Pedro de Alvarado

El Capitan Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras (Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain, ca. 1485 or ca. 1495 – Guadalajara, New Spain, 4 July 1541) was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalva's exploration of the coasts of Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and in the conquest of Mexico led by Hernán Cortés. He is considered the conquistador of most of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras). Although renowned for his skill as a soldier, Alvarado is known also for the cruelty of his treatment of native populations, and mass murders committed in the subjugation of the native peoples of Mexico. Historiography portrays that indigenous people, both Nahuatl-speakers and speakers of other languages, called him Tonatiuh, meaning "sun" in the Nahuatl language. Yet he was also called "Red Sun" in Nahuatl, which allows a variety of interpretations. Whether this epithet refers to Don Alvarado's red hair, some esoteric quality attributed to him, or both, is disputed.

Early life
Pedro de Alvarado was born in 1485 in the town of Badajoz, Extremadura. He was the son of Diego Gómez de Alvarado y Mexía Sandoval y Porras, born in Badajoz in 1460, who was also the Commander of Lobón, Puebla, Montijo and Cubillana, Alcalde of Montanchez, Trece of the Order of Santiago, Lord of Castellanos, a Maestresala official instructor of Henry IV of Castile and General of the Frontier of Portugal. Pedro de Alvarado's mother was Diego's second wife, Leonor de Contreras y Gutiérrez de Trejo. His first wife, Teresa Suárez de Moscoso y Figueroa, had died two years before.

America
Alvarado went to Hispaniola in 1510 with all his younger brothers: Gonzalo, Jorge], Hernando and Juan, and their uncle Diego de Alvarado y Mexía de Sandoval. He held a command in the [[Juan de Grijalva expedition sent from Cuba against Yucatán in the spring of 1518, and returned in a few months,

Expedition to Mexico
In 1519 Alvarado accompanied Hernán Cortés in his expedition to Mexico, commanding one of the eleven vessels in the fleet and also acting as Cortés' second in command during the expedition's first stay in the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán. Relations between the Spaniards and their hosts were uneasy, especially given Cortés' repeated insistence that the Aztecs desist from idol worship and human sacrifice; in order to ensure their own safety, the Spaniards took the Aztec king Moctezuma hostage. When Cortés returned to the Gulf coast to deal with the newly arrived hostile expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, Alvarado remained in Tenochtitlan as commander of the Spanish enclave, with strict orders to make sure that Moctezuma not be permitted to escape. During Cortés' absence, relations between the Spaniards and their hosts went from bad to worse, and Alvarado ordered a preemptive slaughter of Aztec nobles and priests observing a religious festival. When Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan, he found the Spanish force under siege. After Moctezuma was killed in the attempt to negotiate with his own people, the Spaniards determined to escape by fighting their way across one of the causeways that led from the city across the lake and to the mainland. In a bloody nocturnal action of 1 July 1520, known as La Noche Triste, Alvarado led the rear-guard and was badly wounded. According to some sources, Alvarado used his lance to vault across a gap in the causeway; this feat has come to be known as the Salto de Alvarado ("Alvarado's Leap").



Conquest of Guatemala
Pedro de Alvarado was sent out by Hernán Cortés with 120 horsemen, 300 footsoldiers and several hundred Cholula and Tlaxcala auxiliaries; he was engaged in the conquest of the highlands of Guatemala from 1523 to 1527. At first, Alvarado allied himself with the Kakchiquel nation in his conquest of their traditional rivals, the Quiché nation, but his cruelties alienated the Kakchiquel, and he needed several years to stamp out resistance in the region. Alvarado's inhumanity to native populations is depicted in various sources, including the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, wherein it is documented that he enslaved natives, and murdered them by means such as hanging, burning, and throwing them alive to dogs.

Cuzcatlán (El Salvador)
Alvarado led the first effort by Spanish forces to extend their dominion to the nation of Cuzcatlán (El Salvador), in June 1524. These efforts established many towns such as San José Acatempa in 1525 and Esquipulas in 1560. Spanish efforts were firmly resisted by the indigenous people known as the Pipil and their Mayan speaking neighbors. Despite Alvarado's initial success in the Battle of Acajutla, the indigenous people of Cuzcatlán, who according to tradition were led by a warlord called Atlacatl, defeated the Spaniards and their auxiliaries, and forced them to withdraw to Guatemala. Alvarado was wounded on his left thigh, remaining handicapped for the rest of his life. He abandoned the war and appointed his brother, Gonzalo de Alvarado, to continue the task. Two subsequent expeditions were required (the first in 1525, followed by a smaller group in 1528) to bring the Pipil under Spanish control. In 1528 the conquest of Cuzcatlán was completed and the city of San Salvador was established.

Alvarado was subsequently appointed governor of Guatemala by Charles I of Spain and remained governor of Guatemala until his death. He was made Adelantado de La Florida and Knight of Santiago in 1527, and also Governor of Guatemala. In that year he was married in Spain to Francisca de la Cueva, Dame of Úbeda and niece of the Duke of Alburquerque. She died shortly after their arrival in America.

