Lope de Aguirre Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Lope de Aguirre was a Basque rebel and conquistador in South America. He was born around 1510 in Araotz Valley, near Oñate, in the province of Guipúzcoa, then belonging to the kingdom of Castile (today Araotz belongs to the municipality of Oñati, province of Guipúzcoa, Spain), and died in 1561 in Barquisimeto (today in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) in 1561.From the time he arrived in Peru in 1544 with the Pizarro expedition he became renowned for violence, cruelty and sedition. He joined the 1560 expedition of Pedro de Ursúa down the Marañón and Amazon Rivers. He participated in the overthrow and killing of Ursúa and his successor, Fernando de Guzmán, whom he ultimately succeeded. He and his men reached the Atlantic (probably by the Orinoco River) laying waste to native villages on the way.
Aguirre rebeled against the Emperor Charles V and sent letter that contain the most hard rebelious literature to the Emperor. Then he and his men were persecuted along thousands of milles. It all started after the civil wars, when the viceroy Blasco Nuñez Vela envoy to implant the New Laws and suppres the Encomiendas and liberate the Indians was incarcerated by the Real Audiencia. He took part in the complot with Melchor Verdugo for freeing the virrey. After the failed attempt, they escaped from Lima to Cajamarca, and started to gather men to help the virrey. The virrey had escaped awhile thanks to oidor Alvarez by sea to Túmbez and had formed a little army thinking that all the country was going to awake under the royal flag. His resistence would last for two years to Gonzalo Pizarro and his deputy Francisco Carvajal the famous "demon of the Andes". Finally he was defeated in Añaquito on January 18 1546. Melchor Verdugo and Lope de Aguirre had gone to Nicaragua shipping in Trujillo with 33 men. Melchor Verdugo had deputed captains to Rodrigo de Esquivel and Nuño Guzmán, sargeant mayor to Lope de Aguirre and contador to P. Henao. That would go in the expedition of Ursúa to Omagua and El Dorado. On 1551 Lope de Aguirre appeared anew in Peru, Potosí. The judge Francisco de Esquivel arrested him charged with infraction on the laws for the protection of the Indians. He didn't attend the reasons of Aguirre nor his claims of gentry and made him flogged publicly. Wounded in his pride, he waited until the end of the judge mandate. Afraid of Aguirre's vengeance, he hid and changed his residence constantly. Aguirre persecuted him by foot until Quito and anew to Cuzco. In three years he runs 6.000 kms. by foot, unshoed, after the track of Esquivel. The soldiers follow with interest this obstinate persecution. Finally the vengeance is accomplished in Cuzco, in the same mansion of the magistrate.
In 1561 he seized Margarita Island and held it in a grip of terror. When he crossed to the mainland in an attempt to take Panama, however, his open rebellion against the Spanish crown came to a swift end. In due course he was surrounded at Barquisimeto, Venezuela, where he desperately murdered his own daughter and last follower to keep her from being captured. Shortly after this he surrendered and was shot.
He has been seen as a precursor of the Spanish American independence.
Aguirre has twice been represented in the movies: first by Klaus Kinski in Aguirre, Wrath of God in 1973, then by Omero Antonutti in El Dorado
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