena colonial” in Soldados del Rey, p. 42; Rafael Cabrera to Emparan,
Caracas, November 14, 1809; and Domingo Guillén to Emparan, Camatagua, November 21, 1809, AANH,
Crim. 208-7.
46. John V. Lombardi has found that in late colonial Caracas the most common racial categories were
white, Indian, pardo, negro, and slave. The term negro, however, was increasingly subsumed by the term pardo,
which was defined as “nonwhite, non-Indian, and nonslave” people. Lombardi, People and Places, p. 44.
47. The census data of the bishopric of the province of Caracas, compiled by Lombardi, permits us to
assess the impact of the Leva de Vagos of 1809 at the local level. Lombardi, People and Places, pp. 174–227.
This database is available online at http://jvlone.com/venezuela/parish/p_parish00.html (accessed October
6, 2011).
TABLE 1.
Vagrants Apprehended in the Province of Caracas,
September 1809 to March 1810, by Race
Race Number Percentage of Total
White 160 42.9
Pardo 106 28.4
Indian 19 5.1
Mestizo 11 2.9
Zambo 6 1.6
Black 5 1.3
Conflicting Racial Identification 18 4.8
Unknown 48 12.9
Sources: Archivo General de Indias, Audiencia de Caracas, leg. 172; Archivo de la Academia Nacional de la
Historia, Caracas, Secciones Civil y Criminal (1809–1810); and Archivo General de la Nación, Caracas, Gob-
ernación y Capitanía General (1809–1810).
in which the province of Caracas’ cities and towns experienced the recruitment
campaign. In the small town of Camatagua, the teniente apprehended 44 men,
a number that represented one-third of the adult pardo males and one-tenth of
the adult white males of the town’s population. The staggering percentage of
pardo males apprehended becomes even more remarkable in light of their mar-
ital status; the teniente had apprehended 60 percent of the single pardo males
in Camatagua. In Nirgua, at first sight, the situation appears even more stacked
against pardos, with at least 14 pardo males apprehended, but only one white
male. The parish record, however, shows that there were scarcely any white
males in Nirgua’s general population, with most of the population being either
pardo or black. Meanwhile, in Güigüe, the teniente captured eight white males,
eight pardo males, and one male of unknown race, representing about five per-
cent of each group. Finally, in Los Guayos, the teniente apprehended ten white
males and two Indian males. There was a significantly larger number of single
pardo males than single white males in the general population of the town, yet
pardo males were spared.48
Remarkably, the Leva de Vagos of 1809 affected most of the province of Cara-
cas. From the west in Baragüa to the east in Tucupido, from the north in the
city of Caracas to the south in Tiznado, vagrants came from at least 44 towns
and cities throughout the province (see Figure 1).49 Not all areas were equally
48. For these calculations, I rely on the censuses from Camatagua in 1808, Nirgua in 1809, Güigüe in
1809, and Los Guayos in 1805. Ibid.
49. The places of residence identified are Araure, Aroa, Baragüa, Barbacoas, Barquisimeto, Calabozo,
Camatagua, Canoabo, Caracas, Carora, Chacao, El Calvario, El Guapo, El Pao, El Sombrero, El Tocuyo,
FIGURE 1
Province of Caracas: Towns Affected by the 1809 Leva de Vagos
Sources: Archivo General de Indias, Audiencia de Caracas, leg. 172; Archivo de la Academia Nacional de la
Historia, Caracas, Secciones Civil y Criminal (1809–1810); and Archivo General de la Nación, Caracas, Sec-
ción de Gobernación y Capitanía General (1809–1810). Drawn by Adriana Calvo.
affected. Emparan mostly spared the men from the city of Caracas and the main
ports in an effort both to placate the audiencia and the cabildo, which shared
jurisdiction over the city’s vagrants, and to preserve the city’s social peace by tar-
geting mostly outsiders with few local connections.50 The majority of the
vagrants came from the Valleys of Aragua and the region around the Lake
Valencia, regions with long traditions of militia service that had become engines
Humocaro, Guacara, Güigüe, La Victoria, Los Guayos, Maracay, Mariara, Montalban, Nirgua, Ortiz, Ospino,
Parapara, Petare, Puerto Cabello, Quibor, Rio Chico, Sabana de Ocumare, San Carlos, San Felipe, San Mateo,
Santa Cruz, Santa Lucia, Siquisique,Tinaquillo, Tiznado, Tucupido, Valencia, and Yaritagua. Since tenientes
often had jurisdiction over several cities, towns, and hamlets, the number of locations affected was likely
higher. Some vagrants from Camatagua, for example, specified that they lived in Taguay, El Pegón, or San
Francisco de Cara.
50. The cabildo sent a local vagrant to Emparan in February 1810. Alcalde José de las Llamozas to
Emparan, Caracas, February 23, 1810, AGN, Gobernación, tome 218, item 90.
of growth in the last quarter of the eighteenth century due to their productive
agriculture and rapidly increasing populations.
Emparan’s decision to transport large numbers of vagrants to the city of Cara-

