Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán

Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán or sometimes Nuño de Guzmán (ca. 1490 - 1544) was a Spanish conquistador and colonial administrator in New Spain.

Early career and arrival in New Spain

Beltrán de Guzmán was born in Guadalajara, Spain, to an old family of the hidalgo class. He studied law, becoming a licentiate. He arrived in New Spain on May 4, 1526, at Pánuco in northeast Mexico (near Tampico). He was governor of Pánuco, where he first showed his rapaciousness by taking thousands of indigenous prisoners and selling them as slaves to the islands of the Caribbean.

As head of the first Audiencia

Ever since the conquest by Hernán Cortés, New Spain had been governed by a military government, generally violent, arbitrary and exploitative of the indigenes. Hoping to establish a more orderly and just government (and perhaps also to reduce the authority of Cortés), on December 13, 1527 the metropolitan government of Charles V in Burgos named a "Real Audiencia" to take over the government of the colony. This consisted of a president and four "oidores" (judges). The president was Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán and the oidores were Juan Ortiz de Matienzo, Diego Delgadillo, Diego Maldonado and Alonso de Parada.

At the time Beltrán de Guzmán was serving as governor of Pánuco, so Charles ordered the judges to assemble in Veracruz and from there make a joint entrance into the capital. The four from Spain, however, did not wait for the arrival of Beltrán, and proceeded directly to the capital. They arrived on December 8, 1528, taking over the government on the following day. They were given a splendid reception by the city government. Beltrán arrived a little after the others. Two of them (Maldonado and Parada) were sick on their arrival and soon died. They did not take part in the government.

The first bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga, had arrived in the capital only a few days before the oidores.

The instructions given to the Audiencia included a recommendation for good treatment of the Indigenous and a directive that the investigation into the conduct of Cortés and his associates Pedro de Alvarado, Alonso de Estrada, Rodrigo de Albornoz, Gonzalo de Salazar and Pedro Almíndez Chirino be concluded within 90 days. Most of these associates had participated in the government in the proceeding few years while Cortés was in Honduras, with a lot of in-fighting among themselves and injustices to the population, both Spanish and Indigenous.

Cortés himself was now in Spain, where he was defending his conduct and appealing his loss of authority to Charles. (Both the previous governor, Alonso de Estrada, and Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán were enemies of Cortés.) Cortés had some success with his appeal, being named Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca and receiving some other honors.

Nevertheless, Beltrán de Guzmán was now in charge in New Spain. Among his official acts was placing plaques bearing the royal coat of arms on the principal buildings of the capital, to stress that sovereignty resided in the king, not in Cortés. He had Pedro de Alvarado arrested for questioning the loyalty of Gonzalo de Salazar. There was already some animosity between Cortés and Beltrán, because the former had been reluctant to recognize the latter as governor of Pánuco. The later events made the two enemies.

The Audiencia also banned direct communication with the court in Spain. This was so effective that Bishop Zumárraga felt the necessity of hiding a letter sealed in wax in a cask, to be smuggled to the Spanish authorities by a confederate sailor.

As conqueror of western Mexico

Beltrán put Juan Ortiz de Matienzo in charge of the Audiencia. Then, gathering an army of 300 discontented conquistadors and 6,000 Indigenous allies, on December 21, 1529 he set out to the west to conquer lands and peoples who till now had resisted the conquest. Among the officers on this expedition was Pedro Almíndez Chirino.

His motives for leaving the capital are unclear. Was he simply in search of riches, to be stolen from the native peoples? Or was he fearful of Cortés's return? The latter had been reappointed captain general, and was returning to the colony.

This expedition has been described as a "holocaust". Typically, the conquistadors attacked an Indian village, stole the maize and other food, razed and burned the dwellings, and tortured the native leaders to gather information on what riches could be stolen there, or from nearby populations. For the most part, these riches did not exist.

As an example, the Spanish were received in peace by Chief Tangáxuan II (called "Caltzontzin" by the Mexica) in the Tarascan state which is now the state of Michoacán. He gave Beltrán de Guzmán presents of gold and silver and supplied him with soldiers and provisions. Nevertheless, Beltrán de Guzmán had him arrested and tortured, to get him to reveal the location of hidden stores of gold. Presumably there was no more gold, because Tangáxuan did not reveal it under torture. Beltrán had him dragged by a horse and then burned alive.

