Lope García de Castro
Lope García de Castro (* around 1516 in Villanueva de Valdueza, León , Spain ; † January 8, 1576 in Madrid , Spain) was a Spanish lawyer who, as president of the Real Audiencia, held the official duties of a viceroy of Peru from 1564 to 1569 , without formally holding this office.
Life
From 1534 García studied law at the Colegio de San Bartolomé of the University of Salamanca , until 1541 he also taught there. He was sent to Valladolid as judge ( Oidor ) and became a member of the Council of India , which administered the Spanish colonies.
In 1563 he was appointed by King Philip II as Governor of Peru , Captain General and President of the Real Audiencia of Lima - as the successor to Viceroy Diego López de Zúñiga y Velasco , Count of Nieva. García embarked in Cádiz in October 1563 and reached Panama in June 1564; there he overlooked the re-establishment of the Real Audiencia of Panama , which had been based in Guatemala in previous years . From Panama he traveled on to Callao , where he arrived in October 1564.
He reorganized the financial system and established a mint in Lima in 1566. He raised some new taxes and duties, ended the permanent forced labor of the Indios in the estates of the Spanish conquistadores and thus contributed to a stabilization of the financial and economic situation in the colony.
To improve administration, he divided the viceroyalty into provinces in 1565. During his tenure, the area of Tucumán and Cuzco came under the responsibility of the Real Audiencia de Charcas . In 1567 his nephew Álvaro de Mendaña undertook a sea expedition to the Pacific , where he discovered the Solomon Islands , Guadalcanal and other islands in the South Pacific .
Inside he put down an uprising of the Indians in Jauja in 1565 and a rebellion of the mestizo of Cuzco in 1567.
When Francisco de Toledo was called as the new viceroy, García returned to Spain, where he resumed his office in the Council of India until he died in Madrid in 1576.
Web links
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Juan de Saavedra |
Viceroy of Peru (interim) 1564–1569 |
Francisco de Toledo |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | García de Castro, Lope |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish lawyer, interim viceroy of Peru |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1516 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Villanueva de Valdueza, Spain |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 8, 1576 |
| Place of death | Madrid , Peru |