José de Bustamante y Guerra

José de Bustamante y Guerra (baptized as "Josef Joaquín Antonio" in Ontaneda, Valle de Toranzo, April 1, 1759- Madrid, March 10, 1825) was a Spanish sailor, governor of Montevideo from 1797 to 1804 and seven years later, in 1811, he would be assigned as captain general of Guatemala until 1818. He was also a knight of the Order of Santiago.

Biography

He was descended from the Bustamante of Toranzo and the Guerra of Ibio; His father was Joaquín Antonio de Bustamante y Rueda, a native of Alceda, and his mother Clara Guerra de la Vega, a native of Santander. He requested a position as a naval guard in Cádiz in 1770, at the age of eleven; He was already a frigate second lieutenant in June 1771. He served in several sea campaigns in the squadron commanded by Pedro de Castejón. He undertook his first trip to America a few years later when he visited Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Bahamas. In 1784, with a brilliant service record, he reached the position of frigate captain. He first deals with the pirates; The English captured him on the ship Santa Inés after a scuffle in which they stopped his course to the Philippines and he was held captive for a year in Ireland, after which they let him return.

On October 20, 1782 he took part in the naval battle of Gibraltar, against the squadron of Richard Howe, first Earl of Howe, even though he was wounded. His ship was badly damaged in a battle near Cádiz. Bustamante then prepared a projected conquest of Jamaica, which he did not carry out due to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. He entered as a knight of the Order of Santiago on October 21, 1784.

Malaspina-Bustamante Expedition (1789-1794)

In the summer of 1788, with his comrade and also frigate captain Alessandro Malaspina (one of the most unique characters of his time), he planned a voyage of the Royal Navy of a political-scientific nature through the overseas territories of the Spanish empire.. On August 10, 1788 they sent a letter requesting it to the Minister of the Navy, Antonio Valdés, and on September 10, 1788 he replied that King Charles III had authorized the trip. The name that both proposed in their application was 'Scientific and political trip around the world', but during the development of the trip it was even officially known as 'Expedition around the world', after When Spain entered the war against France, they were ordered to return and even with a mission for the Crown and having to do it from America and not through Africa as planned, so they could not complete the trip around the world, which is why they changed their destination again. denomination as "Overseas Expedition started on July 30, 1789", almost a century later news of this expedition was heard again, since the so-called Prince of Peace -Godoy- seized all the documentation of the expedition prohibited all publication or mention after banishing Malaspina from Spain for treason against him and King Charles IV until 1885 when Lieutenant Pedro Novo y Colson published the study he called Political-Scientific Journey around the world by the Corvettes Discovered and Atrevida, commanded by Captains Don Alejandro Malaspina and Don José Bustamante y Guerra from 1789 to 1794 and so on, it has been given different names such as Expedition Malaspina, Expedition of the Royal Malaspina-Bustamante Navy or Malaspina-Bustamante Expedition. The crew was made up of volunteers from among a select and best officer of the Royal Navy of the time, to which botanists, painters, doctors and other enlightened humanists were added, and they sailed between 1789 and 1794 aboard the corvettes Despuesta and Atrevida, the latter directed by himself, built especially for the trip. He is rewarded with the rank of captain (1791). From Cádiz, where they began the journey in 1789, they crossed the Atlantic to reach Buenos Aires and Montevideo and, after touring Patagonia, they crossed Cape Horn and, bordering the west coast of the viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada, they toured New Spain, including California, Nutca and Alaska. They leave America behind and head towards the Pacific, sailing through Polynesia, the Mariana Islands, the Philippines, Macao, Mindanao, New Guinea, the New Hebrides, New Zealand, Australia and the Friends Archipelago to the port of Callao, then sail José de Bustamente with the corvette Atrevida to the Malvinas Islands and from there to the Aurora Islands, discovering what they called Isla Nueva, navigation through the Antarctic Ocean being very risky as having to avoid hundreds of icebergs. ice, then back to Montevideo where the corvette Discovered was, they returned to Cádiz giving military escort to a large and very valuable convoy, which was appreciated by the Crown, since at that time Spain was at war against France. They more than meet all the scientific expectations. Modern navigation charts and current geographical maps were drawn, magnificent mineral and botanical collections were made with hitherto unknown species and great visual documentation was provided with precise reports referring to the social, political and military status of the colonies.