cas ultimately backfired.51 In the province of Caracas, the regular army was an
“urban army,” with garrisons only within the city of Caracas and at the ports of
La Guaira and Puerto Cabello. In Spanish America, most recruits were residents
of the garrison towns.52 In these urban centers, voluntary enlistment presented
some advantages—the fuero militar (military judicial privilege), wages paid
locally, an enganche (enlistment bonus)—that counterbalanced the hardship of
military life. While soldiers tended to earn more than men engaged in agricul-
ture, the soldier’s wage was insufficient and often too unreliable to survive in an
urban center without a second occupation and without an extensive familial and
social network.53 Emparan’s strategy to target outsiders of the garrison towns,
with the resulting severance of local networks, accounts largely for the way
vagrants understood this recruitment campaign, with two men describing it as
“a punishment as harsh as expatriation.”54
The city of Caracas, with a population of only 24,000, was soon overwhelmed
by the sudden influx of hundreds of provincial people.55 Vagrants were placed
in the royal jail, the local hospitals, the casa de corrección (a penal institution for
nonwhite people), and the cuartel San Carlos (a military barracks used as an
interim prison). Hunger, disease, and lack of clothing soon became serious
problems, with many vagrants and their relatives warning authorities of the pos-
sibility of the imprisoned men’s imminent death.56 The problem of over-
crowded prisons was compounded when Emparan issued his second recruit-
ment order, which required sumarias (brief reports with local testimonies of the
vagrants’ misdeeds) before sentencing, because this requirement extended the
time vagrants would remain imprisoned. Faced with this dreaded possibility,
some vagrants pleaded to be sentenced to military service “or otherwise we will
51. On the importance of geography in military recruitment, see Beattie, The Tribute of Blood, pp.
246–255.
52. Marchena Fernández found that around 80 percent of Spanish American soldiers hailed from the
garrison towns themselves. Marchena Fernández, Oficiales y soldados, pp. 282, 302.
53. For Caracas, Miller estimates that in 1800 the annual salary of a soldier was 108 pesos and that the
annual salary of an agricultural worker was 79 pesos. Both Marchena Fernández and Hendrik Kraay have cap-
tured the many challenges faced by soldiers in urban settings in Spanish and Portuguese America. Miller,
“Status and Loyalty,” p. 100; Marchena Fernández, Oficiales y soldados, pp. 332–333; and Hendrik Kraay,
Race, State, and Armed Forces in Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790s-1840s (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2001), pp. 55–81.
54. These men later interpreted the term “expatriation” as the “separation from our homeland (patria)
and our families and the loss of our possessions.” Joseph de los Santos Márquez and Pedro Celestino Avila to
Emparan, Caracas, November 4, 1809, AANH, Crim 223-6.
55. Lombardi, People and Places, p. 62.
56. María Tomasa Figueroa to the audiencia, Caracas, November 15, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
die of hunger in this prison.”57 The chaos that ensued at the prisons led to sev-
eral successful escapes and to Emparan’s petition to the consulado and the
cabildo for more funds to support prisoners.58
The city streets were increasingly a stage for the Leva de Vagos of 1809. Many
of the vagrants’ relatives relocated to the city of Caracas to seek freedom for
their family members, with the audiencia lamenting that the urban landscape
featured “the women and mothers who came following many of [these
vagrants] and who were peregrinating through the city, [and] who lacked a
place to stay.”59 In addition to these relatives, the vagrants condemned to labor
in public works soon crowded the public spaces. Chain gangs were put to work
in groups of over a hundred people, escorted by armed guards.60 The people of
Caracas thus were forced to live up close with those intimately affected by the
leva and to witness the local Spanish government’s powerful incursion into
provincial life.
Once in the city of Caracas, vagrants waited for Emparan to determine their
fates. There were four possible outcomes: freedom, enlistment in the regular
army, enlistment as a substitute in the pardo militia, and forced labor in the
public works. Early in the recruitment campaign, Emparan granted freedom to
all married men, who were excluded by the real ordenanza of May 1775, and
to all militiamen, who enjoyed the fuero militar. In the following months, some
men gained their freedom by arguing that tenientes had improperly appre-
hended them. Most of these cases benefited from the appointment of new
tenientes in late 1809; these were often willing to depict their predecessors as
petty and vindictive.61 The new teniente in Quibor, for example, persuaded
Emparan that the 14 men apprehended by his predecessor should be freed
because they were “some miserable and naive men,” a group of men with moral
57. Eleven prisoners from Valencia to Emparan, Caracas, October 26, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6823-12.
58. For references to prison breaks, see AANH, Crim. 243-3; Crim. 208-6; Civ. 17-6783-14; and Civ.
17-6834-1. For Emparan’s petitions for funds, see Emparan to the Caracas consulado, letter draft, Caracas,
January 31, 1810, AGN, Gobernación, tome 217, item 65; and the Caracas cabildo to Emparan, Caracas,
February 5, 1810, AGN, Gobernación, tome 217, item 107.
59. The audiencia to Minister of Gracia y Justicia Hermida, Caracas, April 2, 1810, AGI, Caracas,
leg. 172.
60. The visibility of the public works chain gangs profoundly shaped contemporary references to the
Leva de Vagos of 1809, with both the Confederacy of Venezuela and Restrepo mentioning only the vagrants
toiling in public works, without acknowledging the recruitment campaign. Manifiesto que hace al mundo, p.7;
Restrepo, Historia de la revolución, p. 540.
61. Chronologically, the Leva de Vagos of 1809 coincided with Emparan’s reform of the teniente
system, which consisted of demarcating new jurisdictions and replacing those tenientes he considered unqual-
ified. As a result of this reform, several tenientes who had sent vagrants to the city of Caracas were removed
in late 1809. While Emparan seemed to have considered this leva and the reform of the teniente system as two
separate issues, the measures affected each other substantially by inviting disagreement between new and
former tenientes over the fate of individual vagrants.
flaws but largely honest, as shown by the long journey to Caracas in which the
men had walked unfettered and minimally guarded.62 In another case, the
former teniente of Güigüe was even held responsible for the costs incurred in
transporting a man to Caracas.63
Military service in the infantry and artillery companies was the destination for
most white vagrants of proper age and height. The sentences were harsh: eight
years of enlistment as prescribed by the royal ordinances.64 Rather than be sen-
tenced, many men took advantage of the Spanish decree giving vagrants the
option of “volunteering” for the army.65 While forsaking their recourse to
appeal, the pretense of volunteer enlistment erased the stain that impressment
left in personal military records and allowed the vagrants to choose between
infantry and artillery companies. In addition, the volunteer pretense ended cap-
tivity in prison and avoided a potential sentence to forced labor in the public
works. Notably, a group of 17 “volunteers” wrote to Emparan that “we all
declared that we are not [vagrants], but, knowing that the goal is to fill the mil-
itary ranks to defend the homeland, we are willing to enlist voluntarily in the
Artillery [Brigade] without [asking for] any enlistment bonus.”66 This state-
ment illustrates not only the general awareness of the leva as a means to con-
front the French, but also the men’s attempt to recast their predicament in
terms of Spanish patriotism and American loyalty.
Militia service became one of the potential sentences for pardo vagrants charged
with lesser offenses. The teniente of Mariara, for example, sent four pardo
vagrants to Caracas in November 1809, reasoning that they could be of use in
the public works. Once in Caracas, Emparan changed their sentence to eight
years in the pardo militias as “substitutes” for other militiamen.67 Other pardo
men received similar sentences.68 For Emparan, the goal was to demobilize
overextended pardo militiamen, allowing them to return to their homes. The
symbolic implication of substituting militiamen with vagrants, however, was
troubling because pardo militiamen derived honor from joining the volunteer
corps. Equating pardo vagrants with pardo militiamen ignored social and eco-
62. Vicente García de Cádiz to Emparan, Caracas, November 27, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6783-5.
63. Felipe Rovena to Emparan, Guigüe, November 27, 1809, AANH, Crim. 218-6; Clemente
Bristapaja to Emparan, Guigüe, September 27, 1809, AANH, Crim. 242-4; and an order to free the appre-
hended man and to charge the former teniente for the recruitment cost, Emparan, Caracas, December 7,
1809, AANH, Crim. 218-6.
64. “Destino fixo por tiempo de ocho años de los vagos aptos para el servicio de las Armas,” July 21,
1780, in Novísima Recopilación, Book 12, Title 31, Law 9.
65. Pérez Estévez, El problema de los vagos, p. 103.
66. Seventeen prisoners from various places of residence to Emparan, Caracas, November 11, 1809,
AANH, Civ. 17-6823-12.
67. Sentence of a vagrant by Emparan, Caracas, November 28, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6783-1.
68. See AANH, Crim. 218-4; Crim. 243-6.
nomic distinctions between men of scarce means and ill repute and men of
known occupation and patriotic credentials.69
Forced labor in the public works was widely regarded as the worst fate for
vagrants. In early October 1809, when it became apparent that the recruit-
ment campaign had ensnared hundreds of nonwhite men who could not join
the regular army, the interventor de obras reales (director of public works) pro-
posed to Emparan the use of these men in his program of public projects,
including a new bridge over the Guaire River, improvements in the road
between Caracas and La Guaira, and the building of new hospitals and a new
slaughterhouse.70 Seizing an unforeseen opportunity, Emparan sentenced
these men to labor in the public works for terms ranging from one to eight
years. In addition to the hard labor, the men were condemned to wear chains
and to live in the casa de corrección.
At first look, the Leva de Vagos of 1809 seemed to have accomplished

