Pérez de Tolosa, Juan (?–1548)

Juan Pérez de Tolosa (d. 1548), governor and captain-general of the province of Venezuela (1546–1548). Pérez de Tolosa was the first governor of the province of Venezuela after the termination of the administration of the Welsers, a group of Germans who were granted permission to settle and exploit the province of Venezuela. Their abuses of native peoples eventually resulted in a rescinding of the original grant and a trial. Pérez de Tolosa was the judge for this trial as well as that of Juan de Carvajal, a Spanish conquistador and colonizer of the Venezuelan interior, who ran afoul of Spanish authorities. He set up his government in the city of El Tocuyo and carried out diverse expeditions to the Andes, placing his brother, Alonso Pérez de Tolosa, and Diego de Losada in charge of them.

During Juan Pérez de Tolosa's rule, the system of the encomienda was initiated in Venezuela and the first looms were installed in El Tocuyo. At the end of his two-year mandate, the king extended it indefinitely. However, Pérez de Tolosa died shortly thereafter. His experience as an administrator in Venezuela is recorded in his book Relación de las tierras y provincias de la gobernación de Venezuela, año 1546.

See alsoVenezuela: The Colonial Era .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Letizia Vaccari, Juicios de residencia en la provincia de Venezuela: Juan Pérez de Tolosa y Juan de Villegas (1983), and José De Oviedo y Baños, The Conquest and Settlement of Venezuela, translated by Jeanette Johnson Varner.

Additional Bibliography

Cunill, Pedro, and Pedro Grases. Los tres primeros siglos de Venezuela, 1498–1810. Caracas: Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, 1991.

Gerendas Kiss, Alejandro. Historia de Venezuela: Narrada año por año: 1410–1640. Caracas: Edimax, 2005.

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