Return to Spain

On his return to Spain in September 1794, he handed over his travel diary, was received by the king along with Alejandro Malaspina and with these merits he was promoted to brigadier; But Malaspina criticizes the poor situation and administration of the colonies and Godoy imprisons him and confiscates the entire archive of the expedition, which remains confined and forgotten until in 1885 another soldier, Lieutenant Pedro Novo y Colson, recovers and publishes it. thanks to which many details of the expedition were known. Bustamante was appointed governor of Montevideo in 1796 and settled in that city on February 11, 1797. During his government the city was a supply point for privateers who roamed the area of the Río de la Plata: the presence is documented, for example, of the French privateer Pierre-Marie Le Bozec (1769-1830), captain of the frigate La Républicaine.

In addition, he was appointed general commander of the ships of the Río de la Plata with the mission of implementing his defense plan for South America, proposed after the aforementioned political-scientific trip; It is upon returning to Spain in 1804 in command of a flotilla of four frigates, Our Lady of Mercedes, La Clara, La Medea and La Fama, when it was intercepted upon arriving off the coast of the Algarve (Portugal), on October 5, 1804, by an English squadron under the command of Commodore Graham Moore and, inexplicably, since Spain was At peace with Great Britain since the signing of the Treaty of Amiens (1802), a naval combat known as the Battle of Cape St. Mary took place. The frigate Mercedes was blown up with a cargo of four million pesos from merchants from Lima and Buenos Aires. 249 crew members and merchants with their families perished. Seeing the inferiority of the flotilla and being wounded, Brigadier Bustamante surrendered the other three frigates that were resisting, which were captured and transported to the port of Gosport in England. Once released, he underwent a court martial in Spain, which acquitted him. He had time to fight in the Battle of Trafalgar.

In 1807 he was appointed member of the Board of Fortifications and Defense of the Indies. In 1808 he abandoned Madrid for not wanting to swear an oath to the intruding king Joseph Bonaparte and fled disguised as a friar to Seville, where he placed himself under the command of the Central Supreme Junta, which promoted him to Lieutenant General. The Regency Council appointed him President of the Audiencia of Charcas, then of Cuzco, positions that he declined for unknown reasons. By then he embraced the absolutism of Ferdinand VII.

In 1810 he was appointed to the Captaincy General of Guatemala, at a time of great independence activity; He develops an enlightened reformist policy, but before the revolution of Hidalgo and Morelos in New Spain he prepared troops in Guatemala and created the "volunteer corps of Fernando VII"; and from his position he confronted the local constitutionalists, harshly repressing the insurgents; He opposed the liberal constitution of 1812, denounced his successor named Juan Antonio de Tornos, Mayor of Honduras, for alleged liberal tendencies and thus achieved his confirmation in his position by Ferdinand VII in 1814. He was the most drastic and intransigent of all the Captains General of the Kingdom of Guatemala, sent especially to repress the independence movement and sadly remembered for the cruelty he put into the performance of his function; Grim and bitter, but not stupid, he came to the conclusion that in the kingdom of Guatemala a broad distribution of land among the poor people was necessary. In a document from 1813, he addressed the peninsular government and "very reserved" He advised: & # 34;... Open the sources of public wealth to banish the misery that disposes those who suffer it to revolutions in which they hope to change their luck; multiply the number of owners to increase the number of true citizens (...) Liberally protect the Indians, the most numerous and recommendable class, at the same time that, due to its simplicity, it is the most exposed to being seduced.". And when it came to recommending the most urgent concrete measures to prevent subversion plans against the Crown from developing in Guatemala, Bustamante recommended a lot of drasticity, reinforcing the militias, but also: ":...that they be distributed in small lots to the mulattoes and honest Indians who were not owners, the lands that could be granted without prejudice to third parties, providing them with funds from the community fund for the first expenses of cultivation. It was a demagogic measure, but the effectiveness that the president assumed lay in the fact that the lack of land was a powerful factor of discontent among indigenous people and mestizos (whom he called "mulatos" according to the usage of the time.) and he hoped that those distributions would be, for that very reason, a blow against the opinion favorable to Independence.

He was dismissed in August 1817 and returned to Spain in 1819. That same year he became part of the Junta de Indias again. In 1820 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the American Order of Isabel la Católica and was appointed general director of the Navy until 1822. In 1823 he was a member of the Board of Expeditions to America, and a year later, he returned to the Navy again. General Directorate of the Navy and worked in the Ministry of the Navy in Madrid until his death in 1825, his military position being 'Lieutenant General of the National Navy'.

He was a knight of the Order of Santiago since 1784, and the king named him knight grand cross of the Order of San Hermenegildo and knight grand cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica.