Belalcázar has long needed a good biographer. His rise from obscurity to a principal role in the conquest is a fascinating story of how much some illiterate Spanish villagers transformed their condition in the New World. With this book, Diego Garcés Giraldo has now furnished the point-of-departure for anyone wishing to study Belalcázar, although Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño’s unfinished Sebastián de Benalcázar (Quito, 1936-49) provides, in places, a day-by-day account that some will still find useful. Garcés Giraldo gives us a judicious, thoughtful, and well-written synthesis of relevant materials published to date. Belalcázar’s early career in Nicaragua, captainship at Cajamarca, conquest of Ecuador and southern Colombia, reluctant involvement in the Peruvian civil wars in the 1540s, and participation in the government in southern Colombia are all appropriately covered.
Perhaps the true significance of Belalcázar’s career is not that of a founder of cities, as Garcés Giraldo’s subtitle suggests, but as a survivor and as a paradigm of southern Colombia’s turbulent and independent development. Belalcázar lacked the extensive network of the Pizarro, Almagro, and Alvarado factions, yet, when forced to choose sides, he survived not only personally but with his government intact—even, amazingly, when he ended up on the losing side, as in Viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela’s defeat at Iñaquito in 1546. While others lost their heads or were shunted aside, Belalcázar carved out a niche for himself in southern Colombia that he successfully defended against all comers from 1536 until his residencia and death sentence in 1550.
By that time, Belalcázar had run afoul of another network. Conducting his residencia was the oidor Francisco Briceño, whose sentence was based on Belalcázar’s 1546 execution of his rival Jorge Robledo. Briceño’s brother, Pedro, was treasurer of New Granada and married to the twice-widowed doña María de Carvajal whose first husband had been Robledo. She was from a noble family, had connections in Spain, and had been agitating vociferously for justice before court officials, all useful in pressing her claims to her dead husband’s ambiguous title to lands and encomiendas. Belalcázar was en route to Spain to appeal the death sentence when he died in Cartagena in 1551 at the age of 61. In spite of the charges, he was able to pass on to his son Francisco one of the biggest encomiendas in southern Colombia, and his descendants have been some of Colombia’s most illustrious citizens.
In a series of useful appendixes, Garcés Giraldo provides the reader with Belalcázar documents, a detailed chronology of his life, and a profile of the 103 participants in the founding of Cali in 1536 in the style of James Lockhart’s Men of Cajamarca (Austin, 1972). A discussion of archival sources is sadly wanting. Some documents still have the old AGI numeration, and some, such as Belalcázar’s published will, Testamento . . . Benalcázar (Quito, 1935), have never been given a specific AGI location. Nevertheless, Garcés Giraldo makes good use of published documents to tell the story of a premier figure of the conquest.
