Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva

Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva (Mogadouro, Trás-os-Montes, Portugal, 1539 - Mexico City, February 13, 1591) was one of the Spanish conquerors of Mexico, founder of the New Kingdom of León. He worked as a merchant, soldier, adventurer and politician. Both he and his family, New Christians of Portuguese Jewish origin, were accused of judaizing (called marranos at the time, a term also used by later historiography) and prosecuted by the Inquisition. He died in prison. His nephew, Luis de Carvajal & # 34; El Mozo & # 34;, was a poet and mystic, the first Jewish writer in America.* You will forget the fire (biographical novel about Luis de Carvajal, the groom). Mexico, Lumen, 2022.

Birth and youth

His parents were Gaspar de Carvajal and Catalina de León. Her mother's family was engaged in the slave trade, mainly in the Guinea area of West Africa. At the age of 8 he went with her family to Spain, living in the Leonese town of Sahagún although they had also lived in Benavente, Zamora, where some of his brothers were born, for the same reason when his parents died they were buried there.

It is believed that on the death of his father, his maternal uncle, Duarte de León, sent him back to Portugal where he spent ten years studying, more or less until 1560, where he managed to work as an accountant, for his good services he arrived to be appointed treasurer representing the Portuguese Crown on the island of Cape Verde, West Africa, where he worked for thirteen years, until 1573, controlling the slave trade.

First stay in America

She decided to move to Seville, where she married Guiomar de Ribera, originally from Lisbon, in 1564. Soon after, financial and marital problems pushed him to undertake an expedition to the New World, with his own ship and as second in command of the Fleet of the Indies. Once in America he was appointed mayor of Tampico. In the fall of 1568 he captured 77 Englishmen from the John Hawkins expedition who, after losing some ships at Veracruz, were pillaging the coast of Tamaulipas. Martín Enríquez de Almansa, viceroy of New Spain, was impressed by the fact and appointed him captain. He carried out various expeditions, in one of which he crossed the Rio Grande, being the first Spaniard to enter the territory of present-day Texas after the eventful odyssey of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Accused of abuse of authority (enslaving and selling indigenous people), he was forced to defend himself: first in Mexico and then returning to the Iberian Peninsula.

Second stay in America

Before the Council of the Indies, he proposed in 1579 the colonization of the Mexican territory from sea to sea; and obtained the confidence of the authorities to return to New Spain as governor and captain general for the establishment of the New Kingdom of León, two hundred leagues inside Tampico, in an extensive territory of indefinite limits between present-day Mexico and the United States (present-day state of Nuevo León, Coahuila, Tamaulipas and the south of the current state of Texas). He embarked on the Santa Catalina with one hundred families from Portugal, Benavente, Valderas, Zamora, Sayago and Medina del Campo, with whom he reached his destination in 1580.

Luis de Carvajal had presented to King Felipe II his project to colonize lands located to the north of New Spain, which would result in the founding of the New Kingdom of León, whose jurisdictional limits started from the port of Pánuco, to the north of the current State of Veracruz, which extended 200 leagues to the West and another 200 leagues to the North, thus forming a square that would have 800 kilometers per side, however this extension would invade the jurisdictions of the Kingdom of Nueva Vizcaya, to which it belonged. the almost recently founded town of Santiago del Saltillo.

Carvajal would found, in the area currently occupied by the city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, the town of Santa Lucía, established in 1577 by Alberto del Canto, which he later renamed City of León, founding likewise another settlement that he called San Luis Rey de Francia (where the city of Monterrey was refounded in 1596). To pacify and colonize the territory, he had one hundred soldiers and sixty married workers.

The Carvajal family before the Inquisition

Among the marranos who began to develop the social life of the new territory was his own family: his sister Francisca de Carvajal, his brother-in-law Francisco Rodríguez and their children (historically the most prominent was who was called like him: Luis de Carvajal el Mozo). When it seemed that they had reached prosperity, and despite the fact that they publicly maintained the Christian religion, in 1590 they were accused as Judaizers before the Inquisition. His nephew, nieces and sister were tried and burned alive.

Sentenced to six years in exile from New Spain, while awaiting the execution of his sentence, Governor Carvajal died in prison on February 13, 1591.