Francisco de Toledo

"Francisco Álvarez de Toledo" redirects here. For other uses, see Francisco Álvarez de Toledo (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Francisco de Toledo Herrera.

Francisco Álvarez de Toledo
5th Viceroy of Peru
In office November 30, 1569 – May 1, 1581
Monarch	Philip II of Spain
Preceded by	Lope García de Castro President of the Real Audiencia of Lima and interim Governor of Peru
Succeeded by	Martín Enríquez de Almansa
Personal details
Born	(1515-07-10)July 10, 1515 Oropesa, Kingdom of Toledo Crown of Castile
Died	April 21, 1582(1582-04-21) (aged 66) Escalona, Kingdom of Toledo Spanish Empire
Profession	Politician and military officer

Francisco Álvarez de Toledo (Oropesa, July 10, 1515 – Escalona, April 21, 1582), also known as the Viceregal Solon, was an aristocrat and military officer of the Crown of Castile who was the fifth Viceroy of Peru. He held that office from November 30, 1569, to May 1, 1581, a total of eleven years and five months. While for most historians he was the most important of the viceroys of Peru and has been praised as the "supreme organizer" of the immense viceroyalty, for giving it an adequate legal structure and consolidating important institutions of the Indies around which the administration of the country revolved for two hundred years, for others he was the great tyrant of the Indigenous people for having exploited them excessively by retaining the mining mita of the Inca Empire while distorting its original meaning, and for having ordered the execution of the last Inca of Vilcabamba, Túpac Amaru I.

Biography

Birth and early years

Francisco de Toledo was born on July 10, 1515, in the Castle of Oropesa, belonging to the noble family of Álvarez de Toledo. He was the fourth and last child of the 2nd Count of Oropesa, Francisco Álvarez de Toledo y Pacheco, and of María de Figueroa y Toledo—eldest daughter of Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, 2nd Count of Feria, and of his second wife, María Álvarez de Toledo, daughter of the 1st Dukes of Alba de Tormes. His birth coincided with the death of his mother, which influenced his serious and taciturn disposition. His aunts María and Isabel took charge of his upbringing.

At the age of eight he moved to the court of King Charles I of Spain to serve as a page to the Queen consort Isabella of Portugal. He learned Latin, history, rhetoric and theology, as well as fencing, music, dance and courtly manners.

In the service of Emperor Charles V

King Charles I of Spain and Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire

Francisco de Toledo was fifteen years old when, in 1530, King Charles I accepted him into his household. He accompanied the Emperor until his last days in the most varied circumstances, in both peace and war. This personal contact with the Monarch, from whom he adopted political prudence, "Machiavellianism" and the tendency to seek counterweights among his collaborators, would serve him as profitable experience for his later work of government.

In 1535, when he was twenty years old, he was invested with the habit of a knight of the Order of Alcántara, a religious-military order, and in 1551 he was granted the commandery of Acebuchar within that body.

The first military action in which he took part was the expedition to Tunis in 1535, a great triumph of the imperial troops over the Ottoman Turks, from whom they seized that stronghold in North Africa. Following the Emperor on his journey through Europe, the young Álvarez de Toledo passed through Rome, where Charles I challenged the King of France, Francis I, which unleashed another war with that country (the third of the Emperor's reign), between 1536 and 1538. After peace was signed, Álvarez de Toledo returned to Spain and later went to Ghent, in Flanders. He soon took part in the expedition to Algiers, an important Turkish stronghold in North Africa, a campaign that ended in failure due to bad weather (1541).

In the following years he continued in the service of the imperial arms, although he also took part in diets, councils and assemblies. It was a very turbulent time, since, in addition to the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks, Protestantism was advancing in Germany, a region within the imperial orbit. Throughout this time Álvarez de Toledo remained close to Emperor Charles V.

He was acquainted with the negotiations between Spain and England to begin a new war against France.

He dealt with the affairs of Hispanic America, taking an interest in the legal status that the Indians should have. He was in Valladolid when friar Bartolomé de las Casas presented before a council of theologians the text of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, and he knew of the drafting of the New Laws of the Indies, which caused such a stir in Peru.

He departed from Barcelona in 1543 with the Emperor, bound for Italy and Germany, during the fourth war against France. He took part in the battles of Guelders and Düren.

In 1556 the abdication of Charles I took place, followed by his journey to Spain, and on November 12, on the way to the Monastery of Yuste, he made his entry into the Castle of Oropesa, located in Jarandilla de la Vera, where he was lodged by its owner, the 3rd Count of Oropesa, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Figueroa, who was Francisco's brother and who also received the elderly former monarch. The stay lasted until February 3, 1557, when the works at Yuste, the last dwelling of Charles I, were completed. Both served him until his death in 1558.

Álvarez de Toledo devoted the following years to activities related to the Order of Alcántara. Between 1558 and 1565 he remained in Rome, where he took part in the discussions and the definition of the Statutes of the Order, as procurator general.

Appointment as Viceroy of Peru

He was a steward in the household of King Philip II, son and successor of Charles I, and attended the provincial council of Toledo of 1565 as royal delegate. He had the decisive support of Cardinal Diego de Espinosa, President of the Royal Council of Castile, during the deliberations of the Junta Magna of 1568. Among the outcomes of that council, where important agreements were reached on the administrative organization of the Indies, was the appointment of Álvarez de Toledo as viceroy, governor and captain general of the Viceroyalty of Peru, on November 30, 1568.

At the end of December 1568 he left Madrid and, after visiting his relatives, arrived in Seville on February 23 of the following year; he embarked at Sanlúcar de Barrameda on March 19, in the fleet commanded by General Diego Flores de Valdés. He arrived together with his secretary Eusebio de Arrieta, who would serve as secretary of the Holy Office in Lima, the same Arrieta family established in Lima and Tarma.

Death

Old and ill, Francisco Álvarez de Toledo retired to spend his last days in the town of Escalona, dying on April 21, 1582.

Will

In his will, Francisco Álvarez de Toledo made numerous provisions that concerned the Indians and that continued his works after his death. In Clause V the former viceroy established:

And likewise, I order that another five hundred masses be said... in Spain... for the conversion of the native Indians of this Kingdom...