Emparan’s military and social goals. It contributed a significant number of sol-
diers and militiamen to the province of Caracas in a short time. The artillery
brigade, for example, almost doubled in size by early 1810, with 77 new recruits
for its two companies.71 In addition, the leva showcased the local Spanish gov-
ernment’s tough stance against the lower classes’ unruly elements. According to
the audiencia, Emparan had sentenced about 200 men to the public works
chain gangs by mid-December 1809.72 Nonetheless, the recruitment campaign
succeeded neither in gaining political support for the local and imperial Spanish
governments nor in pacifying the province of Caracas.
69. Whereas little is known about the pardo militiamen in Caracas, their counterparts in other regions
of Spanish America, especially officers, owned small- and medium-sized landholdings and, in many
instances, slaves. On the colored militias in Spanish America, see Santos Rodulfo Cortés, “Las milicias de
pardos de Venezuela durante el período hispánico,” in Memoria del Tercer Congreso Venezolano de Historia,
Vol. 3, pp. 10-85; Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for his Majesty: The Freed-Colored Militia in Colonial
Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); José Belmonte Postigo, “El color de los fusiles. Las
milicias de pardos en Santiago de Cuba en los albores de la revolución haitiana,” in Las armas de la nación:
independencia y ciudadanía en Hispanoamérica (1750–1850), eds. Manuel Chust and Marchena Fernández
(Madrid: Iberoaméricana, 2007), pp. 37–51; and Hugo Contreras Cruces, “Las milicias de pardos y
morenos libres de Santiago de Chile en el siglo XVIII, 1760–1800,” Cuadernos de Historia 25 (2006), pp.
93–117.
70. Basadre to Emparan, Caracas, October 3, 1809, AGN, Intendencia, tome 300, item 22;
Emparan to the audiencia minister Felipe Martínez de Aragón, letter draft, Caracas, October 3, 1809,
AGN, Gobernación, tome 211, item 6. Contemporaries widely praised Emparan’s program of public
works in Cumana, see Grisanti, Emparan y el golpe de estado, pp. 30, 36; and Leal, “Don Vicente de
Emparan,” pp. 344–345.
71. The additions brought the total of artillerymen to 172—just 38 men short of filling all positions
available. “Lista de todos los vagos que por orden del Capitán General han sido destinados a servir la Brigada
del Real Cuerpo de Artillería, desde el 1º de septiembre hasta el 28 de febrero de 1810,” sub-inspector of
artillery Agustín García, Caracas, February 28,1810, AGN, Gobernación, tome 218, item 129.
72. Acuerdo Ordinario, the audiencia, Caracas, December 14, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
OPPOSING THE LEVA DE VAGOS
From the time he arrived in Caracas in May 1809, Emparan antagonized many
people with his enthusiastic support for the Junta Central’s tenet that preserv-
ing the Spanish empire required reforming local American society. Many in
Caracas countered that reform would destroy the province’s ties to the empire,
proposing instead to hold closely to local tradition so as to fend off the
Napoleonic threat. The tensions between these contrasting visions led to con-
tinuous conflict that pitted Emparan against prominent residents, other royal
functionaries, and royal institutions, such as the audiencia and the cabildo.73
Most of the conflicts, though, were pursued within the traditional framework of
power struggles over legal and jurisdictional matters and generally involved a
small number of people at the apex of local society. In this context, the contro-
versy over the Leva de Vagos of 1809 offered Emparan’s opposition an ideal ral-
lying point for galvanizing a broad coalition against him. The opposition that
eventually emerged adopted a powerful narrative of a despotic captain general
unrestrained by checks and balances; it would become the rallying banner for
the coup of April 1810.
Conflict over forced recruitment began at the provincial level. Levas de vagos
had fallen into disuse in the province of Caracas in the years before 1809. There
was, therefore, no “delicate informal code that governed recruitment” in recent
memory.74 Instead, the tenientes, local elites, and the free lower classes faced a
novel, uncertain situation over local recruitment. In many cases, the Leva de
Vagos of 1809 became enmeshed with long-festering feuds, which blurred the
boundaries between local and provincial politics by endowing tenientes with the
power of exiling individuals to the city of Caracas. These feuds touched on most
aspects of everyday life. In Araure, for example, the teniente impressed a
mulatto who was attempting to elope with the teniente’s white niece—a ploy,
the teniente believed, designed by a competing elite faction to tarnish his
family’s honor. In San Felipe, a family paid for the cost of sending an unruly son
to Caracas as a vagrant. In Camatagua, the parish priest accused the teniente of
apprehending his sacristan to placate an elite man who deemed such a profes-
73. Two examples illustrate the wide range of conflicts Emparan confronted in 1809 and 1810. In one
instance, he challenged the protomédico’s authority to license physicians. In another, he supported one elite
faction’s position against the tradition of auctioning off the offices of regidores in the cabildo, tacitly advo-
cating for reforming this royal institution. Protomédico Felipe de Tamariz to the crown, Caracas, July 19,
1809; Emparan to Minister of Gracia y Justicia Hermida, Caracas, December 4, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 171;
José Manuel Lizarraga to Emparan, Caracas, July 9, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 108; and Joaquín Mosquera y
Figueroa to Emparan, Cádiz, April 30, 1810, in “Documentos de la época de la independencia copiados del
Foreign Records Office, de Londres, 1800–1810,” Vol. 1, eds. Carlos Urdaneta Carrillo and Elena Lecuna de
Urdaneta (unpublished typescript).
74. Kraay, “Reconsidering Recruitment in Imperial Brazil,” The Americas 55:1 (July 1998), p. 2.
sion a “trade of vagabonds.” In Los Guayos, the Indian corregidor utilized the
campaign to chastise Indians who espoused the belief that the crown afforded
them special protection.75 If dissatisfaction with the empire began with the local
tenientes, as one historian has suggested, the recruitment campaign sowed a
great deal of discord at a time when Napoleon was threatening the very exis-
tence of the Spanish empire.76
Tensions between central and provincial officials further complicated recruit-