The actions of the Audiencia attracted the attention of Juan de Zumárraga, bishop of Mexico, who put it under an ecclesiastical interdiction on March 7, 1530. The immediate cause of the interdiction was a case of violation of sanctuary. The Audiencia had violently taken from the convent of San Francisco a servant of Cortés accused of grave crimes, and two religious, Cristóbal de Angulo and García de Llerena.

Undeterred, Beltrán de Guzmán continued his violent assault on the peoples of the present-day states of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Nayarit and Sinaloa. In the latter state, he founded the city of San Miguel de Culiacán, on September 29, 1531. He returned to Tepic, where he set up his headquarters, sending out new expeditions from there. One of these founded the cities of Santiago de Galicia de Compostela and Purificación. Another traveled as far as the current state of Sonora. His violent expeditions into Chichimec lands were a main cause of the Mixtón rebellion.

The foundation of Guadalajara in New Spain

In 1531 (probably January), one of Beltrán's captains, Cristóbal de Oñate, founded a small town near Nochistlán to which the name "Guadalajara" was given. Two years later Beltrán visited the city, and at the request of its inhabitants, who were fearful of Indian attacks and lacked sufficient water, he ordered it moved to Tonalá. This occurred on May 24, 1533. Later, after Beltrán had returned to Spain, it was moved again, to a site near Tlacotan (northeast of modern Zapopan). This occurred probably between October 1541 and February of the following year. Later the settlers began to complain to Antonio de Mendoza, then the viceroy of New Spain, about both the repeated relocations and Beltrán de Guzmán's cruelty.

The Kingdom of New Galicia

Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán gave the name "Conquista del Espíritu Santo de la Mayor España" to the territories he explored and conquered. However, the queen of Spain, Joanna of Castile, mother of Charles V, did not approve of the name. By a royal decree dated January 25, 1531, she supplied the name "Reino de Nueva Galicia" (Kingdom of New Galicia).

This territory extended from the Rio Lerma to Sonora, with its capital at Compostela. New Galicia was a separate entity, not under the authority of the Audiencia of Mexico City (but still part of New Spain).

Beltrán continued his bloodbath in western and northern Mexico for seven years. During this time he explored and conquered a third of present-day Mexico. Many Indigenous were either slaughtered or sold into slavery in the Caribbean, earning Beltán de Guzmán the nickname "Bloody Guzmán". One nineteenth-century chronicler of the Conquest referred to Beltrán de Guzmán as "the detestable governor of Pánuco and perhaps the most depraved man ever to set foot in New Spain." [Vicente Riva Palacio. "México a través de los siglos", Vol. II, (Barcelona: Espasa, 1991 [1880] ) ISBN 9788477645160 cited in Dijes Antón, Juan and Manuel Sagredo y Martín. "Biografías de hijos ilustres de la Provincia de Guadalajara". (Guadalajara, Spain, 1889), 45. Keep in mind that Dijes and Sagredo write, "It truly jumps to our attention that Riva Palacio starts, as soon as he commences his account of Nuño, to use at every step a unique language, applying to him the harshest expressions in the Castilian tongue, language not used with any other, which leaves him open to our attempt to refute him." (43) They point out that the other chroniclers of the period—among them Bernal Díaz and Francisco López de Gómara mention very little about Guzmán, and what they say is positive. They conclude that Rivas Palacio could have made use of the unpublished sources of the Archives of the Indies to come up with his different account.] Fray Bartolomé de las Casas called him a "great tyrant".

Recall and prison

Reports of Guzmán's treatment of the Indigenous had reached Mexico City and Spain, and, at Bishop Zumárraga's request the Crown sent Diego Pérez de la Torre to investigate. Guzmán was arrested in 1536. He was held a prisoner for more than a year and then sent to Spain in fetters. He died a prisoner in the Castle of Torrejón suddenly, in obscurity, in 1544.

References

*en icon Chipman, Donald E., "Nuno de Guzman and the Province of Panuco in New Spain, 1518-1533". Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1967.
*es icon García Puron, Manuel, "México y sus gobernantes", v. 1. Mexico City: Joaquín Porrua, 1984.
*es icon Orozco Linares, Fernando, "Gobernantes de México". Mexico City: Panorama Editorial, 1985, ISBN 968-38-0260-5.

External links

* [http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/slenchek/slguzman.html Mexico Connect - Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán]
*es icon [http://www.aache.com/alcarrians/beltran.htm Biografía de Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán]
*es icon [http://mx.geocities.com/yaimemx/audigob.html La primera Audiencia]
*es icon [http://www.aache.com/alcarrians/beltran.htm Foundation of Guadalajara]