Rafael Delgado (Governor)

Rafael Delgado Cardeña (* 1746 in Navalcarnero , † 1800 in Maracaibo ) was a Spanish military man. He was military governor of the Spanish province of Trinidad from 1779 to 1781 .

Life

Delgado was born in Navalcarnero in central Spain in 1746 to Manuel Delgado and Ignacia Cardeña. The Venezuelan historian María Dolores Fuentes Bajo locates his parents in the lower nobility based on letters to her son. Delgado began his military career at the age of 15 as a cadet in the Spanish military in Ceuta . He set foot on American soil for the first time in 1766 when he was involved in actions against Jesuits in what is now Panama in the run-up to the abolition of the Jesuit order . Another station in his military career was Cartagena in what is now Colombia, where he held the rank of lieutenant of the infantry ( teniente ). In Cartagena he was able to establish relationships with higher-ranking military and administrative officials who were beneficial to his further career, including Manuel de Guirior . This subordinate Delgado in 1776 to the governor of Maracaibo , Francisco de Santa Cruz, with whom Delgado befriended. De Santa Cruz and, secondarily, Delgado got into a dispute with the new Viceroy of New Granada , Manuel Antonio Flórez . At de Santa Cruz's request, Delgado went to Madrid to represent de Santa Cruz in court. His appearance was crowned with success, which earned him the rank of captain ( capitán ) in Maracaibo . In 1777 he returned to Venezuela. Through the commander of La Guaira , Joaquín Sabás Moreno de Mendoza, he met the director of Caracas , José de Abalos , and the captain-general of Venezuela, Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga . In early 1779 Delgado married the daughter of Moreno de Mendoza, Francisca "Panchita" Moreno y Salas. On the advice of de Unzaga, he took command of the Spanish troops in Trinidad in the autumn of the same year. A few weeks later he asked in vain for a transfer because he and especially his pregnant wife could not cope with the climate in Trinidad (it was rainy season). His daughter was born in Trinidad in November 1779.

Manuel Fálques, the military governor of Trinidad, died on July 11, 1779. Martín de Salaverría , envoy of the management in Caracas and since July 1778 in Trinidad responsible for measures to increase the population of the strategically important island as well as the promotion of agriculture and trade, took over Fálque's tasks and was thus temporarily de facto governor of the island. An administrative act had already been passed in Spain in April, which provided for a dual leadership for the administration of the island: Fálques was to become military governor, while de Salaverría was to become civil governor. The copy of the decree did not arrive in Trinidad until August 21, 1779, when Fálques had already died. As a result, de Salaverría took over the post of civil governor conferred on him. Intendant de Abalos spoke out in favor of the reunification of government power in Trinidad, but Captain-General de Unzaga pushed for the dual leadership to be retained and brought Delgado into play as military governor. De Unzaga prevailed, and Delgado took up his office, which is worth 2000 pesos per year.

His term of office was marked by friction with de Salaverría over the competencies of his office. The cooling of his relationship with his once fatherly friend José de Abalos, who was regularly dealt with by Delgado with letters of complaint about de Salaverría's behavior, was significant for his further career. Delgado also had a bad relationship with the French-born majority of the island's population; de Salaverría, biased in this regard, ruled that Delgado had done more damage to the island's economy through his behavior towards French-born settlers than the British, who were hostile to Spain, had ever done it. In March 1781, Delgado was dismissed by de Abalos as part of a political affair for incompetence. One of his horses had trampled on the coffee tree seedlings of Dominique Dert, a friend of Phillipe-Rose Roume de Saint Laurent's . Roume de Saint Laurent was a French-born diplomat who was committed and successfully campaigned for the colonization of Trinidad and was therefore a favorite of the Spanish crown, the civil governor de Salaverría and de Abalos. Dert had withheld Delgado's horse subject to compensation, Delgado had him imprisoned as military governor by virtue of his might. On de Salaverría's advice, Roume de Saint Laurent stood up for his friend at the director of Caracas, and de Abalos immediately deposed his former protégé Delgado and declared him unsuitable to take on administrative offices in the service of the Spanish crown. His successor was Juan Francisco Machado .

Delgado traveled with his family via Curaçao back to Madrid, where he tried to restore his honor in court and was the father of another child in 1781. At the end of 1782 the court allowed him to continue paying your governor's salary, and in 1784 he was awarded an office in Maracaibo. There his wife bore him 14 more children, the last in 1799. In 1800 Delgado died.

Posthumous Effect and Evaluation

The Trinidadian historian Gérard Besson summarizes the traits of Rafael Delgado as "bad-tempered and brutal".

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} María Dolores Fuentes Bajo: Pasión y poder en la isla de Trinidad a fines de la colonia (1766-1784) . In: Procesos Históricos. Revista de Historia y Ciencias Sociales . No. 28, July 2015, ISSN  1690-4818 , p. 5 ff. (PDF, 364 KB, Spanish)
2. ^ Gérard A. Besson & Bridget Brereton: The Book of Trinidad . Paria Publishing, Port of Spain 2010, ISBN 978-976-8054-36-4 , pp. 50 .
3. ^ Douglas Archibald: The Story of Trinidad to 1797 . Westindiana, Port of Spain 2010, ISBN 978-976-8210-35-7 , pp. 202 .
4. ^ Francisco Morales Padrón: Spanish Trinidad . Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston / Miami 2012, ISBN 978-976-637-616-1 , pp. 159 .
5. ^ Pierre Gustave Louis Borde: The History of the Island of Trinidad under the Spanish Government . Paria Publishing, Port of Spain 1982, pp. 180 .
6. ^ Gérard A. Besson & Bridget Brereton: The Book of Trinidad . Paria Publishing, Port of Spain 2010, ISBN 978-976-8054-36-4 , pp. 54 .