Fernández (Hernández) de Córdoba, Francisco (c. 1475–1526)

Francisco Fernández (Hernández) de Córdoba (b. ca. 1475; d. June 1526), conqueror of Nicaragua. (not to be confused with Francisco Hernández De Córdoba [d. 1518], a conquistador of the Yucatán.) Fernández de Córdoba was a Spanish soldier of fortune who came to Panama sometime between 1514 and 1517. In the service of Pedro Arias de Ávila (Pedrarias Dávila), he was captain of the guard at Panama City in 1519. Pedrarias sent him to Nicaragua in 1523 to check the pretensions of Gil González Dávila. There Fernández founded the cities of Granada and León in 1524, as well as the village of Bruselas, the first European settlement in what is today Costa Rica. He also tried to take control of the territory of Honduras and to establish a kingdom independent of Pedrarias, perhaps in alliance with Hernán Cortés. Learning of this in 1525, Pedrarias came to Nicaragua and captured Fernández. After a speedy trial, in which Fernández was convicted of treason, he was beheaded in León in late June 1526. The Nicaraguan unit of currency, the córdoba, is named for him.

See alsoExplorers and Exploration: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlos Meléndez Chaverri, Hernández de Córdoba: Capitán de conquista en Nicaragua (1976).

John H. Parry and Robert G. Keith, New Iberian World: A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early Seventeenth Century, (1984), vol. 3, pp. 86-101; vol. 4, pp. 19, 27, 30.

                             Ralph Lee Woodward Jr.