ment efforts at the local level. In a letter to the Junta Central, Emparan main-
tained that tenientes often mingled “with public office . . . a bodega [retail store
of imported foodstuff and general merchandise], pulpería [retail store of food-
stuffs and alcoholic beverages] or lienzos [retail stores selling clothing and tex-
tiles] to suck through this combination the blood of the towns under the
shadow of the royal jurisdiction exercised by these men.”77 Emparan’s distrust
and contempt for the tenientes may account for his ambivalent support of these
functionaries when vagrants challenged their initial apprehensions. In a few
instances, Emparan unabashedly sided with vagrants, granting them freedom
and even chastising tenientes for apprehending men improperly.78 As an unsur-
prising result, the initial stream of vagrants to the city of Caracas soon slowed
to a trickle. The recruitment campaign thus came to pose a threat to the
tenientes’ honor by opening a potential route to undermining their authority.
Many apprehended men, along with their relatives who had relocated to the
city, contested the charges of vagrancy. Their letters to the Spanish authorities
describe the ways the leva devastated their lives. The purported vagrants pre-
sented themselves as “hardworking men and cultivators of the land” and thus
as “productive residents [vecinos] to the town, the State, the crown, and com-
merce”—a defense that reflected the peculiar nature of the provincial labor
force, with its large number of men working outside the hacienda system.79
Most of these men blamed their predicaments on their petty and vindictive
75. José Gabriel Escalona to Emparan, Caracas, November 29, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6823-6; José de
Berroeta to Emparan, San Felipe, November 26, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6783-4; Bernardo Videl to Domingo
Guillén, San Francisco de Cara, November 23, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6799-2; and José Jacinto Mújica to
Emparan, Los Guayos, November 3, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6783-7.
76. Quintero, El Teniente Justicia Mayor, p. 344.
77. Emparan to minister of justice Hermida, Caracas, October 13, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 108. On
bodegas and pulperías in the city of Caracas, see Jay Kinsbruner, “The Pulperos of Caracas and San Juan
during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Latin American Research Review 13:1 (1978), pp.
65–85.
78. Domingo Guillén, the new teniente of Camatagua, for example, gave favorable testimony for sev-
eral men apprehended by his predecessor Diego de Melo. AANH, Civ. 17-6785-9; Crim. 218-6; Crim.
242-4.
79. Eleven prisoners from Valencia to Emparan, Caracas, October 26, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6823-12;
Joseph de los Santos Márquez and Avila to Emparan, Caracas, November 4, 1809, AANH, Crim 223-6.
tenientes. To a large extent, fathers, mothers, wives, and sisters supported the
men’s characterization by emphasizing to Emparan the centrality of the appre-
hended men’s work for the economic survival of the family.80 For example,
María Bernarda Díaz, a widow from Maracay, petitioned for the freedom of her
brother who financially supported her children.81 None of these initial appeals
challenged the recruitment campaign per se, but rather aimed at the release of
individual men within the tradition of royal paternalism.
The tenor of the vagrants’ defenses, however, soon changed as the audiencia
and the colonial lawyers appropriated the vagrants’ voices within the larger
legal struggle against Emparan. Until the audiencia began to encourage oppo-
sition to the recruitment campaign, the Leva de Vagos of 1809 had closely
resembled traditional recruitment efforts in Spain and Spanish America.82 Fur-
ther, its repression of vagrants fit within a long history of disciplining the free
lower classes in Caracas.83 In late 1809 and early 1810, nevertheless, the judi-
cial elite’s passionate defense of vagrants launched both the audiencia and
many colonial lawyers into uncharted territory during the crisis of the Spanish
monarchy.84
The judicial elite, in particular, was instrumental in transforming individual

complaints into local causes célèbres, with personal dramas illustrating abstract
principles of governance. The case of Joseph de los Santos Márquez, a 25-year-
old pardo from El Guapo, exemplifies one such cause. In early November 1809,
Joseph de los Santos wrote a letter to Emparan in which he denied being a
vagrant and presented himself as a small cacao grower who paid a yearly fee for
the use of royal lands and the breadwinner for a widowed mother and two
80. While the initial appeals to Emparan put forth primarily economic arguments, a few relatives
referred explicitly to the charges of vagrancy as a stain on the family’s honor. “Honorable status and economic
security,” Beattie has argued about recruitment in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Brazil, “were usu-
ally closely correlated, especially for poor families.” The emphasis of the initial Caracas appeals on subsistence
reveals more about contemporary expectations of proper exchanges between royal authorities and vassals than
about the myriad of ways military recruitment challenged “patriarchy and state building.” Beattie, The Trib-
ute of Blood, pp. 14, 89.
81. María Bernarda Díaz to Emparan, Caracas, n.d., AANH, Civ. 17-6823-4.
82. Pérez Estévez has drawn a detailed outline of Spanish levas in the eighteenth century. This outline
points to the many similarities between the Leva de Vagos of 1809 in Caracas and traditional Spanish levas,
especially as they operated at the local level. The most notable difference is the more complex racial dynamic
at work in Caracas; even so, this issue was largely handled with the peninsular solution of condemning men
unfit for the military to forced labor in the public works. Pérez Estévez, El problema de los vagos, pp. 199–273.
83. See Miguel Izard Llorens, “Vagos, prófugos y cuatreros. Insurgencias antiexcedentarias en la
Venezuela tardocolonial,” Boletín Americanista 41 (1991), pp. 186–191; and Langue, “Desterrar el vicio.”
84. In contrast, Archer argues that the military in New Spain impressed the free poor “since these men
lacked support from the elites and seldom dared voice complaints to the viceroy.” Similarly, Lemisch
remarked on the divide between the impressed seamen and the New York elite, wondering “why the articu-
late [were] not more articulate about the seamen’s anger.” Archer, “To Serve the King,” p. 248; Lemisch,
“Jack Tar,” p. 396.
young sisters.85 Soon after this appeal, Lorenzo Márquez, Joseph’s father and a
retired sergeant in the pardo militia, relocated to the city of Caracas to cham-
pion his son’s liberation. In his first letter to Emparan, Lorenzo defended the
reputation of his family with a defiant complaint: “[W]hen I should have
expected a reward or remuneration for my good services [in the local pardo
militia], I find that I am paid with the imprisonment of a son.” In the next two
months, several colonial lawyers assisted the perseverant father by translating his
son’s particular situation into a larger injustice within Spanish law. Conse-
quently, Lorenzo began to advocate for the right of vagrants to be judged by
the audiencia instead of Emparan and to criticize the extraordinary powers
given to local tenientes to charge men with vagrancy.86
A prior history of distrust between the audiencia and Emparan paved the way for
the unusual alliance that developed between the high court, colonial lawyers, and
members of the free lower classes. As the governor of Cumana, Emparan had sin-
gled out the audiencia as an obstacle for enlightened reforms.87 Before depart-
ing to Caracas in 1809, he strongly recommended to the Junta Central that the
most effective means to pacify the captaincy-general of Venezuela was to replace
all oidores (audiencia ministers).88 His animosity toward the Caracas audiencia
ministers was soon reciprocated, with the audiencia systematically opposing most
of his measures. The balance of power, though, now favored Emparan. The
former governor of a fringe province, he was now the leading provincial author-
ity, recently appointed by the Junta Central. In contrast, the audiencia was a
weakened institution tarnished by a recent visita (official inquiry) ordered by the
crown to examine charges of corruption, divided by an internal schism over the
inquest into the elite’s petition for a junta suprema in 1808, and decimated by
the loss of three audiencia ministers in 1808 and 1809 to death and relocation.
Indeed, during most of the controversy over the Leva de Vagos of 1809 the audi-
encia consisted of only two ministers appointed to it by Charles IV—Felipe
Martínez de Aragón and Antonio Julián Álvarez Navarro—and one audiencia
minister interino (temporary), the fiscal (crown attorney) José Gutiérrez del
Rivero, who was appointed by Emparan.89
85. Joseph de los Santos Márquez and Avila to Emparan, Caracas, November 4, 1809, AANH, Crim
223-6.
86. Lorenzo Márquez to Emparan, Caracas, December 20, 1809, and Caracas, February 1810, AANH,
Crim. 223-6. See also AANH, Civ. 17-6817-3.
87. See Yolanda Texera Arnal, “Médicos, cirujanos y curanderos en la capitanía general de Venezuela:
estudio de un expediente,” Asclepio 52:1 (2000), pp. 37–52.
88. The Junta Central was in the midst of complying with Emparan’s petition by appointing new audi-
encia ministers in late 1809. The first two audiencia ministers were slated to arrive in the summer of 1810.
Emparan to the Junta Central, Seville, March 9, 1809, AHN, Estado 60.
89. On the audiencia’s problems during the early 1800s, see Teresa Albornoz de López, La visita de
Joaquín Mosquera y Figueroa a la Real Audiencia de Caracas (1804–1809): conflictos internos y corrupción en
la administración de justicia (Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1987); and Conjuración de 1808.
The audiencia, under the steadfast leadership of Martínez de Aragón, neverthe-

