Lope de Aguirre
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Lope de Aguirre (b. c. 1510, d. 27 October 1561) was a Basque rebel and conquistador in South America. He was born around 1510 in Araotz Valley, in the province of Guipúzcoa, then belonging to the kingdom of Castile. (Today, Araotz belongs to the near municipality of Oñati, Spain). He died in 1561 in Barquisimeto (today in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela).
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 rebelled against the Emperor Charles V and sent letters that contained rebellious language to the Emperor. Then he and his men were persecuted along thousands of miles. It all started after the civil wars, when the viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela – an envoy sent to implant the New Laws and suppress the Encomiendas and liberate the Indians – was incarcerated by the Real Audiencia. He took part in the plot with Melchor Verdugo to free the viceroy. After the failed attempt, they escaped from Lima to Cajamarca, and started to gather men to help the viceroy. The viceroy had escaped meanwhile, thanks to oidor Alvarez, by sea to Tumbes and had formed a little army thinking that all the country was going to awake under the royal flag. His resistance 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 thirty-three men. Melchor Verdugo had deputed captains to Rodrigo de Esquivel and Nuño Guzmán, sergeant major to Lope de Aguirre and contador to P. Henao. That would go in the expedition of Ursúa to Omagua and El Dorado. In 1551 Lope de Aguirre appeared anew in Peru, Potosí. The judge Francisco de Esquivel arrested him and charged him with infraction of the laws for the protection of the Indians. The judge discounted Aguirre's reasons and his claims of gentry and sentenced him to a public flogging. His pride wounded, Aguirre waited until the end of the judge's mandate. Afraid of Aguirre's vengeance, the judge hid and changed his residence constantly. Aguirre pursued him by foot to Quito and then on to Cuzco. In three years he ran 6,000 km. by foot, unshod, on the trail of Esquivel. The soldiers followed with interest this obstinate pursuit. Finally, Aguirre achieved his vengeance in Cuzco, in the 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 Spanish American independence.
Aguirre has twice been represented in the movies: first by Klaus Kinski in Aguirre, Wrath of God in 1973, and secondly by Omero Antonutti in El Dorado.