Pedro Osores de Ulloa

Pedro Osores de Ulloa ( also in a different spelling: Osorez ) (* around 1540 in San Juan de Sa in Galicia , Spain ; † September 18, 1624 in Concepción , Chile ) was a Spanish officer who served as governor of Chile.

Life

Origin and career in Europe

Osores' father, Jerónimo de Ulloa was Treasurer of the Council of India . Pedro Osores joined the Spanish Navy and fought against the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in October 1571 . In 1573 he supported the fortification work on the forts in Tunis . He was badly wounded in the storm on La Goleta and was imprisoned in Algiers for eighteen months until he was able to buy himself free with a ransom of three thousand escudos.

Career in South America

In April 1586 he embarked from Cádiz to the New World to take over the office of Corregidor (bailiff) in the mining town of Potosí . In 1593 the Viceroy of Peru , García Hurtado de Mendoza , Marqués of Cañete , appointed him captain-general of the armed forces on land and sea and sent him from Potosí to Lima . The following year he had to put down a soldiers' uprising in Charcas .

At sea he fought in the following years the Dutch in the Dutch-Spanish Pacific War. The new Viceroy Luis de Velasco appointed him Maestre de Campo , Commander in Chief and Deputy Governor in the General Capitanate of Chile. He held this office for more than four years.

Osores, who had become very prosperous in Potosí, married Maria de Anguerana and in 1601 received the king's permission to return to Spain. This permission was revoked for reasons that are not clear; Pedro Osores was seen as a courageous and capable officer, but also as an independent and not sociable character ( adusto y poco cortesano , describes him by Diego Barros Arana ), who probably didn't like the diplomacy of court life. So Osores stayed in the New World. He acted as a corregidor in Huancavelica , a city that was very important because of its mercury mines . In March 1620 - he was about eighty years old - he was released from his duties.

Term of office as Governor of Chile

However, he remained in Peru as a knight of the Alcántara Order and Corregidor of Castro Virreina. In April 1621 appointed in the viceroy as governor of Chile. He traveled with fresh troops of over 300 men via Concepción (where he took office on November 4, 1621) and reached Santiago de Chile on April 22, 1622. His appointment was confirmed by King Philip IV with a document dated February 17, 1622 .

In Chile he married Lucia Carvallo a second time. After her death, he married Francisca Campusano, who went to Lima after his death.

Despite his advanced age, Osores spoke out against defensive tactics against the Indians during the Arauco War . He led several campaigns in the south, but repeatedly suffered defeats. Osores died during his tenure. On his deathbed, he named his brother-in-law Francisco de Álava y Nureña as his successor.

literature

• José Toribio Medina : Diccionario Biográfico Colonial de Chile . Imprenta Elziviriana, Santiago, Chile 1906, p. 627–629 (Spanish, memoriachilena.cl [PDF; accessed June 15, 2010]).
• Diego Barros Arana : Historia General de Chile . tape 4 . Editorial Universitaria, Santiago de Chile 2001, p. 126–145 (Spanish, memoriachilena.cl [accessed June 10, 2010] first edition: 1886).