less proved a formidable enemy for Emparan. Emboldened to uphold its own
vision of a Spanish empire founded on tradition, the audiencia organized public
opposition to reform in the name of the vagrants. The audiencia threatened sev-
eral tenientes, who as local judges were also subordinate to the court, by insist-
ing that this leva contravened Spanish law. In addition, the audiencia mounted
a barrage of legal challenges to individual apprehensions. To this end, it first
identified vagrants (who were kept outside of the regular justice system) by
ordering censuses of prisoners in the royal jail and by summoning all public
notaries to testify about procedures related to the sentencing of vagrants.90 The
audiencia also encouraged public defenders to launch vigorous protests over
individual detentions, tapping the colegio de abogados (the lawyers’ guild) to pro-
vide additional lawyers to represent vagrants.91 Finally, over Emparan’s objec-
tions, the audiencia proceeded to accept the briefs filed by the cadre of vagrants’
lawyers and later forwarded dozens of these documents to the Junta Central.
The colegio de abogados enthusiastically supported the audiencia during the

controversy over the Leva de Vagos of 1809.92 Founded in 1788, the colegio
had annually selected four lawyers from among its members to represent poor
litigants free of charge.93 When the audiencia asked for four additional lawyers
to represent the large number of vagrants in November 1809, the colegio rap-
idly complied. Three of the four selected lawyers, however, soon petitioned to
be excused. Felipe Fermín Paúl, the dean of the colegio, denied the attorneys’
petitions, admonishing them that “the fate of the imprisoned men should
arouse all the humanidad of attorneys who have sworn as one of their first obli-
gations to defend the men belonging to this class.”94 This exchange inspired
Paúl to appoint four additional lawyers, himself included, a significant increase
in the vagrants’ legal representation. Rather than directly confronting the cole-
90. “Lista de los Presos que han entrado á la Real Carcél de Corte,” ordered by the audiencia, Caracas,
October-November 1809 AGI, Caracas, leg. 172. On the summonses to the notaries, see Acuerdo Ordinario,
the audiencia, Caracas, December 14, 1810, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172. Four notaries replied to the audiencia
that, even if they desired to comply with the court’s order, Emparan had kept in his office the documents
related to vagrants. Antonio Texera, Gabriel José de Aramburu, Pablo Castillo, and Fausto Viana to the audi-
encia, Caracas, December 18, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
91. Acuerdo Ordinario, the audiencia, Caracas, November 13, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
92. The colegio de abogados’ dean Felipe Fermín Paúl to the audiencia, Caracas, November 14, 1809,
AGI, Caracas, leg. 172. In contrast with New Granada, where Victor M. Uribe-Uran has shown a strong cor-
relation between the local elite and colonial lawyers, McKinley maintains that, “the typical lawyer [in Caracas]
was neither rich nor the member of a prominent family.” McKinley, Pre-Revolutionary Caracas, p. 94; Uribe-
Uran, “Kill All the Lawyers! Lawyers and the Independence Movement in New Granada, 1809–1820,” The
Americas 52:2 (October 1995), pp. 175–210.
93. The colegio de abogados had traditionally respresented pobres de solemnidad (the poorest of people).
Héctor Parra Márquez, Historia del Colegio de Abogados de Caracas, Vol. 1 (Caracas: Imprenta Nacional,
1952), pp. 160–165, 381–392.
94. Decision by the colegio de abogados’ dean Paúl, Caracas, November 14, 1809, AGI, Caracas,
leg. 172.
gio, Emparan attempted to circumvent the legal offensive by transferring

vagrants from the royal jail to the military barracks in early December 1809—
in effect denying the colegio lawyers physical access to the vagrants. The
lawyers, however, were largely undeterred and continued to file appeals to the
audiencia on behalf of individual vagrants.
The audiencia also engaged Emparan through official exchanges that, while
upholding proper legal tradition, soon morphed into a vehicle for a novel criti-
cism of the limits of local Spanish governments. Emparan began this exchange
when he requested in late September 1809 that the audiencia not accept any
appeals that could delay the entry of vagrants into the army, given the large need
for soldiers “so necessary in this day for [the province’s] defense.”95 In the name
of the audiencia, the crown attorney Francisco Espejo96 denied this request,
stating that allowing vagrants to pursue appeals provided “the essential formu-
las that constitute the trust of the vassals, the safeguard of the magistrates, and
the reputation of a government that abhors arbitrariness.”97 To counter the
covert accusation of acting as a tyrant, Emparan rewrote the recruitment order
in October 1809 to adhere more closely and demonstrably to the real orde-
nanza on levas of May 1775. In addition, Emparan shared with the audiencia a
letter from the asesor general (counsel) José Vicente de Anca that provided legal
support for the recruitment campaign, suggesting that it could be declared a
matter of policía y gobierno (issues pertaining to the local executive) so as to cir-
cumvent the court and cumbersome legal proceedings. In the letter, the legal
counsel praised efforts to strengthen the military, “taking into consideration the
extraordinary circumstances, and that [in such circumstances] so should be the
resources and means used, taking care only, so to speak, of the health of the
95. Emparan petitioned the audiencia to proceed “sin estrépito judicial,” a legal phrase that calls for
obviating the full legal procedure in favor of a brief, simpler one. Emparan to the audiencia, Caracas, Sep-
tember 21, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
96. Francisco Espejo (1758–1814) was one of the most important lawyers in colonial Caracas, recog-
nized by Charles IV with the title of honorary audiencia minister and by the Junta Central with his appoint-
ment as the artillery brigade’s legal counsel. He was the crown attorney during the Conspiracy of Gual and
España in 1797, the invasion of Francisco de Miranda in 1806, and the inquest on infidencia (treason) fol-
lowing the elite’s petition for establishing a junta suprema in Caracas in late 1808 and early 1809. While he
did not participate in the coup of April 1810, Espejo soon became one of the Junta of Caracas’s most ardent
supporters. The controversy over the Leva de Vagos of 1809 shows him as a staunch defender of Spanish law
and thereby provides a critical context for understanding his later view that American independence had
resulted in part from the Spanish empire’s failure to guarantee “the protection of the [people’s] rights.” Fran-
cisco Espejo, Código constitucional del Pueblo Soberano de Barcelona Colombia (1812), transcribed in Héctor
Parra Márquez, Presidentes de Venezuela: el doctor Francisco Espejo, ensayo biográfico, 2nd ed. (Caracas: n.p.,
1954), p. 200.
97. Espejo’s response to Emparan’s first letter of September 21, 1809, Caracas, October 2, 1809, AGI,
Caracas, leg. 172. The correspondence between Emparan and the audiencia was conducted through the crown
attorney, as was customary. The crown attorney examined every document directed to the audiencia and issued
a report along with his opinion. If the crown attorney’s report was approved, the audiencia often adopted its
ideas as the court’s own. Parra Márquez, Historia del Colegio, vol. 1, p. 112.
patria.”98 While war raged in faraway Europe, the Napoleonic threat was also
present in Caracas, where it colored local power dynamics among the Spanish
authorities.
Emparan’s threat to bypass judicial oversight incensed the audiencia. In a force-

