Gabriel Cano de Aponte (or Gabriel Cano y Aponte) was a Spanish soldier who served as Royal Governor of Chile from 1717 to 1733. His administration was the longest of all Colonial Governors and the second longest in the history of Chile after the administration of General Augusto Pinochet, who surpassed him by some eight months.

Life

Gabriel Cano was born in the town of

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, near

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, the son of Juan Cano Ruiz and of Josefa de Aponte Carvajal. Cano joined the Spanish army and fought in

Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, ...

for 33 years, rising through the ranks from

Alférez In medieval Iberia, an ''alférez'' (, ) or ''alferes'' (, ) was a high-ranking official in the household of a king or magnate. The term is derived from the Arabic ('' al-fāris''), meaning "horseman" or "cavalier", and it was commonly Latinised ...

Brigadier Brigadier is a military rank, the seniority of which depends on the country. In some countries, it is a senior rank above colonel, equivalent to a brigadier general or commodore, typically commanding a brigade of several thousand soldiers. In ...

and finally

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. He married María Campos, but she died in 1713 without descendants. Due to his outstanding valor and performance during the

War of the Spanish Succession The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict that took place from 1701 to 1714. The death of childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700 led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire between his heirs, Phil ...

he was promoted to

Lieutenant General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the ...

on October 28, 1715 and three days later, was appointed Royal Governor of Chile. On January 5, 1716, he married again, this time with María Francisca Velaz de Medrano Navarra y Puelles, in the city of Pamplona. They travelled together to

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

to assume his position, arriving to

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

on December 17, 1717.

As governor of Chile

In a flare up of the Arauco War he fought the

Mapuche The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who sha ...

toqui

Vilumilla Vilumilla was the Mapuche Toqui elected in 1722 to lead the Mapuche Uprising of 1723 against the Spanish for their violation of the peace. The Mapuche resented the Spanish intruding into their territory and building forts, and also the insolence of ...

in the Mapuche Uprising of 1723. It was ended with the

Peace of Negrete Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (such as war) and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups. ...

in 1726. In 1725, Governor Cano attempted to repress contraband, without complete success, due to the wit and skills of the French and Dutch merchants and the complicity of some of the Kingdom's influential citizens.

Death

As a soldier, Cano was an innovative horseman, and historians have documented Cano's "inclination for unbridled fun and equestrian exercises". On July 26, 1733, while he was participating in a game on horseback, Cano suffered an equestrian accident when he fell with his horse and was crushed by it. The sequence of events that caused his death three months later are unclear, but what is clear is that Cano was badly injured and never recovered, dying on November 11 of the same year. It has been stated that a spinal lesion caused by the accident kept him bedridden for a period of three months, clear in reason and with intense pain, before his death. However, there is no evidence that conveys any typical sign associated to spinal injury following the accident. Therefore, it is possible that Cano suffered a complex pelvic ring fracture. The fact that he was prostrated, lucid, but suffered intense pain best sustains the hypothesis of a pelvic fracture. After the initial period, one of the most common causes of death resulting from a pelvic fracture is deep venous

thrombosis Thrombosis (from Ancient Greek "clotting") is the formation of a blood clot inside a blood vessel, obstructing the flow of blood through the circulatory system. When a blood vessel (a vein or an artery) is injured, the body uses platelets (thro ...

with secondary pulmonary thrombo-embolism. This must have been the sequence of events that most probably caused Cano de Aponte's death.

Additional information

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