Gutiérrez de Piñeres, Juan Francisco (1732–1802)

Juan Francisco Gutiérrez de Piñeres (b. 25 August 1732; d. 7 October 1802), regent-visitor of New Granada (1776–1783). Born in Lebeña, León, Spain, Gutiérrez studied law in Seville, was appointed to the Audiencia of Valladolid in 1774, and two years later became oidor of the Casa de Contratación. In December 1776, José de Gálvez named him visitor-general of New Granada and regent of the Audiencia of Santa Fe, bearing instructions to improve the administration of royal revenues.

With the outbreak of war in 1779 came authorization to raise taxes and royal monopoly prices. A technocrat lacking political skills, Gutiérrez pursued his mission with such zeal that Viceroy Manuel Flores Maldonado Martínez y Bodquín urged caution, but to no avail. When Flores assumed military command on the coast, he relinquished his civil powers to Gutiérrez. The Comunero Revolt of 1781, protesting his measures, forced the regent-visitor to flee Santa Fe for Cartagena. Thereafter, Gutiérrez saw his effective powers diminished, although he returned to the viceregal capital in 1782. Recalled to Spain in 1783, he assumed a position on the Council of the Indies, where he remained until his death.

See alsoComunero Revolt (New Granada) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José María Restrepo Sáenz, Biografías de los mandatarios y ministros de la Real Audiencia, 1671–1819 (1952), especially pp. 509-514.

Allan J. Kuethe, Military Reform and Society in New Granada, 1773–1808 (1977).

John Leddy Phelan, The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia, 1781 (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Grahn, Lance Raymond. The Political Economy of Smuggling: Regional Informal Economies in Early Bourbon New Granada. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.

McFarlane, Anthony. Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics Under Bourbon Rule. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

                                      Allan J. Kuethe