Lope de Aguirre

Lore & Background

Aguirre was born around 1510 in the Araotz Valley, a valley and hamlet belonging to Oñati, close to Arantzazu in the province of Gipuzkoa, or in Aramaio, both in the Southern Basque Country of northern Spain. He was the son of a nobleman, possibly from a family of court clerks. In his twenties, living in Seville, he was inspired by Hernando Pizarro's return with Inca treasures and traveled to the Americas in the early 1530s, arriving in Cartagena. He arrived in Peru in 1536 or 1537, worked breaking stallions in Cuzco, and soon became infamous for violence, cruelty, and sedition against the Crown.

In 1544, Aguirre initially supported Gonzalo Pizarro against Peru's first viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, though his role was ambiguous and he later switched sides. After a failed attempt to free the imprisoned viceroy, he escaped to Nicaragua and later returned to Potosí in 1551. Judge Francisco de Esquivel sentenced him to public flogging for infractions of laws protecting Indians. Aguirre pursued Esquivel for three years, finally killing him in the mountains near Cuzco. In 1554, he fought in the Battle of Chuquingua against Hernández Girón, receiving two musket wounds that caused an incurable limp and ostracism from his peers.

In 1560, Aguirre joined Pedro de Ursúa's expedition down the Marañón and Amazon Rivers with 300 Spaniards and hundreds of natives. A year later, 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. On 23 March 1561, he urged 186 officers and soldiers to sign a statement acknowledging him as "Prince of Peru, Tierra Firme and Chile." He seized Isla Margarita, killed the governor, and was surrounded at Barquisimeto, Venezuela, where he killed his daughter Elvira and his wife. He was captured by royalist forces and shot to death by his own soldier, Custodio Hernandez. His body was beheaded and quartered; his skull remained in Valencia's town square for at least forty years.

Reader's Guide

Lope de Aguirre's significance lies in his dramatic rebellion against Spanish colonial authority and his enduring legacy as a symbol of cruelty and treachery in early Spanish American history. Over the centuries, his story has been reinterpreted to reflect shifting political and cultural contexts. Early accounts by expedition members portrayed him as a violent tyrant, while later colonial chroniclers used his tale as a moral warning against rebellion. In the nineteenth century, independence movements in Latin America and Basque nationalist writers recast him as a proto-revolutionary who defied royal authority, one of Latin America's first revolutionaries. Twentieth-century scholarship began to separate the historical figure from the legend, examining how each generation adapted his legacy to its own purposes. Aguirre has become an antihero in literature, cinema, and other arts, portrayed in films such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), El Dorado (1988), and Jungle Cruise (2021). His ill-fated voyage is the subject of works by Robert Southey, Ramón J. Sender, and Stephen Minta. The post-mortem trial found him guilty of lèse-majesté, and several of his soldiers were sentenced to death by dismemberment.

Did You Know?

• Aguirre styled himself 'Wrath of God' and was nicknamed El Loco ('the Madman').
• He killed his own daughter Elvira and his wife to prevent them from being 'bedded by uncouth people.'
• His skull remained in the town square of Valencia for at least forty years after his death.
• Aguirre was found guilty of lèse-majesté in a post-mortem trial held in El Tocuyo.