People database

Origin

Roma

Place of activity

Portobelo, Madrid

From 1663 to 1674 Giustiniani served on the Isthmus of Panama as an agent of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento. His duties included the logistics of the slave trade: he received the asiento ships arriving at Portobelo, assessed the state of health of the captives, saw to their sustenance, sold them in the local markets and organised their transfer across the isthmus to Panama. He was thus involved in twenty-five asiento voyages that reached the isthmus, and was responsible for the lives of almost 11,500 captives. After the end of the Grillo and Lomellini asiento he married a noblewoman from Navarre and returned with her to Spain, to Madrid. He nevertheless continued to be involved in the slave trade through his close collaboration with his brother-in-law Antonio Echeverz, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century had become one of the most powerful men on the isthmus, a great owner of land and of enslaved people. In the first months of 1692 the Venetian Nicolás Porcio, a key figure in the asiento since the late 1670s, appointed Giustiniani chief administrator of the asiento in the event of his death, which occurred two years later. With the proceeds of the slave trade Giustiniani purchased government offices and titles from the Crown: honorary offices in the Council of Italy and the Council of War (1684), the office of provincial alcalde of Panama and Portobelo (1685), the habit of knight of the Order of Calatrava (1692), and the titles of Marquis of Peñaflorida and Viscount of Casares (1704).

Origin

Crema

Place of activity

Seville

Born in Crema, in the Venetian Terraferma, after his father's death he moved to Cádiz with his mother and his brother Pompeo. In Cádiz he married Teresa María Barroso del Pozo de la Oliva, daughter of Juan Barroso del Pozo. In January 1679 Porcio, on behalf of Juan Barroso, undertook to introduce 6,000 of the 10,000 enslaved people granted to the Consulado of Merchants of Seville, which then held the asiento: the two thus obtained 60% of the contract, which expired at the end of 1681. Through their agents in Amsterdam they negotiated with the Dutch West India Company (WIC) the delivery to Curaçao of 9,800 enslaved Africans by the end of 1681, on average 4,900 a year. In 1682 Porcio and Barroso obtained a new contract that made them sole holders of the asiento: for five years they were to introduce into Spanish America up to 10,000 toneladas (the fiscal unit of the asiento, corresponding to the 'pieza de Indias'), with the possibility of obtaining supplies directly in Jamaica and Curaçao, like Grillo and Lomellini, in exchange for silver or colonial products. Conflicts with the Dutch, and above all with the Coymans brothers, put an end to the asiento before 1687.