74 CHAPTER 3 THE CONQUEST OF AMERICA
LOPE DE AGUIRRE—AN UNDERDOG OF THE CONQUEST
That confl ict was a major ingredient in the dev-
il’s brew of passions that produced three decades
of murderous civil wars and revolts among the
Spaniards in Peru after the fall of the Inca Empire.
The defeat of the great revolt of Gonzalo Pizarro
in 1548 brought no lasting peace to Peru, for it
left seething with discontent the many adventur-
ers who had fl ocked from all parts of the Indies to
join the struggle against Pizarro. These men had
hoped to be fi ttingly rewarded for their services to
the crown. Instead, Pizarro’s wily conqueror, La
Gasca, added to the encomiendas of the rich and
powerful friends who had abandoned Pizarro and
come over to the royal side. The sense of betrayal
felt by many rank-and-fi le conquistadors was ex-
pressed by Pero López, who charged that La Gasca
had left “all His Majesty’s servants poor, while he
let many of His Majesty’s foes keep all they had and
even gave them much more.”
The Viceroy Cañete clearly defi ned the eco-
nomic essence of the problem in a letter he wrote to
Emperor Charles V in 1551; he reported that only
480 encomiendas existed in Peru, whereas the
number of Spaniards was 8,000. Including the jobs
that the colonial administration could provide, only
1,000 Spaniards could “have food to eat.” Cañete’s
only solution to rid Peru of the plague of unem-
ployed conquistadors was to send them off on new
conquests, “for it is well known that they will not
work or dig or plow, and they say that they did not
come to these parts to do such things.” The emperor
agreed; permission for new conquests, he wrote the
viceroy in December 1555, would serve “to rid and
cleanse the country of the idle and licentious men
who are there at present and who would leave to
engage in that business... .” Accordingly, Charles
revoked a decree of 1549, issued at the urging of
Las Casas, which prohibited new conquests.
The career of the famous Lope de Aguirre, “the
Wanderer,” casts a vivid light on the psychology
and mentality of the disinherited conquistador
host. A veteran conquistador, Aguirre was fi fty,
lame in one leg as a result of wounds, and had spent
a quarter-century in a fruitless search for fortune
in the Indies when the rumor of a new El Dorado in
the heart of the Amazon wilderness caused fever-
ish excitement in Peru. Whether or not the legend-
ary realm existed, it provided a convenient means
of solving a potentially explosive social problem.
In 1559 Viceroy Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza au-
thorized Pedro de Ursúa to lead an expedition to
search for the province of “Omagua and Dorado.”
Lope de Aguirre, accompanied by his young mes-
tiza daughter, formed part of the expedition when
it sailed down the Huallaga River, a tributary of the
Amazon, in quest of the new golden realm. Ursúa
proved to be a poor leader, and unrest, aggravated
by intolerable heat, disease, and lack of food, soon
grew into a mutiny whose ringleader was Lope de
Aguirre. Ursúa was murdered and, although the
rebels raised a Spanish noble named Fernando de
Guzmán to be their fi gurehead “prince,” Aguirre
soon became the expedition’s undisputed leader.
He had devised an audacious new plan that
had nothing to do with the quest for El Dorado. It
called for the conquest of Peru, removal of its pres-
ent rulers, and rewards for old conquistadors like
himself
for the labors we have had in conquering and
pacifying the native Indians of those king-
doms. For although we won those Indians
with our persons and effort, spilling our blood,
at our expense, we were not rewarded....
Instead the Viceroy exiled us with deception
and falsehood, saying that we were coming to
the best and most populous land in the world,
when it is in fact bad and uninhabitable....
Having constructed two large boats on the
banks of the Amazon, the expedition sailed off down
the great river, bound for the conquest of Peru.
Aguirre’s distrust of Guzmán soon led to the killing
of the “lord and Prince of Peru” and his mistress
and followers. By the time Aguirre and his men
entered the Atlantic in July 1561, other killings
had reduced the number of Spaniards from 370 to- Sailing past the shores of Guiana, they seized
the island of Margarita and killed its governor. In
September he landed on the coast of Venezuela,
captured the town of Valencia, and proclaimed a
“cruel war of fi re and sword” against King Philip
II of Spain. But by now the alarm had gone out