And in Clause XXIV he provided:

And I order that 500 ducats be given as alms to the hospital of Potosí for the native Indians, and another 300 to the hospital of the natives of the city of Cusco, and another 500 ducats to the hospital of the natives of this City of the Kings, so that my executors may order that the said hospitals be made more in the service of Our Lord and the benefit of the poor.

His remains

Oropesa, the native town of Francisco Álvarez de Toledo and where his mortal remains rest, owes to him the construction of the Convent of San Bernardo and the College of the Jesuits, which date from 1590. In 1605, his remains were moved to the by then completed Church of San Bernardo—designed by the architect Francisco de Mora, a disciple of Juan de Herrera, in classicist Baroque style—and deposited at the foot of the high altar. However, they currently lie in the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, in a corner without any mention. In fact, the Church has deconsecrated the Church of San Bernardo.

Commemorations

In 2014, in order to commemorate the 5th Centenary of the birth of Francisco Álvarez de Toledo and to extol his figure and his works, the Town Council of Oropesa and Corchuela, in the Province of Toledo, held a competition of ideas for the making of an outdoor sculpture, designed life-size with a height of 2 meters, without weight limitations, to be made of durable bronze able to withstand deterioration and placed on a granite pedestal. The winning sculpture was "Camorza" by Óscar César Alvariño Belinchón (from Manzanares el Real).

As part of this commemoration, the Spanish national deputy Rocío López, from the Culture Committee, proposed remembering Francisco Álvarez de Toledo through the issue of a postage stamp by Correos de España showing a portrait of the figure over the map of Peru. The issue took effect on October 23, 2015, printed by offset on gummed paper, with a stamp size of 40.9 by 28.8 mm.

Arrival in Peru

Francisco Álvarez de Toledo and his signature. Engraving by Evaristo San Cristóbal, 19th century. It is the classic image of the Viceroy according to the description of the chroniclers: dressed in strict black, sword at his belt and with a large green cross of the Order of Alcántara on his chest.

The Viceroyalty of Peru was then immense: it extended over a large part of the territory of South America, from Panama to the southern tip of the present-day continental territory of Argentina, including the Audiencias of Panama, Bogotá, Quito, Lima, Chile and Charcas. Venezuela and Brazil were excluded.

Francisco Álvarez de Toledo arrived in the New World and landed at Cartagena de Indias on May 8, 1569.

His solid and physically imposing figure must have impressed all whom he met, not only for his asceticism and the bearing of his physical presence, but for his manners and way of speaking, full of seriousness and strength. About to turn 54, in the full maturity of his life, Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo was a man of firm convictions, with personal values of his own, of morally irreproachable conduct, exaggerated sobriety, reforming spirit, great leadership, boundless audacity, uncompromising perfectionism and a haughty disposition. He was not married, and this allowed him to devote all his energies to the service of God, the King and Spain.

His effectiveness in command was demonstrated immediately: no sooner had he landed in Cartagena than he established customs duties, built a hospital, equipped the stronghold with artillery and expelled some Frenchmen settled there. Three weeks later he arrived at Nombre de Dios, in Panama, continuing his organizing work: he set up a hospital for sick sailors, changed the location of the city and the port, which he moved to a place called Porto Bello, sent the married Spaniards back to the Iberian Peninsula and imprisoned the soldiers and sailors who were in a rebellious attitude. He traveled overland to the city of Panama, ordered the construction of roads and routes, resolved conflicts between opposing interests, established the almojarifazgo duty, gathered the Indians into new reductions and pursued the maroon Black people who were ravaging the region.

From Panama he announced his arrival and sent an embassy to Lima, the viceregal capital, explaining the purpose of his governing mission. He sailed to Manta (on the coast of present-day Ecuador) and, continuing overland, reached Piura at the beginning of September 1569. On October 15 he was received with full solemnity in Trujillo; on November 26 he arrived at the Barrionuevo farm, near Lima, where he received the greeting of Governor Lope García de Castro, the Real Audiencia, notable residents and religious prelates; and finally on November 30 he entered Lima, passing under the triumphal arches that had been raised in his honor. The archbishop of Lima, Jerónimo de Loayza, received him in the Cathedral.

First measures

King Philip II of Spain.

Having thus taken possession of the viceregal government, Álvarez de Toledo remained in Lima for a year in order to overcome the critical situation he found, characterized by confrontation with the Audiencia, widespread abuses, non-compliance with regulations, lack of respect for authority, non-enforcement of the laws, the misery and dispersion of the Indigenous people, the abandonment of the mines and the rebellions of Spaniards, criollos and Indians.

During this time he knew how to surround himself with those most knowledgeable about the situation and, with their support, immediately began a formidable work as legislator and reformer, for which he earned the title of "Solon of Peru," bestowed on him by the distinguished Lima-born jurist Antonio de León Pinelo. His work transformed the viceroyalty, secured the sovereignty of the Castilian Crown and deepened knowledge of the Inca past.

During those first months of government he took the following measures:

• He appointed corregidors in the most important cities.
• He created the office of the protomedicato, charged with supervising the practice of medicine.
• He reestablished military service.
• He reorganized the books of laws and the activity of the royal officials, revising their salary system.
• He reorganized the Royal Treasury.
• He demanded from priests and prelates strict compliance with the norms issued by the Council of Trent.
• He created the so-called "ring bishops" or auxiliary bishops.
• He installed the Tribunal of the Inquisition.

His correspondence with the King over these months demonstrated the scope and breadth of the work undertaken in these fields.

He had an immense task ahead of him, devoted to civil administration. First of all, to solve the problem of the Indians he was obliged to gather them in villages or reductions, but at the same time he had to fix the chaotic situation of the repartimientos and reorganize the functioning of the encomiendas, which had become perverted over time. Many encomiendas were vacant, and their assignment provoked protests and confrontations with those who complained of alleged favoritism and discrimination. It was an endless task, which occupied him throughout all the years of his term.

The general visitation of Peru (1570–1575)

Following the King's recommendations, Álvarez de Toledo set out to carry out a visitation of the territories under his charge, something that had never been done due to the vastness of the Viceroyalty of Peru and which would undoubtedly be a very exhausting task. This project, aimed at reshaping the economy, territory and Andean society of the Kingdoms of Peru, set the following objectives:

• The development of a new book of tribute assessments.
• To consolidate the administration of justice in order to protect the Indians.
• To succeed in congregating Indigenous populations in reduction towns.

