Diego de Sojo

Diego de Sojo or Diego de Sojo y Peñaranda (Talamanca de Jarama, Spanish Crown, 1566 – Carthage of the province of Costa Rica, Spanish Empire, e/ November and December 1639) was a Spanish conquistador and encomendero who founded the new city of Santiago de Talamanca, of which he was its third ordinary mayor around 1609 until 1610, the year he was briefly appointed lieutenant governor of his jurisdictional territory..

Biography

Family origin and early years

Diego de Sojo was born in the year 1566 in the town of Talamanca de Jarama, in New Castile, which was part of the Crown of Spain, being the son of Juan de Peñaranda y Sojo, who as lieutenant governor from Cartago held the position of interim governor of Costa Rica from 1589 to 1590, and from Sabina de Artieda Uclés y Enríquez de Chirino (b. Uceda, ca. 1646), a sister of the governor Diego de Artieda Chirino y Uclés.

He arrived at the age of eleven, in 1577 and with his father, to the province of Costa Rica where his maternal uncle from that year until 1589 was governor for life and, from the previous year until 1583, also from the province of Nicaragua.

Mayor and lieutenant governor of Talamanca

On October 10, 1605, he founded the city of Santiago de Talamanca, on the banks of the Sixaola River - in territories today belonging to the current Republic of Panama - in which he had been appointed as its first ordinary mayor. to Diego de Flores, who in 1607 was succeeded by Gaspar Delgado and around 1609 by Captain Sojo himself.

In 1610 the Royal Court of Guatemala established the incipient province of Duy y Mexicanos in the region and appointed Gonzalo Vázquez de Coronado y Arias Dávila as governor. The latter appointed Diego de Sojo as his lieutenant general and entrusted him with the position of lieutenant governor of Talamanca, in the new province, with Juan Fernández succeeding him as ordinary mayor of Santiago de Talamanca.

Aboriginal rebellion in the new province of Duy and Mexicanos

But the abuses that he committed with the indigenous people and the distribution of these in parcels of personal services provoked a rebellion on July 29 of that year, by the people of the atheist, terrebe, and viceita ethnic groups. and Cabécar, led by Guaycorá, chief of Sucaca, and by the usekar or high priest of Cabécar called Sumamará.

The city of Santiago was besieged and the rural population, including children, women and men, was completely murdered. The 120 urban inhabitants took refuge in the San Ildefonso fort, which had been built by Alonso de Bonilla a few years before, but finally the city was destroyed and burned.

Reintegration of Duy and Mexicans to Costa Rica

When the reinforcements arrived, the siege of the city was lifted, but around September 12 of the same year, the inhabitants, fearful of another uprising, decided to abandon it, and in this way the new province was effectively extinguished and its territory nominally reincorporated. to the Costa Rican province.

Diego de Sojo tried to reconquer the region, but he did not dare to go beyond Tariaca, in Tierra Adentro, and at the end of November 1611 he retired to Cartago in the province of Costa Rica.

Mayor of Cartago and death

He was assigned as ordinary mayor of said city from 1625 to 1630. Finally, the field master Diego de Sojo y Peñaranda would die between November and December 1639 in the Costa Rican city of Cartago, of the Captaincy General of Guatemala that In turn, it was an autonomous entity of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Marriage and offspring

Diego de Sojo had married Fabiana de Torres, with whom he had two children:

• Alonso de Sojo (n. 1595) was a military man who would reach the rank of captain.
• Juana de Sojo y Torres (n. 1610).