Miguel Gomez de Silva

Miguel Gómez de Silva y Morales (* 1594 in La Serena , Chile , † May 23, 1668 in Santiago de Chile ) was a Chilean officer in the service of the Spanish Crown. At the beginning of 1668 he ruled temporarily as governor of Chile.

Life

Gómez de Silva was born in La Serena to Miguel Gómez de Silva and his wife Isabel de Morales. He accompanied his father in the war in Araucania against the insurgent Mapuche and was stationed in various places. In Santiago he was Alcalde Ordinario in 1629 and 1632 , and in 1645 served as Corregidor of the Justicia Mayor court and chief bailiff of the Real Audiencia of Chile , the highest instance of colonial administration. In 1655 he was promoted to Maestre de Campo and thus military deputy to the governor.

His first marriage was to Catarina Verdugo de la Vega from Osorno , with whom he had ten children. After her death he married Isabel de la Torre, a niece of the judge Machada, who bore him six more children.

At the end of 1667 the situation of the Chilean governor Francisco de Meneses Brito came to a head; A new viceroy , Pedro Antonio Fernández , Conde de Lemos , had arrived in Peru , who upon his arrival found numerous petitions and complaints against his administration and person from the Chilean colonial administration and the Real Audiencia of Chile . In November, Viceroy Fernández decided to depose Governor Meneses and replace him with Diego Dávila Coello y Pacheco , Marqués de Navalmorquende , who was with him in Lima at the time.

When the news reached Chile in January 1668, Meneses fled from office and hid - probably for fear of having to answer in court. In his function as Maestre de Campo , Gómez took over the administration temporarily for a few weeks, even though his health was already bad at that time. Essential decisions have not been passed down, but it was Gómez who welcomed the new governor Dávila in March 1668 and transferred the business to him. He died only a few weeks later in May 1668.

literature

• José Toribio Medina : Diccionario Biográfico Colonial de Chile . Imprenta Elziviriana, Santiago, Chile 1906, p. 364–366 (Spanish, memoriachilena.cl [PDF; accessed June 15, 2010]).