Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán (1558) was a Spanish conquistador and colonial administrator in New Spain. He was the governor of the province of Pánuco from 1525 to 1533 and of Nueva Galicia from 1529 to 1534, and president of the first Royal Audiencia of Mexico – the high court that governed New Spain – from 1528 to 1530. He founded several cities in Northwestern Mexico, including Guadalajara.
Originally a bodyguard of Charles I of Spain, he was sent to Mexico to counterbalance the influence of the leader of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Hernán Cortés, since the King worried he was becoming too powerful. As Governor of Pánuco, Guzmán cracked down hard on the supporters of Cortés, stripping him and his supporters of property and rights. He conducted numerous expeditions of conquest into the northwestern areas of Mexico, enslaving thousands of Indians and shipping them to the Caribbean colonies. In the resulting power struggles where he also made himself an enemy of important churchmen, Guzmán came out the loser.
In 1537, he was arrested for treason, abuse of power and mistreatment of the indigenous inhabitants of his territories, and he was sent to Spain in shackles. He was eventually released, dying in poverty in 1558.
His subsequent reputation, in scholarship and popular discourse, has been that of a cruel, violent and irrational tyrant. His legacy has partly been colored by the fact that history was written largely by his political opponents such as Hernán Cortés, Juan de Zumárraga and Vasco de Quiroga.
Early life
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán was born ca. 1485 in Guadalajara, Spain, to an old noble family. His father was Hernán Beltrán de Guzmán, a wealthy merchant and a High Constable in the Spanish Inquisition; his mother was Doña Magdalena de Guzmán. The Guzmán family supported Prince Charles in the Revolt of the Comuneros and achieved gratitude of the later Emperor. Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán received some experience in law, but never finished a degree. For a period he and his younger brother served as one of 100 royal bodyguards of Carlos V, and he accompanied the Emperor on a trip to Flanders in 1522, and undertook sensitive diplomatic missions, including one dealing with the Bishop of Cuenca (Spain). Cortés had already extended his reach into Pánuco, so that Guzmán's appointment was a direct challenge. His appointment was opposed by the Pro-Cortés faction of the struggle for power in early colonial Mexico, who viewed him as an outsider with no military experience.
As conqueror of western Mexico
In 1529, Guzmán put Juan Ortiz de Matienzo in charge of the Audiencia. Then, gathering a military force of 300 to 400 discontented conquistadors and between 5,000 and 8,000 indigenous Nahua allies, Guzmán set out on December 21, 1529, to the west of Mexico City to conquer lands and peoples who until then had resisted the conquest. Typically, the conquistadors attacked an Indian village, stole the maize and other food, razed and burned the dwellings, and tortured the native leaders to gather information on what riches could be stolen there, or from nearby populations. For the most part, these riches did not exist.
Meanwhile, in Mexico City, the actions of the Audiencia attracted the attention of Juan de Zumárraga, bishop of Mexico, who put it under an ecclesiastical interdiction on March 7, 1530. The immediate cause of the interdiction was a case of violation of sanctuary. The Audiencia had violently taken from the convent of San Francisco a servant of Cortés accused of grave crimes, and two religious, Cristóbal de Angulo and García de Llerena.
Undeterred, Guzmán continued the violent suppression on the peoples of the present-day states of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Nayarit and Sinaloa. In the latter state, he founded the city of San Miguel de Culiacán on September 29, 1531. He returned to Tepic, where he set up his headquarters, sending out new expeditions from there. One of these founded the cities of Santiago de Galicia de Compostela and Purificación. Another traveled as far as the current Mexican state of Sonora. His violent expeditions into Chichimec lands were a main cause of the Mixtón rebellion.
Foundation of Guadalajara in New Spain
In 1531 (probably January), one of Guzmán's captains, Cristóbal de Oñate, founded a small town near Nochistlán to which the name "Guadalajara" was given. Two years later Guzmán visited the city, and at the request of its inhabitants, who were fearful of Indian attacks and lacked sufficient water, he ordered it moved to Tonalá. This occurred on May 24, 1533. Later, after Guzmán had returned to Spain, it was moved again, to a site near Tlacotan (northeast of modern Zapopan). This occurred probably between October 1541 and February of the following year. Later the settlers began to complain to Antonio de Mendoza, then the viceroy of New Spain, about both the repeated relocations and Guzmán's cruelty.
Kingdom of New Galicia
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán gave the name "Conquista del Espíritu Santo de la Mayor España" to the territories he explored and conquered. However, the queen of Spain, Joanna of Castile, mother of Charles V, did not approve of the name. By a royal decree dated January 25, 1531, she supplied the name Reino de Nueva Galicia (Kingdom of New Galicia).
This territory extended from the Rio Lerma to Sonora, with its capital at Compostela. New Galicia was a separate entity, not under the authority of the Audiencia of Mexico City (but still part of New Spain).
One nineteenth-century chronicler of the Conquest referred to Beltrán de Guzmán as "the detestable governor of Pánuco and perhaps the most depraved man ever to set foot in New Spain."
Final years in Spain
Reports of Guzmán's treatment of the Indigenous had reached Mexico City and Spain, and, at Bishop Zumárraga's request the Crown sent Diego Pérez de la Torre to investigate. Guzmán was arrested in 1536. He was held a prisoner for more than a year and then sent to Spain in fetters. He was released from the Castle of Torrejón prison in 1538. In 1539 he returned to his position as royal contino bodyguard - court records show him on the payroll every year from 1539 to 1561 (in 1561 as "deceased"). In 1552 he wrote up a memorial containing his own version of the events leading to his fall. In his account he justified his execution of the Purépecha Cazonci as being necessary in order to bring a Christian rule of law to the area, and he assured that: "in truth no execution more just has been carried out in all of New Spain, and if I were deserving of any punishment it would be for having doubted some days about whether to carry it out."
In 1558 he wrote his last will which was uncovered in 1973, it shows him as a poverty stricken noble struggling to save his heirs from his debts, having had even to pawn his heirlooms to pay for medicine. In it, he requested some of the property that was confiscated from him to be returned to his heirs, and wages still due to him for his years as Governor and President be paid and turned over to his heirs. With affection he bequeathed most of his belongings to a woman Sabina de Guzmán, who had taken care of him in his illness. He also bequeathed belongings to the Franciscan Order, in spite of the conflicts he had had with its members in New Spain. He probably died in Valladolid in 1558 on October 16 or shortly thereafter.