Fulfilling his duties, he left the City of Lima on October 22, 1570, accompanied by his secretary Álvaro Ruiz de Navamuel and by the wisest men and those most knowledgeable about the land, among whom were the cosmographer and historian Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa and the naturalist Tomás Vásquez. Later they would be joined by the licentiate Juan Polo de Ondegardo, the distinguished Juan de Matienzo and the religious chronicler José de Acosta.

These companions, such as Diego Núñez Bazán (in charge of the repartimiento of Indians of Sipesipe), were general visitors and received orders and instructions on how they should proceed on the basis of the same objectives already mentioned, in addition to being endowed with political powers to intervene in the judicial practice of the regional localities and to restore social peace after so much caudillismo resulting from the recent wars in the territories. Thus they were instructed to put an end to the excesses in the tribute assessments (such illegal amounts being collected by the encomenderos, caciques and other people of power who were to be restrained), in addition to the obligation to moderate and settle multiple situations of litigation over property or of abuses against the peasants and Indigenous people of the common people and the Republic of Indians (being able to mediate or arbitrate). More specifically, he ordered them to act against any person who, against the Indians,

"[…] may have committed ill-treatment and other grievances in any manner, proceeding against them, making the inquiries and investigations necessary to know and ascertain the truth, punishing the guilty and hearing and deciding any lawsuits of Indians, both those that may newly be begun and those that may be pending before any courts of justice"

In the five years that this inspection visit lasted, Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo made an extraordinary journey of some 8,000 km, which was divided into two stages: in the first, the itinerary was as follows: Lima – Huarochirí – Jauja – Huamanga and Cuzco. He remained in Cuzco for two years and then continued the visitation in a second stage, heading toward the Province of Charcas, following this itinerary: Checacupe – Chucuito – Juli – La Paz – Potosí – La Plata. After an unfortunate expedition against the Chiriguanos of southeastern Charcas, he returned to Lima via Arequipa and the sea.

The long visitation had its incidents. After entering the highlands through Huarochirí, on November 20, 1570, he arrived at Jauja, where he established new reductions or Indian villages. There he was astonished to find a mountain of court files, since the locals were given to endless lawsuits. Practical as was his custom, and to demonstrate the uselessness of such papers, he threw them all into the fire. Next, he built churches and remedied injustices, while ordering the recovery of the traditions and customs of the ancient Incas.

On December 15 he entered Huamanga, present-day Ayacucho, attending to some works. He focused his attention on the already famous mercury mines of Huancavelica, to which he sent an inspector. He also ordered the construction of a new settlement, Villa Rica de Oropesa, present-day Huancavelica, and the regrouping of the Indian villages.

He arrived in Cuzco in mid-February 1571 and remained in the ancient Inca capital until October 5, 1572, a long stay full of events and fruitful administrative activity. Impressed by the grandeur of its buildings and its numerous population, he sought to recover the institutions and laws of the Incario, recognizing their undeniable value and seeking to adapt them to the government of the Indians. He enlarged and improved the reductions, whose lands he granted in ownership, planned the construction of churches, schools and hospitals, and approved the institution of the Indian cabildos, which allowed their self-government. He also concerned himself with the situation of the encomenderos, collectors of the tributes of the Indians assigned to them, which obliged them to care for and catechize them, as well as to build schools and hospitals and even to pay for their services should they need them.

In this way, the viceroyalty was being endowed with a stable legal framework, which was to remain unaltered for more than two hundred years. From Cuzco, Álvarez de Toledo governed, administered and transformed the difficult reality he had found everywhere, with admirable tenacity and patience. It was for this reason the Viceroy of greatest action in the history of Peru.

As a result, the visitors (as persons who possessed experience and knowledge in the field of Law) ended up intervening in disputes over the possession of cacicazgos and ordering fines against encomenderos and caciques found guilty of mistreating the natives, or for failure to fulfill obligations agreed before the law. With this, they had to punish Indigenous disobedience and put an end to lawsuits related to land ownership. This would show that the spectrum of social problems that the visitors had to take charge of must have been very broad, which is why the persons appointed were licentiates and professionals in the field of the administration of justice (having served as prosecutors, oidores, lawyers of the Reales Audiencias or chief alguaciles of the King), accompanied by men-at-arms (such as captains and nobles) together with residents connected with the locality visited. Finally, the general visitors, in cases that were very difficult to resolve, could also carry out the redistribution of lands owned by Spaniards and Indians, in order to ensure the concentration of the natives in the towns of the Indian reductions, though on the condition that the Spaniards always guaranteed economic compensation to those affected (usually the Indigenous people, who had surplus lands).

"[…] you shall provide that the Indians who are reduced to other towns shall not have taken or removed from them the chácaras and lands they had in the towns they vacate, provided these are within one league of the towns where they are reduced, so that without vexation and without going far from their homes they may till them; and if they are not, they shall be taken in order to use them to compensate the Spaniards and Indians from whom lands are taken for the said reduction"

The primary objective was to satisfy all parties, granting each one involved what corresponded to them according to their condition, seeking a balance between the interests of the Spaniards in securing their new possessions and those of the Indians in being able to maintain their economic livelihood through their traditional ways of life with the land:

"[…] thus I leave all the Spaniards content because their property remains secure to them, and the Indians because they are given silver for their common needs and they have no need of the lands, because they have many more than they require for their sustenance."

— Licentiate Juan de Matienzo, oidor of Charcas

However, a very controversial decision of his government was the subjugation of the fourth and last Inca of Vilcabamba. As a consequence of the Incas' breach of the Treaty of Acobamba, Álvarez de Toledo sent an army to Vilcabamba under the command of Martín Hurtado de Arbieto, who succeeded in defeating and capturing the Inca Túpac Amaru I, brother and successor of Titu Cusi Yupanqui. In a public act intended to set an example, the last Inca was executed in September 1572 in the Plaza Mayor of Cuzco.

This event, as well as other decisions taken by Álvarez de Toledo, fueled the growth of strong animosity against him on the part of some officials, priests and encomenderos, who were dissatisfied with and complained of the Viceroy's provisions.

