Juan Díaz de Solís

Juan Díaz de Solís (* around 1470 in Lebrija , Seville Province , Spain ; † February 2, 1516 on the Río de la Plata ) was a Spanish navigator and explorer .

Life

Until 1505 he worked in the service of the Portuguese King Manuel I as a cartographer in the Casa da Índia . After his voyages of discovery in Central America in 1506 and in Brazil in 1508, after the death of Amerigo Vespucci in 1512, he was appointed "piloto mayor" ( chief helmsman of the royal trade organization for America ) of the Casa de Contratación . From 1512 Juan de Solís was to explore a sea route to the west south of Tierra Firme, today's Venezuela; because the Casa de Contratación was convinced of the archipelago character of the countries discovered long after Christopher Columbus. The royal instruction to Solís is characteristic: "Follow your voyage until you find a canal or an open sea. That is your most important task, I will ..."

Two years after his appointment to this post, Solís prepared a corresponding expedition to explore the southern part of the continent and find the western passage to India . The expedition was considered a private project. In reality, it wasn't just about the highest order; the thrifty King Ferdinand even paid part of the costs. Solís set sail with three caravels on October 8, 1515 from the Spanish city of Sanlúcar de Barrameda . He sailed along the east coast of South America to the Río de la Plata and then up this river, which he named Mar Dulce (Sweet Sea), to take possession of this area in the name of the Crown. He landed on the eastern bank of the Río de la Plata near the confluence of the Río Uruguay and Río Paraná with two officers and seven sailors. This area was inhabited by the Charrúa indigenous people . These attacked those who had gone ashore, and Solís and most of his men were killed.

The only survivor of Juan Díaz de Solís' shore leave was the 14-year-old cabin boy Francisco del Puerto, who lived as a prisoner among the Indians for over 10 years until he was found by Sebastian Caboto's expedition . The Argentine writer Juan José Saer recorded this story in his historical novel El entenado ( Eng : “The Ancestor”; literally: “The Stepson ”). His starting point was the few lines that the Argentine historian José Luis Busaniche (1892–1959) lost in his Historia argentina about the case.

Literature: Siegfried Huber Discoverer and Conqueror - German Lonquistadors in South America - Walter Verlag Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau 1966