ful response, the crown attorney attacked the new recruitment order and the
notion of “extraordinary circumstances.” The leva, he believed, was a prime
example of a rogue local government violating the “system of the constitution
of the kingdom”—a reference indicating that the crown attorney was well
versed in contemporary Spanish interpretations of the medieval courts and laws
as comprising the nation’s de facto constitution.99 Pointing to Emparan’s slight
modifications to the real ordenanza on levas of May 1775, the crown attorney
argued that Emparan was, in effect, drafting new laws. The local government,
he advised Emparan, must observe the law “within the limits of the executive
power, abstaining from the legislative and reforming [powers] that have not
been conceded to it.”100 Even the Junta Central, he claimed, could not legislate
Spanish law, as shown by the junta’s decision to convene the Spanish Cortes
despite the war raging in the peninsula.101 Moreover, the crown attorney stated
that the notion that “the extraordinary circumstances” called for extraordinary
measures was not an acceptable argument for imposing the executive’s will. This
maxim, he explained, set a dangerous precedent that could justify any abuse and
pave the road for a government based on arbitrariedad. Perhaps, the Creole
attorney wondered, the European-born legal counsel was masking a prejudice
against Spanish Americans? He reminded Emparan that their rights were equal
to those of European Spaniards. Finally, contradicting some of his own prior
arguments, the crown attorney claimed that to the extent that peninsular legis-
lation on levas applied to the Indies (something he disputed), the audiencia—
and not the captain general—should enjoy the prerogative of the king and thus
hold the right to determine the way levas were conducted, given “the circum-
stances of the current war.” The crown attorney thus introduced a critical
debate over which royal institution—the audiencia or the captain general—was
the most appropriate representative of the absent king.
98. Anca to Emparan, Caracas, November 2, 1809, quoted in Emparan to the audiencia, Caracas,
November 3, 1809, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
99. Richard Herr, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1958), pp. 341–347; J. H. R. Polt, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971), pp.
129–133. On the discursive uses of the Spanish constitutional tradition during Spanish American independ-
ence, see José Carlos Chiaramonte, “The ‘Ancient Constitution’ after Independence (1808–1852),” Hispanic
American Historical Review 90:3 (August 2010), pp. 455–488.
100. Espejo rephrased this idea, stating: “But to none of these chiefs, magistrates, and courts in Amer-
ica, nor to all of them together, is given the authority of acting as legislators even in the most urgent of cir-
cumstances.” Espejo’s response to Emparan’s second letter of November 3, 1809, Caracas, January 9, 1810,
AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
101. Ibid.
Emparan did not reply to the crown attorney, forcing the audiencia to express
its opposition in a more public manner. The excessive suffering caused by the
recruitment campaign became in fact the focus of an acuerdo ordinario (a meet-
ing of audiencia ministers) in February 1810. The minutes from this meeting
chronicle the way this leva separated “from their homes and families, more than
two hundred men who, some leaving behind their women and children and
others their siblings and parents, have been conducted to this capital city from
the hometowns located at distances of forty, eighty, and more than one hundred
leagues, [with many of their relatives] following them with no economic means
to support themselves.” 102 The magnitude of the suffering, the audiencia min-
isters maintained, made it impossible for the court to remain passive in the face
of those most defenseless. The audiencia was positioning itself as the last resort
for individuals unjustly mistreated by the local executive, a risky approach that
exposed the local Spanish government’s deep fractures.
The relentless opposition finally broke down Emparan’s silence in March

1810.103 In a long letter to the audiencia, Emparan defended the legality of his
recruitment campaign by discussing imperial and local precedents in dealing with
vagrants. Conceding that the leva was flawed at the outset, he believed that his
subsequent actions, especially his release of married men and his requirement of
sumarias for each vagrant, had corrected the most significant mistakes. Beyond
stressing the campaign’s military dimension, though, the crux of his letter was
criticism of the audiencia’s steadfast opposition to Emparan’s government.
First, Emparan deftly noted that the audiencia could not pinpoint exactly the
nature of his “arbitrariedad.” At times, the court seemed to argue that he failed
to adhere to established legal procedures in the impressment of vagrants; at
other times, he argued, the court seemed to challenge the apprehension of
vagrants more broadly.104 Indeed, the audiencia and local lawyers offered a
moral condemnation of the leva rather than a coherent legal argument against
the recruitment of vagrants. Although Spanish law supported Emparan’s posi-
tion, Caracas’ recent tradition stood squarely in favor of those who opposed a
local push as a means of military expansion. Military recruitment had been a
minor issue in the province of Caracas. Not only had the province not experi-
enced general levas in almost three decades, but also the large transfer of Span-
102. Acuerdo Ordinario, the audiencia, Caracas, February 15, 1810, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
103. On February 26, 1810, Emparan had requested the libro de registro (the registry), which the audi-
encia had informed him was required to deal with vagrants in Caracas according to the royal cédula of May
1789. No such book, however, could be found in the archives on March 8, 1810—the same day Emparan
wrote his passionate letter to the audiencia. Emparan to the audiencia, Caracas, February 26, 1810; Escribano
de cámara (court notary) José Tomás Santana to the audiencia, Caracas, March 8, 1810, AGI, Caracas, leg.
172.
104. Emparan to the audiencia, Caracas, March 8, 1810, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
ish soldiers to Caracas had significantly reduced any need for local recruits. In
addition, prior to the Leva de Vagos of 1809, punishment for vagrancy had typ-
ically consisted of only a few months of forced labor in public works, rather than
the eight years in the army prescribed by Spanish law.105 As a consequence, the
people of Caracas were not expecting the local Spanish government to coer-
cively recruit soldiers among the population, which may account for the notable
absence of references in the extant documentation to the flight of potential
recruits in late 1809.
Those who opposed the leva evidenced a shared feeling that Emparan was
unfairly, even if legally, recruiting among the free lower classes. Those adversely
affected by the recruitment campaign described their ordeal at the hands of
tenientes as an act against humanidad, the principle of compassion toward
brethren in disgrace.106 Meanwhile, the audiencia complained to the minister of
justice (gracia y justicia) that Emparan’s long sentences equated vagrants to
“offenders of serious crimes,” as opposed to being merely men without known
occupation, and also referred to forced labor as “a severe and shameful impris-
onment through the public streets.”107 Lawyers echoed these sentiments by
calling an eight-year sentence to forced labor “unfair and even scandalous,”
given the slight offense in question.108 The letter of the law was not so much in
dispute; rather, the audiencia and the lawyers faulted Emparan for not exercis-
ing his prerogative of adapting Spanish law to Spanish American circumstances.
In addition to shrugging off the charge of arbitrary behavior, Emparan rebuked

the audiencia for appealing to the court of public opinion in the controversy
over local recruitment. The public opposition led by the audiencia under the
banner of “arbitrariedad,” he warned the court, would “inspire hatred and dis-
trust toward the government and, even in less tumultuous times, could result in
a subversion.” Emparan singled out the crown attorney for articulating the
“subversive” idea that the local executive was arbitrary—an image embraced by
most lawyers who were eager to paint him “with such bleak colors, spreading
really seditious lies and scandalizing the people with the same spirit of intrigue
and disunion that [the lawyers] so openly demonstrate in everything.”109 Amid
105. AANH, Crim. 223-5.