Visit to the Imperial Town of Potosí (1572)

After remaining two years in Cuzco, he moved on to the territory of the Province of Charcas, where he remained another two years. On the way he met Lope García de Castro, the previous governor, who was returning after inspecting the Audiencia of Charcas.

After arriving in La Paz, Álvarez de Toledo hurried to the Imperial Town of Potosí, site of one of the most notable silver mines in the world.

From the work Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí by the chronicler Bartolomé Arzans, it is known that on August 29, 1572, the Cabildo of Potosí had made arrangements for the reception of Viceroy Toledo, who entered on November 23, 1572, celebrating and applauding his arrival with 15 days of very costly.

From Potosí he promulgated a series of decrees concerning mining production and the labor of the Indians, recovering the ancient mita of the Incas as a system of production. After remaining six months in that town, he moved on to La Plata, seat of the Audiencia. He had time to write to King Philip II in defense of his administration and tried to refute the arguments of his enemies.

Toledo began his government in 1569 by carrying out a visitation of the viceroyalty, obtaining information on the demography of the territory and the Inca administrative organization. According to Luis Capoche, "...he found in the land a great decrease in the silver output it had had, because the rich ores of this mountain had run out...".

Potosí. The first image in Europe. Pedro Cieza de León, 1553.

The general situation of Potosí in the time of Francisco Álvarez de Toledo was prosperous. He arrived in the Imperial Town on November 23, 1572, conducting a profound reorganization in accordance with viceregal interests, and consolidated its economy, which until then had been stagnant, with the introduction of the amalgamation technique. He is considered the organizer of the Imperial Town of Potosí, since he laid the foundations of what would be the productive circuit of silver: the production or extraction of silver from the Cerro Rico, the processing of silver by means of the amalgamation system in the ingenios (refining mills) and the transformation of the silver in the Royal Mint of Potosí.

The population had grown considerably, and only with the arrival of Viceroy Toledo did urban organization begin, on the initiative and through the work of this illustrious ruler.

To him was owed the urban planning of the City of Potosí, since he applied to it the traditional grid layout mandated by the ordinances of Kings Charles V and Philip II for inland cities. He widened the streets and small squares, placed the main square at the center, and began the construction of new public buildings surrounding it, such as the Mint, the Royal Treasury, the Main Church and, apparently, also the Cabildo. Finally, the Imperial Town was better laid out by dividing the Spanish and Indigenous populations, separated by the Ribera, which, with the building of ingenios and reservoirs, began the systematic industrialization of Potosí.

The mine owners, called the "Ordinances of the Mita," which established the forced conscription of the Indigenous element for work in the mines. The first allotment was made on April 1, 1573, with 3,733 Indians. The Mita system, as is well known, had disastrous consequences for the native population, which had to endure the most inhumane treatment imaginable, despite having extensive legislation in its favor.

His next objective was the subjugation of the Chiriguano Indians, who were on a war footing and kept the whole region southeast of Charcas in alarm, where years earlier Santa Cruz de la Sierra had been founded. Álvarez de Toledo first sent an inspection and reconnaissance mission to the territory of the Chiriguanos, and then he himself set out with an expedition of 400 Spaniards and a fair number of Indian auxiliaries (most of them from Jauja). It was the end of May 1574. A confrontation took place with the Chiriguanos, who adopted the "scorched earth" tactic, that is, they gradually withdrew, laying waste to everything in their path. The shortage of provisions began to take its toll among the Spaniards, compounded by diseases due to the unhealthiness of the territory. The Viceroy himself fell ill with fevers, which forced him to withdraw, arriving in Chuquisaca with the remnants of his battered expedition. The enterprise was a total failure, since the objective of subduing the Chiriguanos was not achieved.

After a short stay in La Paz, Álvarez de Toledo set out on the return to Lima, passing through Arequipa, which he titled "noble and loyal," and where he continued his tireless work as legislator, with the purpose of correcting the abuses he continued to find. He then went down to the coast and from Quilca sailed to Callao. On November 20, 1575, he arrived in the capital after five years of absence, having satisfactorily completed the general visitation.

Founding of the Mint

It is evident that one year after authorizing the founding of a Mint in the viceroyalty, on October 1, 1566, Licentiate Lope García de Castro informed His Majesty of the beginning and layout of the Mint, urging him to send technicians who knew how to make coins and a couple of trusted officials. The following year, it was stated that although two mints might be built—one in the City of the Kings and another in La Plata—there were no officials who knew how to do the work, urging that they be sent for this purpose.

From this information, we know that as early as 1567 there were suggestions or intentions to build a Mint in the City of La Plata, because it was near the existing silver mines in Potosí, a place of extraction and production of the mineral.

When Don Francisco de Toledo took office on November 26, 1569, he had to face many problems; he complained that "from ten leagues from the City of the Kings to here, not only does no minted coin circulate, but I have not even seen a single real, nor that there is one." Even before Toledo's government, Licentiate García de Castro and royal officials reported the problem of monetary circulation in the viceroyalty in a letter of January 15, 1565, namely:

In this land there circulates as money a small silver which they call corriente, which goes about unassessed for the royal fifth, and much of it the Indians falsify, making it of copper and lead with a false color that they usually give it, so that those who trade with it suffer great loss both in the weight and in the little value it has; and if there were coinage, all this silver would be consumed to better purpose, and by melting it down to mint coins, the fifth of it would be collected for Your Majesty[…]

A "Letter to His Majesty from Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo, on business and matters concerning the treasury," issued from Cuzco on March 1, 1572, sets out several points or chapters referring to the administration and government of the viceroyalty and to the state of the royal treasury and its increase, in addition to referring to the need to eliminate the use of the corriente silver for this to take effect, after consultation with the respective authorities and experts on the matter. He recommended the need to move the Mint to the City of La Plata, which was close to the silver mines, where more could be minted and where "the labor of the coinage would cost less if it were worked in the place where the silver is."