Peru
In 1534, Alvarado heard tales of the riches of Peru, headed south to the Andes and attempted to bring the province of Quito under his rule. When he arrived, he found the land already held by Francisco Pizarro's lieutenant Sebastian de Belalcazar. The two forces of Conquistadors almost came to battle; however, Alvarado bartered to Pizarro's group most of his ships, horses, and ammunition, plus most of his men, for a comparatively modest sum of money, and returned to Guatemala.

Governor
In 1532, Alvarado received a Royal Cedula naming him Governor of the Province of Honduras, which at that time consisted of a single settlement of Spaniards in Trujillo, but he declined to act on it. In 1533, or 1534 he began to send his own work gangs of enslaved Africans and Native Americans into the parts of Honduras adjacent to Guatemala to work the placer gold deposits. In 1536, ostensibly in response to a letter asking for aid from Andrés de Cereceda, then acting Governor of the Province of Honduras, Alvarado and his army of Indian allies arrived in Honduras, just as the Spanish colonists were preparing to abandon the country and go look for gold in Peru. In June, 1536, Alvarado engaged the indigenous resistance led by Cicumba in the lower Ulua river valley, and won. He divided up the Indian labor in repartimiento grants to his soldiers and some of the colonists, and returned to Guatemala. During a visit to Spain, in 1537, Alvarado had the governorship of Honduras reconfirmed in addition to that of Guatemala for the next seven years. His governorship of Honduras was not uncontested, however. Francisco de Montejo had a rival claim, and was installed by the Spanish king as Governor of Honduras in 1540. Ten years after being widowed, Alvarado married one of his first wife's sisters, Beatriz de la Cueva, who outlived him. After the death of her husband, de la Cueva maneuvered her own election and succeeded him as governor of Guatemala, becoming the only woman to govern a major political division of the Americas in Spanish colonial times. She drowned a few weeks after taking office in the destruction of the capital city Ciudad Vieja by a sudden flow from the Volcan de Agua in 1541.

Later Life and Death
Alvarado developed a plan to outfit an armada that would sail from the western coast of Mexico to China and the Spice Islands. At great cost, he assembled and equipped 13 ships and approximately 550 soldiers for the expedition. The fleet was about to set sail in 1541 when Alvarado received a letter from Cristóbal de Oñate, pleading for help against hostile Indians who were besieging him at Nochistlán. The siege was part of a major revolt by the Mixtón natives of the Nueva Galicia region of Mexico. Alvarado gathered his troops and went to help Oñate. In a freak accident, he was crushed by a horse that was spooked and ran amok. He died a few days later, on July 4, 1541, and was buried in the church at Tiripetío, a village between Patzcuaro and Morelia (in present-day Michoacán).

Four decades after Alvarado's death, his daughter Leonor de Alvarado Xicoténcatl paid to transport his remains to Guatemala for reburial in the cathedral of the city of Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala, now Antigua Guatemala.

Family
After the death of her husband, Beatriz de la Cueva maneuvered her own election and succeeded him as governor of Guatemala, becoming the only woman to govern a major political division of the Americas in Spanish colonial times. .

Alvarado had no issue from either of his marriages. But more so than his wives his vital companion was Luisa de Tlaxcala (also called Xicoténcalt or Tecubalsi, her original names after Catholic baptism), an Indian noblewoman, daughter of the Tlaxcaltec Chief Xicotenga. Luisa was delivered by her father in 1519 to Hernán Cortés as a proof of respect and friendship, and in turn he gave her in guard to Pedro de Alvarado, who quickly became her lover. Luisa followed Pedro in his adventures, and despite never being recognized as his legitimate wife, had numerous possessions and was respected as a Dame, both for her relationship with Alvarado and for her noble origin. She died in 1535 and was buried at the Guatemala Cathedral.

With Luisa de Tlaxcala he had three children:
 * Leonor de Alvarado y Xicotenga Tecubalsi, born in the newly founded city of Santiago de los Caballeros, who married Pedro de Portocarrero, a conquistador trusted by his father-in-law, whom he accompanied during the conquests of Mexico and Guatemala. Portocarrero participated in numerous battles against the Indians.
 * Leonor married a second time, to Francisco de la Cueva y Guzman. The Alvarado fortune remained with their descendants for generations to come, in the family of Villacreces de la Cueva y Guzman, governors of this part of Guatemala.


 * Pedro de Alvarado, who disappeared at sea when travelling to Spain
 * Diego de Alvarardo, El Mestizo, who died in 1554 in the civil wars of Peru

By other women, in concealed and occasional love affairs, he had two other children:
 * Gómez de Alvarado, without further notice
 * Ana (Anita) de Alvarado

References in modern culture
C. S. Forester's 1937 novel The Happy Return, set in Central America in 1808, features a character El Supremo who claims to be a descendant of Alvarado by a (fictional) marriage to a daughter of Moctezuma.

Pedro de Alvarado is a character in the opera La Conquista (2005) by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, which depicts the major episodes of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521 and the subsequent destruction of the Aztec civilization.

Pedro de Alvarado is identified as the torturer of Tzinacán, the narrator in Jorge Luis Borges's story "The God's Script" ("La Escritura del Dios"), first published in 1949.

Ancestors
Ancestors of Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras