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- Maria del Carmen Manzano was the youngest daughter of Manuel Manzano Maceiro. She was married at the age thirteen to her cousin Nicolás Estrada. I have no idea of the degree of their relationship. At first, she absolutely refused the marriage imposed on her by her father, but it seems that he was a rather nice man and eventually they had three children. These were the years of the wars of Spanish American Independence and Nicolás was a captain in the Spanish navy. During most of this time he was at at sea. The revolution finally succeed and after the battle of Carabobo (1822) bolivar issued and edict that forced every citizen to swear allegiance to the new republic. At the news of Carabobo and at a new insurrection in what is now Argentina Nicolás left, never to return. He was lost at sea. (His story will be told later) Her father Manuel refused to swear allegiance to Bolivar and was given 24 hours to leave with his family, which at the time included, not only his two unmarried daughter, but María del Carmen, her two daughters and one other on the way. She gave birth to her last child, Carmen María Estrada, in the territorial waters of Maracaibo, hence her daughter was born a Dutch subject. She was baptized in Maracaibo at the Catholic church, as a now lost document confirmed. (This one was lost by my mother Emma Vidal. I saw it more than a thousand times: it contained the date of birth, the parents and godparents of the child). When she arrived in Mayagüez the family was penniless. The family supplemented their income by making sweets, which were sold in the market place by the slave who came from Venezuela with them. She never remarried and died in Mayagüez after marrying her daughters well.
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