Apparently this resolution was left without effect, since later in the same letter he refers to the Mint being established in the Town of Potosí and not in the City of La Plata, justifying that production costs would be lower, besides avoiding the hauling or transport of the silver to another place from the center of production or from the Cerro Rico:

The town of Potosí, having learned of the determination there is to found this mint in the city of La Plata, has come forward in the matter, claiming through the letters and reports it has made to me that it be founded in the said town and not in the city; for this they put forward their reasons, especially that the labor of the coinage would cost less if worked in the place where the silver is than in another where of necessity it must bear the cost of hauling by carrying it there, and that for the Indians and poor persons who might wish to mint some coin out of their poverty it would be costly to carry it and bring it back those eighteen leagues; besides which there are other more fundamental reasons, such as that, the silver having to be taken out of Potosí to carry it to be worked in La Plata, it seems a way would be opened to take out corriente silver, and that once taken out of Potosí it could easily spread throughout the kingdom; and finally, if Potosí had the supply of firewood and provisions at as good a price as in La Plata, there is no doubt but that it would be fitting to place it there, although the Audiencia not residing in the same seat would make some lack; between now and the time the house is to be established there will be time to consider what ought to be done and to decide it with more deliberation.

In a provision some years later, he reiterates and confirms that by his order the mint of Potosí was founded, arguing as follows: Royal Provision of June 26, 1574

To you, the royal officials of the royal treasury of His Majesty who reside in the Imperial Town of Potosí, know that Joan de Yturrieta, treasurer of the mint which by my order is founded in the said Town, has made report to me, saying that because the said house is new and because the residents and inhabitants thereof, and the dealers and merchants, do not understand the benefit of the said coinage, they have not brought nor do they bring [silver] to be minted[…]

Last years of his government

During the following five years he remained in Lima, though without neglecting the governance of the enormous viceroyalty. His health was by then broken by gout and gallstones.

In those years he carried out abundant public works, water channels, construction of dikes and bridges over the Rímac River, hospitals and schools in the area of Lima and its surroundings, in addition to the reorganization of the University of San Marcos and the demarcation of powers with the Audiencia and with the Inquisition. In 1579 the surprise incursion of the English privateer Francis Drake took place, which forced him to take defensive measures throughout the territory of the Viceroyalty.

End of his government

His continual clashes with ecclesiastical and civil officials and his poor health obliged him to request his removal several times, which was repeatedly refused, until, in view of the repeated complaints that reached the court, Philip II decided to relieve him of the office of Viceroy, choosing Martín Enríquez de Almansa as his replacement, by a decree of May 26, 1580.

Álvarez de Toledo remained in office until the arrival of the new viceroy, but he did not wait for him to enter Lima, and on May 1, 1581, he left Callao bound for Spain, via Panama. His haste was due to the discomfort that the possibility of a juicio de residencia upon the arrival of the new viceroy would cause him, taking as a pretext the urgency of reaching the fleet waiting at Nombre de Dios, which was to carry him to Spain together with the silver destined for the royal coffers. Three days later the new viceroy landed at the port, annoyed by what he considered a discourtesy on the part of Álvarez de Toledo.

After a voyage of five months, Álvarez de Toledo arrived in Lisbon, where the court was then established. It is said that when he presented himself before King Philip II, the King did not give him all the recognition he expected, partly because he reproached him for ordering the death of the rebel Inca of Vilcabamba, Túpac Amaru I, and the persecution of his family. It is said that the King's words of reproach were, verbatim:

Go to your house, for I sent you to Peru not to kill kings but to serve them.

This version does not seem plausible, since Túpac Amaru I had begun to exercise effective and not merely nominal power, and even after his death, which occurred in 1572, King Philip II kept Álvarez de Toledo as Viceroy of Peru for nine more years. What is certain is that in the decree by which he was replaced, the King mentioned how well Álvarez de Toledo had served during the twelve years he held the office.

Works and measures of his government

Main article: Toledo reforms

Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo undertook a vast task of organization and, based on a strict and constant exercise of authority, succeeded in giving the Viceroyalty of Peru an adequate legal structure. His work entailed the consolidation of important institutions, around which the administration of the country would revolve under all the successive viceroys who followed him during the dynasty of the House of Habsburg and until the reforms of the 18th century undertaken by the new Bourbon dynasty. Álvarez de Toledo ultimately secured the subjection of Peru to the Hispanic Monarchy, or universal monarchy, of King Philip II.

The general visitation he carried out in Peru between 1570 and 1575 allowed Álvarez de Toledo to know the reality of the country. Where he could not go, he sent visitors who took note of the situation and sent him their reports. On the basis of all this he revised the previous ordinances, supplemented them and issued new ones.

Ordinances of Peru

In 1573, Viceroy Toledo promulgated the "Ordinances of Peru for good government." This body of regulations was of transcendental importance in the history of viceregal Peru. This entire legal construction was based on the Viceroy being the center of the administration of the viceroyalty of the Indies, holder of absolute power and acting as the sole representative of the King of Spain.

These ordinances, also known as the "Ordinances of Toledo," which were drafted by the jurists Juan de Matienzo and Juan Polo de Ondegardo, regulated every aspect of viceregal life: life in the cities, cabildos, taxes, administration of justice, agricultural labor, mining, trade and defense.

In drafting them, Álvarez de Toledo had as precedents both the ordinances issued for the Viceroyalty of Mexico by Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco in 1537, and the earlier ones for the Viceroyalty of Peru itself by Viceroy Pedro de la Gasca in 1550.

Such was the importance of the Ordinances of Peru that Álvarez de Toledo passed into posterity with the epithet of the Viceregal Solon or the Solon of Peru.

In those provisions the civic, working and public life, and even aspects of the private life, of the native population were meticulously articulated, in order to coordinate its development with the state formula implanted by the Spanish crown. It is very worthy of note that, with the purpose that this normative system should not depart from traditional customs, Toledo took care to gather from the mouths of the surviving elders of the pre-Hispanic period reports about the system of government prevailing under the rule of the Incas, information that in turn was systematized in the form of a history by the chronicler Sarmiento de Gamboa.

These ordinances were of great importance in the legal order of the Peruvian viceroyalty and were applied for more than 200 years, until 1786, when they were replaced by others.

The problem of the perpetuity of the encomiendas

Álvarez de Toledo likewise sent sixty visitors throughout the country, a task undertaken by people of extensive knowledge and experience.

