Juan Rodríguez Ballesteros

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Juan Rodríguez Ballesteros (* 1738 in Alcalá de Guadaíra near Seville , Spain , † February 17, 1818 in Lima , Peru ) was a Spanish judge and colonial administrator in South America . For a few weeks in 1808 he ruled interim as governor of Chile .

Life

He probably came to the New World after 1775, when his son José was born in Madrid that year . His father became a royal prosecutor at the Supreme Court in Santiago de Chile (the Real Audiencia of Chile ). Juan followed him in this office. He was appointed to the Real Audiencia in Lima in 1795 and returned to Santiago in September 1806 and took over the direction there.

When the governor Luis Muñoz de Guzmán died in February 1808 , the office passed to the highest-ranking officer of the Spaniards: Francisco Antonio García Carrasco , the head of the engineering corps with the rank of brigadier, who at the time was in the south of the country with his secretary Juan Martínez de Rozas inspected the fortifications. Until the news of Muñoz's death reached García, who had fulfilled his duties and was able to come to Santiago, Rodríguez took over the official duties on an interim basis, which he handed over to García Carrasco on April 22, 1808.

Juan Rodríguez Ballesteros remained a supporter of the royalist cause in Chile even after the overthrow of his successor and the election of a government junta . The advocates of independence saw him and the Real Audiencia as essential pillars of Spanish power. When Tomás de Figueroa undertook a royalist coup in April 1810 and failed, the junta under Fernando Márquez de la Plata replaced the Real Audiencia as the highest court in Chile. The reason given was the alleged support of the conspirators - regardless of possible sympathy, the judges of the Real Audiencia had only promised to present the demands of the Figueroa putschists to the junta.

On April 24, 1811 Rodríguez Ballesteros was replaced as chairman of the Audiencia and was given safe conduct to Lima . There he was able to convince the Viceroy José Fernando Abascál y Sousa to send an expedition to Chile to put a stop to the country's progressive independence efforts - this culminated in the Chilean War of Independence . Rodríguez first returned to Chile and lived for a time in retirement in Melipilla , later in Lima, where he died in 1818 at the age of 80.

His son José suggested as a sergeant an army career and fought until Morte a Guerra on the part of the royalists. After the defeat of the last resistance forces on Chiloé , he lived in Santiago.

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