jan 12, 1812 - Three Kings Day Revolt Antonio Charboniel slaves vs Kercado

Description:

Under the pretext of celebrating the feast of the day of Kings, on the afternoon of January 12, 1812 several slaves gathered at the hacienda of Lorenzo de Kercadó, probably
a French planter emigrated from Saint-Domingue after the black revolution of 1791, who would have taken his slaves with him. The black Antonio Charboniel, perhaps also of French descent, as seems to indicate the morphology of his surname, attended the black congregation of the hacienda of Kercadó and shouted "that the slaves were already free, and that Antonio de Castro, a slave of Germán de Castro, he had pronounced with enough roughness and heat, that if now they did not grant him the livertad, as when they offered him for the siege of the Angles, there was more blood running than in the Guarico ".

Although many of the participants were enthusiastic after this speech, not all approved it. In the long run, the role of Charboniel's detractors would be crucial in the outcome of the conspiracy, as will be seen in the next section.

In the conspiracy analyzed in this article, the government learned about the machinations of the colored population thanks to the denunciation of a slave attended to the meeting of slaves in the hacienda of Lorenzo Kercadó on the day of the Kings of 1812. As noted in the epigraph Previously, not all the assistants had approved the words of Antonio Charboniel, who had encouraged them to conquer by force a freedom that supposedly had been granted to them by the Cortes de Cádiz. When the council concluded, the largest of the square, Rafael Chico, who confessed that "the blacks of the city walked at night in corrinchos, and ensuring that the livertad of the slaves had been published by vando".

Immediately after the denunciation of Carolina, the captain general appointed a commission to cross the fields, to investigate the motives of the conspirators and to capture them. The command of the commission was entrusted to Diego Bezerra, who was authorized to enter the haciendas to practice the proceedings leading to the clarification of the facts. The
members of this and other commissions, organized in the other parties affected by the plot, arrested the suspects and took them to the capital, where they would be tried. Apart from this initiative, Captain General Melendez reacted by means of two circulars, the 255 and the 256, to calm the situation as soon as possible and prevent a similar phenomenon from occurring in the future. The first circular dates from January 14, 1812, two days after the conciliation of the hacienda of Lorenzo Kercadó, for what constituted the immediate reaction of the authorities to the denunciation of the black Carolina.

In order to guarantee the safety of the latter, where they are already
a good part of the conspirators. He also ordered that he be arrested
the blacks who are not respectful of their masters or who are outside
of his farm without an express license from his owner, applying 50 lashes and
returning them to their plantation. If in addition those individuals had
constituted in the head of mutiny, 100 lashes would be applied and they would be sent
to the Real Jail, judging them after agreement with their crime. This measure
should be complemented with the strengthening of surveillance in the parties

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