He addressed wisely the problem of the perpetuity of the encomiendas. The debate was whether or not the encomiendas should be granted in perpetuity to the conquistadors and their descendants, a subject that was taken up at the Junta Magna of 1568 held in Spain, a meeting where the best way to administer the American viceroyalties was discussed and where Álvarez de Toledo was appointed Viceroy of Peru. Álvarez de Toledo advised the King, drawing on the resolutions of the Count of Nieva, his predecessor in the Viceroyalty, to grant only some encomiendas in perpetuity; the others were to return to the crown upon the death of the encomendero or would be granted for one or two more generations. Despite the insistence of the encomenderos, the Crown was always reluctant to grant encomiendas in perpetuity, since it feared that the encomendero would obtain local power that would threaten the metropolis, as had happened years before. The matter of the encomiendas would never be resolved; in 1592, Philip II would suspend all controversy on the subject. A closely related problem was whether the lands should be distributed among the Indians, which was flatly rejected at that council. Once in Peru, Álvarez de Toledo confirmed the magnitude of the land problem: as the Spaniards divided among themselves the best farmland, they left the least productive to the Indians or forced them to emigrate. All this, added to the fact that the mita and personal service took many hands away from agriculture, as well as the obligation to pay tribute, subjected a large part of the Indigenous population to a situation of extreme poverty.

Regarding the empowerment the conquistadors were gaining to the detriment of the Indians, he issued the following opinion, in which he considered that the efficient administration of justice had slipped out of Francisco Pizarro's hands:

"The little knowledge of men that the Marquis Don Francisco Pizarro, its first Governor, had—who, although he won the land [of Peru] for Your Majesty—is shown and seen in the manner, arrangement and distribution he made in it, and in the disorder in which he placed them, planting in the minds of the people a vicious liberty, whence arose tyrannical disobedience with a false principle and foundation that all this land was theirs, upon which there necessarily followed what usually follows, which was discord among those who wished to make themselves leaders [...] the first who conquered dealt more with laws of liberty than of justice, and thus they used those of the arquebuses rather than of the staffs of office to administer it, and they were of very little capacity as to letters".

— F. de Toledo, 1570–1572

The Indian reductions

Viceroy Toledo concerned himself with the demographic organization of Peru. His policy was based on concentrating the Indigenous population in strategic places of the territory, thereby combining the mercantilist needs then in vogue.

Through this sound planning of population demography he obliged the Indians to live in reductions, that is, in Aboriginal settlements with a main square, church, cabildo and their own building plots. Until then the Indigenous population lived dispersed across the territory, and this measure facilitated the work of the priests and the authorities in general, but it conspired with a social organization that adapted to the needs of the new viceroyalty and to public policies.

The reductions had already been recommended by the Real Audiencia of Lima in October 1549 and ordered by a royal decree of March 21, 1551. The previous Governor Lope García de Castro had already reduced 563 old villages to only 40.

Álvarez de Toledo undertook this task with greater determination and created the "Republic of Indians," reductions of urban nuclei of roughly 400 native families, with their own institutions that had the support of the curacas and were designed especially to suit the Indigenous idiosyncrasy, which, while harmonizing with the rest of the institutions of the Indies, presented particular characteristics in accordance with pre-Hispanic uses, customs, needs and political, social and economic styles. Thus the "Republic of Indians" coexisted with the system implemented for the "Republic of Spaniards."

However, in some cases, when the Indians were concentrated in villages and the lands were divided along new boundaries, the traditional system of control of ecological tiers was profoundly altered. Many lands previously cultivated were abandoned by the Indians and the Spaniards took possession of them.

In a letter to the Monarch Philip II the Viceroy wrote:

The greatest strength for its security that is understood here is that there be many towns, because the houses and the roots the settlers have in these places make them desire peace and quiet... These natives cannot be governed without the caciques being the instruments of execution, both in temporal and in spiritual matters, nor is there anything that has more power over them for good and evil... It is necessary that these caciques be good, so that by their example good may rub off on them, for one word from these can do more to make them abandon their idols and other wickedness than a hundred sermons by religious.

Regulation of the mita

He regulated the mita, an ancient system of compulsory labor in shifts that the Incas implemented for the construction of public works and that the Spaniards reintroduced, transforming its original meaning. Under the Incas, the mitayo or Indigenous worker received maintenance from the State and remuneration in goods; by contrast, the Spaniards set a derisory wage for each mitayo, this heavy labor burden being added to the tribute that the Indian had to pay the encomendero. According to the provisions of the ordinances, the Indigenous villages had to provide a number of workers for the construction of bridges, roads and administrative and religious buildings; for the maintenance of tambos or inns; and for industries such as mineral extraction, cloth factories (obrajes) and estancias. The most hated by the Indians were the mining mita and the obraje mita.

Regulation of the Indigenous tribute

He regulated the collection of the Indigenous tribute, requiring that payment be made in coin, despite which the Indians continued paying in kind. Individuals from 18 to 50 years of age were obliged to pay it, but both limits were arbitrarily extended by the encomenderos, corregidores and caciques responsible for collecting it, in order to maintain the yield of the revenue.

Mining boom

A boom in mining took place, both because of the labor force that the mita provided to the mines and because of the inclusion of the amalgamation technique in silver refining, which made it possible to increase production volumes considerably. He incorporated the quicksilver mines of Huancavelica into the Crown, owing to how essential that metal was in amalgamation. This is the so-called estanco, by which the state leased such mines to the miners.

The greatest success he achieved was the revival of the Cerro de Potosí, which was exploited using the traditional system of the Incario, and in one decade he quintupled the production of silver ore from two hundred thousand pesos a year to more than one million pesos.

Urban works

In the legislation that Álvarez de Toledo issued in the "Ordinances" for good government, cities were a subject of special attention for the Viceroy. In this regard he carried out important works of urban improvement in various places, benefiting the cities with the building or restoration of their cabildo houses, hospitals, churches and jails, and he also concerned himself with the water supply, both in Cuzco and in Lima; in the latter he completed the work already begun by Viceroy Count of Nieva, with the arrival of water at the fountain of the Plaza Mayor, which was quite an event.

