| Notes |
- Manuel Manzano or Maceiro was born in Santiago de Compostela, in the province of Galicia in Spain. According to family tradition he was a Capitán de Navío, which is the equivalent in American naval terminology to admiral. For some obscure reason, which has been commonly referred to as a duel, he came to Venezuela to the city of Vela del Coro (Present day Coro. A note of interest: the Fugger family founded Coro, the bankers for the Hapsburg emperor Charles V or Carlos V. Carlos V had given them the region of Venezuela, in return in payment for a loan. The condition was that the family would establish a flourishing Spanish out post. They failed) As far as we know he was unmarried at his arrival and there married (we believe) a criolla. In looking at history there are two interesting point that tend to lend credibility to his departure and to the place where he went. First during the last half of the X VIII century duels were banned by law. And secondly, Vela del Coro had important naval facilities. It was here that Francisco Miranda began the insurrections in Latin America in 1795. He attacked naval facilities in the hope of disturbing the traffic between South America and the Virreinato de Nueva España (Mexico). So, there were important naval facilities in the city.
As to his marriage, we do not know the name of his wife. We know he had three daughters, of which the youngest (probably the prettiest) was María del Carmen. This one he married to a cousin, Nicolas Estrada, which he brought from Spain. A man also connected with the Spanish navy.
During his time in Coro he accumulated a fortune in land. He owned land (according to my grandmother) in Maracaibo. I do not know the place exactly because his great-grand daughter Inés María de la Sierra burned the property titles in the 1920's. He moved to Caracas, again the date is unknown. There he also acquired land and entered the cattle trade. He was a "ganadero" in Caracas. His herd most have been enormous, because during the wars of independence in Venezuela, he fed a whole regiment of the king's troops every day. He also purchased bonds from the crown to support the royalists. These were also burned by Inés María de la Sierra. (To my children, blame her for our poverty).
In 1822 Simón Bolivar dealt a mayor blow to the royalist troops in the battle of Carabobo. At this moment he declared the independence of Venezuela, abolished slavery and gave the royalist 24 hours to either pledge allegiance to the young republic, flee or die. This is the famous / nefarious Edict of Carabobo. Manuel left, with his three daughters, the jewels of his family and a young slave, that chose to go with them, rolled inside a carpet. He promised the Virgin Mary that if he survived he would make a monstrance with them in her honor. He must have had a great deal of fear, since the troops left by Bolivar were the regiments led by Paez. His troops were notoriously bloody and they proved to be so during those harrowing 24 hours, Caracas had no port and the only way out was through land to La Guaira. It is said that the waters of the sea became red after the 24 hours expired, because Paez's troops killed every man woman and child that could not catch a boat. Fortunately for our family they were able to go. (I read this in a diary own by Janet Brau de Aguiló, whose g-g-g grandmother, mother of Salvador Brau described)
At this moment the Spanish crown, in order to attract settlers loyal to her, granted money to those willing to settle in Puerto Rico. Don Manuel accepted this deal, and became the court scribe of the town of Mayagüez. As promised, he melted the gold and made a monstrance. (It was taken to Spain in 1898. There is no evidence of such thing ever existing, but the vicar of the town told me in the 1950's that the Spanish clergy took every ecclesiastical vessels of value, leaving to the new American clergy insignificant or worthless objects. Maybe this was a kind lie told to an excited eighteen-year-old, but it could be true.) He sold the jewels and built a house (I believe that the house was still sanding in the 1960's when I left. It was the old house of the Heliger family on the way to El Cerro de las Mesas). He died in Mayagüez.
There is still another interesting thing about this man: his name. His daughters bore the name of Manzano. He claimed to be Maceiro, or at least he had this name in his family. During his tenure as scribe for the court, someone tried to bribe him. They wanted him to change the testimony of a witness. At this point his granddaughter (mother of Inés) heard him say that he would not besmirched the name of Maceiro, who was in the "Libro de Oro de Santiago" (Golden book of Santiago). There is in Santiago a "Libro de Oro," which in the past bore the names of the city's dignitaries and who at present is a record of the great visitors to the city (i.e. the Pope). Why was he so vehement about this? Why did his daughters used the name Manzano?
Manzano, in Spain, has a stigma: it is a name commonly used by "conversos," people of Jewish origin. Was he of "converso" origin? Was that the reason why he left Spain? Did he marry his criolla wife? Maybe one day I will try to solve this conundrum, because I think it is not hard. One just have to look at the death records of the church in Mayagüez to find his real name and that of his parents or look at the record of people who held the post of court scribes between 1822-1834.. This I leave as food for thought.
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