Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador
under Spanish control in the 1520s and
1530s, ruthlessly suppressing determined
Native American resistance. Subduing
the Quiche and Cakchiquel of
Guatemala, Alvarado burned captured
chiefs to death and branded and sold
prisoners as slaves. The Maya of the
Yucatán, with their decentralized soci-
eties and guerrilla tactics, were harder to
subdue: the last independent group was
not conquered until 1697. Elsewhere in
Central America, Panama City was
founded in 1519, and the first Spanish
colonies were founded in Nicaragua in
the 1520s and in Costa Rica in the 1560s.
Expanding northward from Mexico,
the conquistadores established new
provinces such as Nueva Galicia, where a
rich silver deposit was discovered in 1546,
leading to rapid founding of mines. The
northern frontier pushed into what is
now the American Southwest in
1540–1542, with the expedition ofFrancisco de Coronado (1510–1554).
The American Southeast was explored in
1539–1542 by Hernando de Soto (ca.
1500–1542), who had served under
Pizarro in Peru and who sailed from
Cuba.
In South America, Spanish control
spread south from Panama and north
from conquered Inca strongholds in Peru
and Ecuador. The Chibcha or Muisca
civilization, centered around what is now
Bogotá, Colombia, fell in the 1530s to
conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de
Quesada. Soon all of Colombia and
Venezuela were under Spanish rule.
Conquistadores pushed south from Peru
as well, with Bolivia conquered in 1538
and Santiago, Chile, founded in 1541.
But the Araucanian people of Chile
proved difficult to subdue; they launched
a major rebellion in the 1550s, and war-
fare with them continued into the 19th
century, even after independence from
Spain.40 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora was one of New Spain’s greatest
intellectuals. Born in Mexico City in 1645, he studied astronomy
and mathematics with his father, who had been a tutor for the
royal family of Spain. De Sigüenza published his first poem in
1662, and in 1671, an almanac. In 1672, he became chair of math-
ematics and exact sciences at the University of Mexico and was
ordained a priest the following year. He then became chaplain of
the Hospital del Amor de Dios (now Academia de San Carlos)
from 1682 until his death in 1700.
Throughout his career, de Sigüenza bridged the divides
between science, the arts, and religion. In addition to his poetry,
he also was one of New Spain’s foremost non-fiction writers, pub-
lishing El Mercurio Volante, the first newspaper in New Spain, in
1693, and also producing works of history, philosophy, cartogra-
phy and cosmography. In fact, his reknown stretched will beyond
the Spanish colonies, as the French King Louis XIV attempted to
convince him to move to Paris.
It was de Sigüenza’s lifelong interest in the native peoples of
the Americas that won him what may have been his greatest
acclaim. At the Hospital del Amor de Dios, he met historian Juan
de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, a descendent of the kings of Texcoco, a city-
state in the central Mexican plateau. De Alva, whose family line
also included several of the last Aztec rulers, granted de Sigüenza
access to his family’s richly detailed papers, and in 1668, de
Sigüenza began what would become his lifelong study of Aztec
and Toltec writings.
Among the documents found in de Alva’s family papers was
purported to be a “map” or codex that documented the leg-
endary 1531 apparition of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady ofGuadeloupe (see sidebar on p. 20). A devotee of the Virgin Mary,
de Sigüenza had written poetry in her honor as early as 1662;
because of his association with the codex, he now became even
more closely associated with the legend.
De Sigüenza also continued his work in a wide variety of fields
during the latter part of his career. In 1680, he was commissioned
to design a triumphal arch for the arrival of a new Viceroy of New
Spain, Cerda y Aragón. He also wrote histories of Ancient Mexico,
arguing that the Olmecs had migrated to the New World via the
lost city of Atlantis, and that the Apostle Thomas had evangelized
natives of the New World shortly before the death of Christ.
In 1691, de Sigüenza prepared the first map of all of New Spain,
and also drew hydrologic maps of the Valley of Mexico. The follow-
ing year, King Carlos II of Spain appointed him as royal cartogra-
pher of New Spain. As royal geographer, de Sigüenza mapped
Pensacola Bay and the mouth of the Mississippi during a 1692
expedition in search of defensible frontiers against the French.
That same year, a serious drought and the loss of a significant
portion of the year’s wheat crop due to disease led to a severe
food shortage throughout New Spain. Although de Sigüenza was
able to identify the cause of the wheat disease as a small insect
called chiahuiztli, the food shortages led to an uprising on June
8, 1692. On that day, a mob attacked the viceroy’s palace with
stones and set the archives on fire. Putting his life at risk, de
Sigüenza saved most of the documents and some paintings, this
preserving preserved a host of colonial Mexican documents that
would otherwise have been lost. Two years later, he retired from
the University. He died in 1699, leaving his body to science and his
papers to the Jesuit College of San Pedro and San Pablo.CARLOS DE SIGÜENZA Y GÓNGORA