Compilations of the history of the Incas

Title page of the Second Part of the chronicle of Sarmiento de Gamboa, concerning the history of the Incas

He directed the gathering of information about the Tahuantinsuyo, entrusted to Juan Polo de Ondegardo and Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, with the purpose of disputing the legitimacy of Inca lordship. His intention was to show that the government of the Incas had been a tyranny imposed on the rest of the peoples and that, therefore, the Spanish conquest was justified. Polo de Ondegardo wrote a Relación del linaje de los incas y como ellos extendieron sus conquistas, and Sarmiento de Gamboa wrote a Historia Índica. They began the tradition of the so-called Toledan chroniclers. The viceroy himself questioned, during his travels, the curacas, quipucamayocs and Inca nobles, and as a result drew up a "Report" for the King. He also commissioned the making of some canvases and tapestries recording the most important events of the history of the Incas, their idols, the layout of their temples and other data of interest, a work entrusted to the most expert Indian craftsmen. These cloths, as well as the Viceroy's "Report" and the second part of Sarmiento's Historia Índica—concerning the history of the Incas—were sent to the King in 1572, Don Gerónimo de Pacheco being the bearer of the consignment.

All these reports, accounts, documents and illustrations have been of great value for the study of the Incario.

Regulation of the cultivation and trade of coca

The consumption of coca leaves by the Indians had reached such an extreme that herds of llamas were seen loaded with baskets of coca. The Church condemned its use, since it associated it with the old idolatrous practices. But the Spaniards noticed that the Indians performed better at work after the act of "chacchar" (chewing) coca leaves, and therefore allowed its use. Álvarez de Toledo believed he had reconciled the opposing points of view by regulating its cultivation and trade.

Installation of the Tribunal of the Inquisition

Celebration of an auto-da-fé in the Plaza Mayor of Lima

The Tribunal of the Inquisition of Lima was installed, created by a royal decree of Philip II in 1569. It was a provincial branch of the Council of the Supreme and General Spanish Inquisition. On the recommendation of Álvarez de Toledo, Doctor Andrés de Bustamante and Licentiate Serván de Cerezuela were appointed as the first inquisitors of Lima. The former died in the middle of the voyage, near Panama. With only Cerezuela present, on January 29, 1570, the Tribunal of the Inquisition was established in Lima by means of a solemn act held in the Cathedral, attended by the main civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The tribunal was charged with watching over and punishing grave offenses against the faith and the commandments, including enforcing the prohibition on reading and spreading the books included in the Index of the Church. For this it relied on a system of constables and informants. The Indians were outside its jurisdiction. The first auto-da-fé was held on November 15, 1573, on which occasion Mateo Salado, a French Lutheran accused of blasphemy and heresy, was burned. A second auto-da-fé was held on April 13, 1578, at which the Dominican friar Francisco de la Cruz was executed; he apparently led a conspiracy of religious opposed to the government.

Installation of the Tribunal of the Holy Crusade

The Tribunal of the Holy Crusade was installed in 1574, created to safeguard the publication of the Bull of the Crusade and the collection of the alms provided for in it, whether to wage war against the infidels of Africa, or as penance or charity for hospitals or other pious works. In exchange for these, the faithful were dispensed from the abstinence or fasting imposed by the Church.

Execution of the Inca Túpac Amaru I

Execution of the Inca Túpac Amaru I, according to a drawing by Guaman Poma de Ayala.

On August 24, 1556, the previous provisional governor of Peru and President of the Real Audiencia of Lima, Lope García de Castro, had signed with the third Inca of Vilcabamba, Titu Cusi Yupanqui, the Treaty of Acobamba, which agreed peace between the Crown of Castile and the Kingdom of Vilcabamba. King Philip II approved the agreement on January 2, 1569.

But the sudden death of the Inca Titu Cusi in 1570, probably from pneumonia, was fatal for the Augustinian missionaries who had settled in Vilcabamba after the treaty and who, in their eagerness to help the Inca recover, gave him potions that the people of Vilcabamba thought were poison. The Incas blamed the missionary Diego Ortiz, who was tortured and executed. The same fate befell the Spaniards and mestizos who were in Vilcabamba. Hostilities between Spaniards and Incas began again.

The elite sought a successor, and thus his half-brother Túpac Amaru took up the scepter and girded on the mascapaycha at the beginning of 1571.

The Spaniards, unaware of the death of the previous Inca, had routinely sent two ambassadors to continue the ongoing negotiations. The last of them was the conquistador Atilano de Anaya who, after crossing the Chuquichaca bridge, was captured and executed together with his escort by the Inca general Curi Paucar. The crime was reported by the priest of Amaibamba to Viceroy Francisco Álvarez de Toledo who, on April 14, 1572, declared war on the Inca of Vilcabamba, basing his action on the breach of the peace agreement and on the fact that the Inca had not respected "the inviolable law of all the nations of the world: respect for ambassadors."

Determined to put an end to this focus of latent hostility, he secretly organized an army that left Cuzco under the command of Captains Martín Hurtado de Arbieto and Juan Álvarez Maldonado, joined by the tribe of the Cañari, enemies of the Incas. After a hard struggle with the Inca's forces, the Spaniards occupied Vilcabamba, and it fell to Captain Martín García de Loyola to have the honor of capturing Túpac Amaru as he fled with his wives and children. The young Inca was taken to Cuzco and proceedings were initiated against him by order of Álvarez de Toledo. He was accused of rejecting the offers of peace, killing the Spaniards sent to negotiate it, and of being a rebel and traitor, in addition to preparing a general insurrection. He was sentenced to death, which provoked numerous petitions for clemency, from notable Indians as well as from Spaniards, both civil and religious, to which the Viceroy refused to listen.

The sentence was carried out in the Plaza Mayor of Cuzco, before a crowd that wept for the death of the Inca, on September 22 or 23, 1572.

On September 24, 1572, the Spanish Viceroy wrote to King Philip:

what Your Majesty commands concerning the Inga has been done

The Inca's head was placed on a pike, but when people began to worship it and to believe that the Inca's head did not decay, the Viceroy ordered it removed.

Not content with all this, the Viceroy persecuted the members of the imperial family of Cuzco to prevent any hint of Inca vindication. Thus he ordered the banishment of its members, which included Túpac Amaru's own son, who was only three years old, and sent them to Mexico, Chile and Panama, although he later allowed them to return to Peru.

The rebel Incas then spread the myth of the Viceroy as a bloodthirsty, cruel and detestable viceregal ruler, in contrast to the youth, innocence and shyness of the last descendant of the Inca kings. The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, years later, took it upon himself to amplify and spread this image. In reality, Álvarez de Toledo believed he was fulfilling his duty as a ruler, and therefore acted without pangs of conscience.

