The Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas (1728-1785), read in its own defence brief

A Basque chartered company took the cacao trade of Venezuela in 1728 and set out to end the Dutch contraband that carried it. Its own printed account of 1765 claims exports rose from an average 21,440 fanegas a year before 1730 to 80,661 in 1763 alone, and that the price fell twenty pesos a fanega. The same pages record what the province called it - opresión, tiranía, estanco - and dismiss the rising of Juan Francisco de León as a sedition with no popular support.