Espinareda, Pedro de
ESPINAREDA, PEDRO DE
Pioneer Franciscan missionary in the north of Mexico; b. place and date unknown; d. Zacatecas, Mexico, 1576. Espinareda first appeared in history in the late summer of 1553 traveling from Salamanca in Spain to embark as a Franciscan missionary to the New World. In 1562 he was superior of a small band of Franciscans engaged in settling the nomadic Tepehuan people in the lowlands of Durango and introducing them to the Egyptian plow, which they still use to this day. From his home base at Nombre de Dios he spearheaded the founding of new mission fields farther north. In 1566 he made his historic journey eastward along the northern rim of Spanish conquest to Panuco on the Gulf of Mexico, thereby occasioning further expeditions in that direction and arousing interest in a connecting route between the mines of northwest Mexico and the seaport of Panuco. He was appointed the first commissary of the Inquisition in the newly founded Kingdom of New Vizcaya in 1563, and lived to see his small band of friars grow to become the Custody of Zacatecas, the northern jurisdiction of the Franciscans in Mexico. Tradition tells us that he was the first superior of the custody.
Bibliography: j. l. mecham, Francisco de Ibarra and Nueva Vizcaya (Durham 1927). j. i. gallegos, Durango colonial, 1563–1821 (Mexico City 1960).
[i. gallegos]