106. Nicolas Antonio Peres to Emparan, Caracas, November 2, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6783-14; María
Agueda Márquez a Vicente Emparan, Caracas, December 7, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6783-7; and 11 prisoners
from Valencia to Emparan, Caracas, October 26, 1809, AANH, Civ. 17-6823-12.
107. The audiencia to minister of justice Hermida, Caracas, April 2, 1810, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
108. Bernabé Díaz and Manuel Andrés Pereira to the audiencia, Caracas, January 22, 1810, AGI, Cara-
cas, leg. 172.
109. Emparan to the audiencia, Caracas, March 8, 1810, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172. On May 3, 1810, the
Junta of Caracas specifically referred to Emparan’s complaint about Espejo, stating: “the crown attorney was
particularly threatened because, being the legal body in charge of promoting the observance of the law, he
a climate of intense unrest in Caracas, Emparan blamed the audiencia itself for
encouraging a widespread opposition to his authority.
Finally, Emparan tried to shift the focus of the controversy back to the French
military threat. The audiencia and the lawyers had focused on the personal dev-
astation inflicted on individuals, especially those condemned to the public
works. Whereas constructing roads and buildings was not a contemporary pri-
ority, complaining about military recruitment at a time of war could be inter-
preted as an act of disloyalty. Once again, Emparan emphasized the pressing
need for military recruits and invited the audiencia to use its power to recruit
vagrants in the city of Caracas. His invitation came with a momentous threat. If
vagrants were not impressed in sufficient numbers, he suggested, recruits would
have to be found among the province’s general population. Citing the Junta
Central’s order of December 7, 1809, Emparan claimed that he possessed the
mandate to enlist all young men and to decide where these men would be
posted—a strained interpretation of a royal order specifically dealing with the
war effort in Spain.110
In March 1810, Emparan also addressed the province of Caracas publicly on

the controversy surrounding the recruitment campaign. In a bando de buen
gobierno (edict propounding governing principles), he stated his commitment
“to relentlessly chase vagrants, idle people, lingerers, deserters, enlisted men,
fugitives, worldly women, and suspicious people. [These people] would be
sentenced, briefly and through sumarias, without trials or appeals, to the army,
the public works, or other fates appropriate for their gender and class.”111 Cor-
nered by his critics and concerned by the persistent silence from Spain,
Emparan now targeted every potential social and political deviant, including
suspect women and other “suspicious people,” to be punished to the full
extent of Spanish law. At this point, provincial levas de vagos were just begin-
decried against [Emparan’s] arbitrariness and despotism.” The Junta of Caracas’ reference demonstrates that
the correspondence between the audiencia and Emparan circulated among the local elite. “La Suprema Junta
de Carácas se dirije á la Junta Superior de Gobierno de Cádiz exponiéndole los hechos, razones i fundamen-
tos que tuvo la capital de Venezuela para establecer su gobierno propio el dia 19 de abril, como lo hicieron en
España las provincias y pueblos de la península,” Caracas, May 3, 1810, in Documentos para la historia, vol.
2, p. 420.
110. The royal order of December 7, 1809 was concerned with the need to keep an up-to-date record
of men unfit for combat due to injuries in Spain. Emparan, however, seemed to have seriously considered con-
scripting new militia companies in the province of Caracas, because he ordered provincial tenientes to make
lists of the men in each locality in late December 1809—a critical step toward recruiting militiamen based on
municipal quotas. Reglamento general para el gobierno y regimen facultativo del Cuerpo de Médico-cirujanos del
Ejército (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1829), pp. 157–158; Emparan to the Caracas tenientes, Caracas, December
27, 1809, AGN, Gobernación, tome 215, item 50.
111. Copy of the Bando’s article dealing with vagrants sent to the Junta Central by the audiencia, Cara-
cas, March 8, 1810, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172.
ning in Guayana, Margarita, Cumana, and Maracaibo, as well as in the coman-

dancia general of Barinas.112
The confrontation between the leading Spanish authorities in Caracas—

