Martin Garcia Oñez de Loyola
Martín García Óñez de Loyola (Azpeitia, 1549-Curalaba, December 24, 1598) was a Spanish official who participated in important military actions and held high political positions in the Viceroyalty of Peru, among them the Governor of the Kingdom of Chile.
Biography
He was born in Azpeitia (Guipúzcoa) into the wealthy Loyola family. His parents were Martín García de Loyola y Araoz from Biscay, and María Nicolasa de Oyanguren. When his grandfather created the estate of Oñaz y Loyola, he left the entire fortune to his eldest son, Beltrán de Oñaz, Martín's uncle. Martín was a great-nephew of San Ignacio de Loyola.
In Peru
García Óñez de Loyola left for Peru at a very young age, in 1568, alongside the new viceroy Francisco Álvarez de Toledo as captain of his guard.
In 1572, during the military expedition against Túpac Amaru, the last descendant of the Incas who maintained resistance to foreign domination, an Inca captain named Huallpa met him. He challenged the Spaniard to a fight without weapons, with his bare hands, which the proud hidalgo could not avoid. Once the combat had started, the witnesses saw how the Indian, with incredible lightness of movement, was beating the poor Spaniard, reducing him to impotence, hitting him in the body and holding him in a lock that put him in a state of dying with a broken neck, but then a servant of the Spanish hidalgo seized his sword and treacherously ran Captain Huallpa through, saving the Spaniard from certain death.
Later, Óñez de Loyola, being in command of the vanguard column, surprised the camp of the last Inca and captured it. Due to his performance, he successively obtained the position of corregidor of Potosí, Huamanga and Huancavelica, in addition to possession of goods and a parcel. He also counted as a reward his wife, belonging to the royal family of the Incas, niece of Tupac Amaru, and baptized with the Christian name of Beatriz Clara Coya.
With these recommendations, Felipe II named him governor of Paraguay in 1592, a position he did not assume because shortly after the king appointed him governor of Chile, considering him the most apt captain to put an end to the Arauco War.
Governor of Chile
García Óñez de Loyola arrived in Chile on September 23, 1592, determined to pacify Arauco, so he immediately headed for Concepción at the head of 110 men that he managed to gather in the capital (February of the following year). With so few resources that he had in the kingdom, García Óñez de Loyola realized that without reinforcements from Peru he would not achieve anything; his campaign against the Mapuche was maintained with just over 200 soldiers.
The appearance of the British pirate Richard Hawkins, who set off the alarm in Peru, delayed the sending of reinforcements (it was said that they were necessary for the defense of the viceroyalty). Hawkins, in his raids, also attacked the port of Valparaíso, but since the booty was very poor, in a chivalrous act, he returned the articles that were of no use to him and released the imprisoned sailors.
The governor did not receive the requested soldiers, but two religious orders did arrive, the Augustinians and the Jesuits; The latter would have great importance in future events that occurred during the colonial period in Chile, until their expulsion in 1767.
The governor decided not to wait any longer, and in 1594 he began the southern campaigns with the small contingent he had. Three years later a reinforcement of 140 men arrived, but they were not enough, to which Santiago's refusal to send more soldiers was added. The few reinforcements that arrived from Peru were not due to a decision by the viceroy, who offered generous offers to whoever joined, but because the name of Chile was discredited by that endless war, and no one wanted to risk their lives by going there.
Curalaba: death of the governor
The governor was in La Imperial when the news reached him that the Mapuche had resumed their attacks in Angol, so he set out on December 21, 1598 with 50 Spanish horsemen and some 300 yanaconas auxiliaries. Both towns were 20 leagues away (1 league = 5.6 km), the journey was very dangerous. The nearest forts—San Salvador de Coya (formerly destroyed) and Jesús in Purén, next to Fort Huadaba, present-day Los Sauces—were beyond the swamps and Lake Lumaco; the Curalaba area was a transit point used by the Spanish army to spend the night.
At dusk on December 21, 1598, they advanced one league to a place called Pailachaca, to continue very early the next day marching to Curalaba (= broken stone), on the banks of the Lumaco river, boxed in at this place by high ravines, where they rested without taking any precautionary measures to avoid an attack. This place is located at the entrance of the current town of Lumaco and the Mapuche communities maintain stories about that event. At dawn on the 23rd, the Mapuche approached the camp, and to the thunder of their shouts and horns they launched themselves into the attack of the Spaniards.
In the combat almost all the Spaniards died, including the governor; Only the cleric Bartolomé Pérez, taken prisoner, and Bernardo de Pereda, a soldier who was left lying on the battlefield with 23 wounds to his body, but still alive, were saved.
The importance of the victory over the Spanish was such that dozens of lonkos and their konas gathered in the house of the lonko of Lumaco Wenumilla to celebrate. Subsequently, the Mapuche then began a general uprising that ended with the destruction of the seven cities between the south of the Biobío River and the Chacao channel. The Araucanians kept the head of Martín García Óñez de Loyola and delivered the skull years later to Governor Alonso García de Ramón.
Offspring
From his marriage to the Inca princess Beatriz Clara Coya he had only one daughter, Ana María Lorenza García Sayri Túpac de Loyola, who after her marriage to Juan Enríquez de Borja —son of the Marquis of Alcañices and grandson of San Francisco de Borja —, received in 1614 the title of Marchioness of Santiago de Oropesa.
Contenido relacionado
118
85
58