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Juan de Esquivel (c. 1480 - c. 1515) was a Spanish colonist and first governor of Jamaica.


Biography

Juan de Esquivel was a native of Seville, the son of Pedro de Esquivel and Constanza Fernandez de Arauz. His grandfather, Gabriel Sanchez, had been a controller of customs in Seville. Juan de Esquivel accompanied
Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus * lij, Cristoffa C(or)ombo * es, link=no, Cristóbal Colón * pt, Cristóvão Colombo * ca, Cristòfor (or ) * la, Christophorus Columbus. (; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506) was a ...
in 1493 on his second voyage to the
West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Grea ...
where he settled on
Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...
. In 1502 the governor of the Indies,
Nicolás de Ovando Frey Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres (1460 – 29 May 1511 or 1518) was a Spanish soldier from a noble family and a Knight of the Order of Alcántara, a military order of Spain. He was Governor of the Indies (Hispaniola) from 1502 until 1509, sen ...
, sent Esquivel with 400 men to subjugate the Tainos on the eastern end of the island. The region was depopulated and many of the defeated natives were made slaves. As a young man,
Bartolomé de las Casas Bartolomé de las Casas, OP ( ; ; 11 November 1484 – 18 July 1566) was a 16th-century Spanish landowner, friar, priest, and bishop, famed as a historian and social reformer. He arrived in Hispaniola as a layman then became a Dominican fria ...
was part of the Spanish force and later wrote about the violence he witnessed. Las Casas claimed that Esquivel led a second expedition against the Tainos in 1504, but Esquivel had returned to Spain during this period. Around 1504 Esquivel was named a ''procurador'' (legal representative) for the towns of Hispaniola and sent to Spain to request relief from the heavy tax on gold mining as well as better terms on trade of imported goods. The king agreed to reduce the royal tax on gold production from one-third to one-fifth of the output and put an end to the royal monopoly on trade with the islands. After Columbus died in 1506, his son Diego Colon established his claim as hereditary
viceroy A viceroy () is an official who reigns over a polity in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. The term derives from the Latin prefix ''vice-'', meaning "in the place of" and the French word ''roy'', meaning " ...
of lands discovered by his father. Colon returned to Hispaniola in 1509 and learned that Jamaica had been partitioned between two Spaniards unfriendly to his regime. He sent Esquivel to subdue the island with seventy men.
Pánfilo de Narváez Pánfilo de Narváez (; 147?–1528) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' and soldier in the Americas. Born in Spain, he first embarked to Jamaica in 1510 as a soldier. He came to participate in the conquest of Cuba and led an expedition to Camagüe ...
served as second-in-command. Esquivel apparently brought along his wife and daughters; in 1513 the family was given permission to import three slaves. The island was quickly subjugated and Esquivel founded the towns of Sevilla la Nueva on the north coast and Santa Gloria. No gold was discovered on Jamaica but the soil was fertile and the Spaniards were instructed to use native labor to grow food crops for the mainland and the other islands. King Ferdinand instructed Colon to treat the Jamaican natives with care so that "they may increase and not diminish as has been the case in Espaniola." Without gold, the colony was not as prosperous as hoped and in early 1512 it was even suggested that the colonists relocate to Cuba where Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was attempting to establish Spanish control of the island. The relocation never took place but Esquivel did send Narváez and thirty crossbowmen to Cuba to assist Velázquez. Ferdinand was unhappy with the leadership in Jamaica. He acknowledged that Colon spoke highly of Esquivel but he suspected that the lack of gold was the result of some sort of fraud. He also complained that Esquivel had failed "in the conversion of the Indians and pacification of the island as well as in the increase of our royal revenues." He ordered that a ''residencia'' (audit) be taken for Esquivel's term in office, an action that typically coincided with an official's dismissal. The timing is not clear but by November 1514, Esquivel had been replaced by Francisco de Garay. According to Bryan Edwards, he was "one of the few Castilians...distinguished for generosity and humanity".Edwards 1794 pp. 58-59


See also

*
Colony of Santo Domingo In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...
* Colony of Santiago (Jamaica) *
Spanish West Indies The Spanish West Indies or the Spanish Antilles (also known as "Las Antillas Occidentales" or simply "Las Antillas Españolas" in Spanish) were Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. In terms of governance of the Spanish Empire, The Indies was the d ...


References


Bibliography

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Further reading

* *Williams, Cynric R. 1827. A Tour Through the Island of Jamaica: From the Western to the Eastern End in the Year 1823. Hunt and Clarke. pp. 207–209.


External links


Contact of the Antilles aborigines with the Spanish conquerors
Spanish explorers Spanish conquistadors People of the Colony of Santo Domingo 15th-century births 1513 deaths Colony of Santiago History of Hispaniola {{Spain-bio-stub