Guzmán, Nuño Beltrán de (c. 1485–1558)

Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán (b. ca. 1485; d. 26 October 1558), governor of Pánuco (1527), president of New Spain's first audiencia (1528–1531), conqueror of Nueva Galicia (1529), and founder of Guadalajara (1531). Of the lower nobility of Guadalajara, Spain, Guzmán became noted for his corruption and brutality toward indigenous people. In Pánuco he earned the enmity of Hernán Cortés and other first conquerors by aggressively trying to expand his jurisdiction at their expense and, as audiencia president, by profiteering from the confiscation of their properties. Relations were not improved when in 1530 he tortured and then executed Cazonci, the Tarascan ruler of Michoacán, an ally of Cortés. In 1531, while Guzmán was still in Nueva Galicia, the first audiencia and its president were replaced, in part because of the complaints of such prominent figures as Bishop Juan de Zumárraga. Guzmán continued as governor of New Galicia until January 1537, when he was arrested. After languishing in jail for eighteen months, he left Mexico in mid-1538, arriving in Spain in December (or perhaps in early 1539). He remained with the royal court under a kind of house arrest until his death in Valladolid.

The overwhelmingly negative picture of Guzmán that has come down to us is partly the result of his conflict with Cortés; with the exception of Guzmán's own correspondence, most of the primary information comes from the pens and testimony of Cortés's adherents, such as Francisco López de Gómara, who wrote that if "Nuño de Guzmán had been as good a governor as he was a warrior, he would have had the best place in the Indies; but he behaved badly both to Indians and Spaniards" (Life of the Conqueror, p. 394).

See alsoCortés, Hernān .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The most complete biography of Guzmán remains Donald E. Chipman, Nuño de Guzmán and the Province of Pánuco in New Spain, 1518–1533 (1967). J. Benedict Warren, The Conquest of Michoacán (1985), focuses on Guzmán's later career, especially his exploits among the Tarascans of Michoacán. See also Francisco López De Gómara, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary, translated and edited by Lesley Byrd Simpson (1964).

Additional Bibliography

Blázquez, Adrián, and Thomas Calvo. Guadalajara y el Nuevo Mundo: Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, semblanza de un conquistador. Lima: Editorial Milla Batres, 1992.

Marín, Fausto. Nuño de Guzmán. México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores; Sinaloa: Difocur, 1992.

                                       Robert Haskett