Red Gold

Red Gold: Between Blood and Hope is a historical-legal essay with a strong narrative drive that returns to Venezuela's point of departure: the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the encounter with Indigenous peoples, and the decisions of the Catholic Monarchs and Pope Alexander VI that defined the legal status of these lands.
Drawing on chronicles, maps, legal texts, and an extensive bibliography, Miguel Dempere shows how, from the late fifteenth century onward, the original inhabitants were recognized as subjects of the Crown and legitimate owners of their property, including the gold obtained through exchange rather than by force. From there, he weaves a journey that passes through the conquest of Hispaniola, the "discovery" of Venezuela, the origin of the country's name, and the mixed-race figure of Francisco Fajardo, in order to explain why Venezuelan history followed a particular path within the vast Hispanic American mosaic.
In its final section, the book leaps into the present: it analyzes the 1961 and 1999 Constitutions, the oil booms, and the current scenario of sanctions and instability, to present a bold and pragmatic proposal: a new Humanitarian Constitution that recognizes, for every Venezuelan, a real and enforceable right to share in the benefits of gold, oil, and other strategic resources, beginning with the most vulnerable families. The aim is to transform a country "rich with millions of poor people" into a nation where wealth reaches, justly, its true owners.
This book is written for historians, legal scholars, political scientists, economists, university students, and any reader who wants to understand-without partisan slogans-the relationship between history, law, and social justice in Venezuela.Red Gold reads like a story of explorers, chiefs, mestizos, and kings, and stands as a powerful argument in favor of a new constitutional pact centered on the family and on human dignity.