A Conquistador’s Resume: Pedro de Ursúa in New Granada and Panama

When Pedro de Ursúa won command of an expedition into the Amazon in the late 1550s, he beat out a number of other would-be leaders. While Ursúa ended up dying at the hands of his own men on the banks of the great river, the fateful command was the culmination of nearly two decades of resume building in the colonies of New Granada and Panama. Ursúa arrived in the Indies in the retinue of his maternal uncle Miguel Díaz de Armendáriz in the 1540s. The Spanish Crown had ordered Díaz to New Granada to serve as royal inspector and judge. Díaz relied on his nephew to carry out a number of sensitive tasks. Ursúa arrived in Santa Fé de Bogotá before his uncle and arrested the unpopular official who governed the city. When Gonzalo Pizarro rebelled in Peru, Ursúa was to command the royal reinforcements from New Granada. (They ended up not being needed and never made the trip). Finally, under his uncle’s auspices, he founded the city of Pamplona on New Granada’s frontier. After new officials arrived, Ursúa continued to serve, leading expeditions against various indigenous groups in the highlands and along the coast. Eventually though, he fell from grace and had to flee arrest by taking ship for Panama. There, he acquired a new and powerful patron: Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, the recently arrived Viceroy of Peru. Ursúa was handsome and charming with the manners of a courtier; he impressed the new Viceroy. Hurtado de Mendoza charged Ursúa with the suppression of runaway African slaves harassing commerce across the strategic isthmus. Ursúa succeeded when he lured the runaways’ leader Bayano into negotiations and then treacherously threw him in chains. This final coup prompted the Viceroy to award Ursúa the coveted—and ultimately tragic—Amazonian command.