Emparan and the audiencia—had reached an impasse. Before 1808, the crown
was the arbiter of disputes among fractious royal functionaries over military
recruitment.113 After 1808, the Spanish resistance governments, fragile and rap-
idly changing coalitions, became the new power brokers in Spanish America.
Thus traditional dispute resolution at the imperial level was transformed by the
uncertain turns of the European war and by the complex power dynamics of the
Spanish resistance. Aware that their fates rested with the Junta Central, both
Emparan and the audiencia sought allies among the post-1808 bureaucrats of
Seville. Emparan wrote to both the minister of war Antonio Cornel and the
minister of justice Benito Ramón de Hermida, not only to emphasize the urgent
need for soldiers, but also to complain bitterly about the audiencia ministers’
unreasonable opposition to the leva, threatening to resign if the audiencia min-
isters were not soon replaced.114 At the same time, the audiencia relentlessly
denounced Emparan’s alleged abuses of power to the minister of justice, includ-
ing those against vagrants. In April 1810, the court even pleaded for the
removal of Emparan—a necessary measure, it argued, to avoid a “lamentable
upheaval [trastorno]” carried out by “desperate” people.115
By late January 1810, the Junta Central, however, had already dissolved under
the pressures of the French occupation of Andalusia, a fact unknown to those
in Caracas at the time. In its final hours, the Junta Central had appointed the
Council of the Regency, a new Spanish resistance government based in Cádiz,
112. Emparan to the governors of Guayana, Margarita, Cumana, and Maracaibo and the political com-
mander of Barinas, Caracas, January 4, 1810, AGN, Gobernación, tome 215, item 144.
113. On another dispute among royal authorities over military recruitment, see MacAlister, “The Reor-
ganization of the Army of New Spain, 1763–1766,” Hispanic American Historical Review 33:1 (February
1953), p. 28.
114. Emparan to minister of war Cornel, letter draft, Caracas, December 21, 1809, AGN, Gober-
nación, tome 215, item 20; Emparan to minister of justice Hermida, Caracas, March 6, 1810, AGI, Cara-
cas, leg. 108.
115. The audiencia to minister of justice Hermida, Caracas, April 2, 1810, AGI, Caracas, leg. 172. In
1813, a confession by a pardo milita officer of infidencia (treason) revealed the potential value of vagrants for
those conspiring against Emparan. The pardo militia officer recounted in his confession how the pardo cap-
tain Pedro Arevalo, who later played a central role in the coup of April 19, 1810, was involved in an aborted
coup planned for April 1, 1810; the coup was to be manned by the nonwhite (mostly pardo) men appre-
hended during the recruitment campaign from late 1809 onwards. The militia officer explained in his confes-
sion that the aborted coup was to be executed by the “hundred-something convicts that were housed inside
the barracks of the Misericordia who they supposed [were] resentful with mister Emparan for having sen-
tenced them to serve in the public works.” While the veracity of the confession made under duress is ques-
tionable, it nevertheless reflects a world in transition where it was possible to imagine a fierce pardo captain
who could lead a force of disgruntled colored men against the established government. Confession of José
Martin Barrios, Castillo de San Felipe (Puerto Cabello), January 9, 1813, AGN, Causas de Infidencia, tome
6, file 5.
to govern the Spanish empire. The council would prove remarkably responsive
to the growing opposition to Emparan: it appointed a new captain general of
Venezuela in April 1810. However, its decision came too late. A few days ear-
lier, the newly established Junta of Caracas had refused to recognize the impe-
rial and local Spanish authorities, expelling both Emparan and the audiencia
ministers. The junta soon declared a general amnesty for vagrants.116 Those in
Caracas explained to the Junta of Cádiz that one of the reasons for not recog-
nizing the Council of the Regency was Emparan’s violation of “the order estab-
lished by the laws for the employment and correction of vagrants; and who
acting guided by his whim rather than by laws . . . carried out a conscription
perhaps harsher than the French one described in the government’s gazette.”117
CONCLUSION
The severe crisis of the Spanish monarchy transformed the Leva de Vagos of
1809, a local American conflict, into a threat to the very existence of the Span-
ish empire capable of destabilizing both the city and the province of Caracas.
One of Caracas’s most prominent men claimed in February 1810: “I have
found the spirits in this city in a terrible state of discord and ferment,” especially
due to the public wrangling among the province’s leading functionaries.118 The
leva controversy played a pivotal role in de-legitimizing the local Spanish gov-
ernment by undermining the authority of both Emparan and the audiencia. The
emerging narrative of a despotic captain general, which the court itself encour-
aged, was the counterpart of an implicit narrative of a powerless audiencia.119
On April 19, 1810, when Emparan was deposed for his purported tyranny, the
audiencia offered the most suitable royal alternative for leading the captaincy-
general of Venezuela. That those opposing Emparan tacitly ruled out this pos-
sibility illuminates the extent to which the local Spanish government had unrav-
eled in the province of Caracas.
The Leva de Vagos of 1809 also shaped the relationship between a new and
largely unknown captain general and the people of Caracas, especially those
116. Andrés F. Ponte refers to this decree of April 20, 1810. Ponte, La revolución de Caracas, p. 111.
117. “La Suprema Junta de Carácas,” Caracas, May 3, 1810, in Documentos para la historia, vol. 2, p.
420. Comparing the Leva de Vagos of 1809 with the French annual conscription, the Junta of Caracas explic-
itly rejected the Spanish government’s effort to militarize local society. This rejection accounts for the Junta
of Caracas’ initial failure to recruit provincial volunteers to increase the size of its army—a move Thibaud
claims was met with “entrenched resistance.” Thibaud, Repúblicas en armas, p. 60.
118. Antonio Fernández de León to Esteban Fernández de León, Caracas, February 12, 1810, AGI,
Caracas, leg. 437-A.
119. The power of Spanish American audiencias was based “ultimately upon the ability, integrity, and
respect commanded by the individuals who composed them.” As such, the leva dealt a serious blow to the
Caracas audiencia. Mark Burkholder and D. S. Chandler, From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and
the American Audiencias, 1687–1808 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977), p. 3.
from the free middle and lower classes not usually privy to elite politics. The
pardo father pleading for his son’s freedom despaired in February 1810: “I find
that instead of being heard and my stated justification accepted, I am looked
down upon and all doors are closed to me.”120 With his spectacle of force,
Emparan limited his ability to tap popular support for the crown, with sweep-
ing consequences. On April 19, 1810, cornered by a hostile elite that was sup-
ported by the army, Emparan appealed to a large crowd, asking them to uphold
his government. The people of Caracas, despite having dramatically demon-
strated twice their fidelity to the crown in 1808, refused.121
Many historians have blamed Emparan for Spain’s loss of the province of Cara-
cas in April 1810.122 His unbridled passion and unwillingness to negotiate cer-
tainly turned many local issues into intractable controversies, as happened in the
Leva de Vagos of 1809. Focusing too narrowly on Emparan, however, obscures
his larger significance as an agent of the Junta Central, a Spanish resistance gov-
ernment committed to the “preservation of empire” through reforms.123 As
such, Emparan was seeking both to preserve local society and to reform that
society to its core—a feat difficult to accomplish even in calmer times. For many
in Caracas, Emparan was thus the harbinger of the new political compact in the
Spanish world that emerged from the Napoleonic wars. To a large extent, it was
against the Spanish empire’s vaunted “regeneration,” as conveyed by Emparan,
that those in Caracas rebelled. Opposition to Emparan, which became more vis-
ible during the Leva de Vagos of 1809, soon turned into a broader rejection of
Spanish resistance governments. The Council of the Regency felt the wrath of
Caracas on April 19, 1810.
Harvard University OLGA GONZALEZ-SILEN

Cambridge, Massachusetts
120. Lorenzo Márquez to Emparan, Caracas, February 1810, AANH, Crim. 223-6.
121. In July 1808, an enraged urban mass forced the local Spanish government to recognize Ferdinand
VII. In November 1808, popular discontent intimidated those elite men petitioning for a junta suprema for
Caracas.
122. Ponte, Parra Pérez, and Parra Márquez largely blamed Emparan for his own demise. In his defense
of Emparan, Grisanti also criticized the functionary’s gullibility for heeding the advice of an elite covertly seek-
ing independence. Ponte, La revolución de Caracas; Parra Pérez, Historia de la Primera República; Parra
Márquez, El Mariscal Vicente Emparan; and Grisanti, Emparan y el golpe de estado.
123. Timothy Hawkins, José de Bustamante and Central American Independence: Colonial Adminis-
tration in an Age of Imperial Crisis (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), p. xxvi. On the critical
roles played by the post-1808 Spanish functionaries appointed to Spanish America, see Hawkins, José de Bus-
tamante; Timothy Anna, “The Last Viceroys of New Spain and Peru: An Appraisal,” The American Histori-
cal Review 81:1 (February 1976): pp. 38–65; and Demetrio Ramos Pérez, “Paralelismo entre Meléndez Bruna
e Hidalgo de Cisneros, dos marinos gobernantes en América, en la época emancipadora,” in Estudios de his-
toria moderna y contemporánea: homenaje a Federico Suárez Verdeguer (Madrid: Editorial RIALP, 1991), pp.
407–416.

Leva de Vagos Caracas 1809

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Leva de Vagos Caracas 1809

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

THE AMERICAS

THE ROYAL ARMY AND THE VAGRANTS OF THE

The province of Caracas in 1810, with a population of 427,000, had experi-

out of the provinces of Caracas, Maracaibo, Cumana, Margarita, Trinidad, and

To make further amends, the Junta Central began a significant renovation of

Modernizing the Caracas army, Emparan believed, was critical to reducing

For Emparan, the forcible recruitment of vagrants also offered an appealing

On September 1, 1809, Emparan began the recruitment campaign by ordering

The original recruitment order encouraged tenientes to improvise the logistics

The apprehensions of hundreds of vagrants by these tenientes generated a

Emparan’s decision to transport large numbers of vagrants to the city of Cara-

At first look, the Leva de Vagos of 1809 seemed to have accomplished

OPPOSING THE LEVA DE VAGOS

Tensions between central and provincial officials further complicated recruit-

The judicial elite, in particular, was instrumental in transforming individual

The audiencia, under the steadfast leadership of Martínez de Aragón, neverthe-

The colegio de abogados enthusiastically supported the audiencia during the

gio, Emparan attempted to circumvent the legal offensive by transferring

Emparan’s threat to bypass judicial oversight incensed the audiencia. In a force-

The relentless opposition finally broke down Emparan’s silence in March

In addition to shrugging off the charge of arbitrary behavior, Emparan rebuked

105. AANH, Crim. 223-5.

In March 1810, Emparan also addressed the province of Caracas publicly on

ning in Guayana, Margarita, Cumana, and Maracaibo, as well as in the coman-

The confrontation between the leading Spanish authorities in Caracas—

Harvard University OLGA GONZALEZ-SILEN

You might also like