Expedition to Chile

In response to the request of the settlers of Chile, who were facing the hostility of the Araucanian Indians, an army of 250 soldiers was sent to that region under the command of General Rodrigo de Quiroga, already experienced in such struggles. He set out from Callao in April 1572, but did not achieve any decisive victory over the Indians. Quiroga was later appointed Governor of Chile, a post he held until his death in 1580.

Failed expedition against the Chiriguanos

From La Plata, in the Province of Charcas, Álvarez de Toledo in person began a campaign to put an end to the rebellion of the Chiriguano Indians, who kept the southeastern region, neighboring the recently founded Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in a state of unrest. The expedition did not achieve the success that had been hoped for, and Álvarez de Toledo himself fell seriously ill and had to retreat (1574).

Repression of outbreaks of insurrection

• The Aguado brothers, who rebelled against the incorporation of the quicksilver mines into the Crown, were executed.
• A resident of La Paz named Gonzalo Gironda stood out for his restless spirit; he disturbed the peace of several Andean cities and escaped prison more than once.
• The disputes within the colonizing host of Santa Cruz de la Sierra were quelled, by Toledo's order, with the strangling of the leader Diego de Mendoza.
• Quarrels were also frequent in the jungle provinces subordinate to the jurisdiction of Quito.

The University of San Marcos: Royal and Pontifical

Main article: National University of San Marcos

Facsimile of the provision of Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo, of April 25, 1577, endowing the University of San Marcos with 13,000 pesos of annual income

The University of the City of the Kings or Lima had been founded by a royal decree of King Charles I in 1551 and established in 1553 in the cloisters of the Convent of Santo Domingo under the direction of the Dominicans, the first religious order to arrive in Peru. Its first years of life were precarious and obscure, among other reasons because of the scarcity of students and the lack of income.

From its creation until 1571 the rector was the prior of the Dominican order. But during this time professors from other religious orders, clerics and laymen joined, who held points of view different from those of the Dominicans.

On June 1, 1571, Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo carried out the first university reform, secularizing the university with the election of a lay rector, the jurist Doctor Pedro Fernández de Valenzuela.

At the same time, the Dominicans obtained from Pope Pius V the brief Exponi Nobis, given on July 25, 1571, by which the university was also a Pontifical University. In other words, while the University of the City of the Kings was a Royal University it was directed by the Dominican friars; by contrast, when it was transformed into a Royal and Pontifical University, it was laicized and became fully subject to the authority of the Monarch.

Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo installed its classrooms in suitable premises, first on a large plot of land located beside the Church of San Marcelo, in 1574, and placed the university—by drawing lots—under the patronage of the evangelist Saint Mark, on November 20, 1574, since when it has been called the Royal and Pontifical University of San Marcos.

Later he moved it to a large house located opposite the Plaza de la Inquisición, until then occupied by the Recogimiento de San Juan de la Penitencia for mestiza daughters of the conquistadors, in 1576. He then endowed it with thirteen thousand pesos of annual income, important economic resources for the salaries of the seventeen chairs instituted, on April 25, 1577, and finally promulgated the Constitutions according to which that center of studies would be governed, on April 22, 1581.

Founding of the Colegio Mayor de San Felipe y San Marcos

Complementing his educational work, Álvarez de Toledo ordered the founding of the Colegio Real y Mayor de San Felipe y San Marcos, as an annex of the University and under the direction of the university rector, in 1575. Its purpose was to provide facilities for poor students and to offer those coming from the provinces comfortable and safe lodging, freeing them from boarding houses. Only in 1592 did Viceroy García Hurtado de Mendoza complete the construction of the building.

He also sought to spread learning among the Indigenous people, devising the establishment of colleges for the sons of caciques in Lima and Cuzco, besides which he stressed the need to teach all children in the doctrinas to read and pray. In this task the collaboration of the Jesuits proved fundamental.

Controversy with the Jesuits

He had a controversy with the Society of Jesus, to whom he wished to entrust some chairs of the University, on condition that they close their own classrooms. The Jesuits refused, since this meant a limitation on their main work, namely giving youth a solid education, and Álvarez de Toledo, in response, closed the Colegio Máximo de San Pablo de Lima. The background to this dispute was the Viceroy's desire to favor the rise of the University in the face of an alternative center of notable intellectual quality. The King did not approve of such conduct and by royal decree of February 28, 1580, ordered the reopening of the College, which would only materialize under the government of the next viceroy, Martín Enríquez de Almansa.

The printing press, the Quechua language and publications on Indian catechesis

During the Viceroyalty of Álvarez de Toledo the first printing press in Peru was installed.

The Viceroy, as a faithful representative of the Spanish Renaissance, knew how to combine his obligations toward his homeland, his king and his God.

Since he was a deeply believing man strongly influenced by his Catholic faith, he made sure that this religion was effectively transmitted to the Indians. He considered it essential that the Quechua language, which the Incario had imposed on the Indian populations, be used for the catechesis of the natives, a request that was approved by the King, who also authorized his petition for the printing of the catechism in the Inca language. Only in 1583, two years after the end of his term, did the Third Council of Lima order the publication of the "Catechism of Christian Doctrine, in Quechua and Aymara."

He likewise created the chair of Quechua at the University of San Marcos, which had the corresponding royal authorization. He also required university students to attend that chair for a certain period so that they would have knowledge of that general language in order to obtain the degrees of bachiller and licenciado.

Founding of settlements

Monument to Francisco Álvarez de Toledo located right next to the Cabildo of Salta, Argentina.

Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo carried out his idea of settling the vast Viceroyalty of Peru based on a clear objective, which was to ensure that the provinces had connection and annexation in such a way that they would be protected from uprisings, in the conviction that one province would be in a position to go to the aid or relief of another, and vice versa.

In keeping with this conception of the state, the Viceroy also devoted himself to founding numerous towns and cities, such as:

- The Villa de San Francisco de la Victoria de Vilcabamba, carried out by Martín Hurtado de Arbieto on October 4, 1571, in commemoration of the capture of the last Inca of Vilcabamba.

- The Villa Real de Oropesa, present-day Cochabamba, in the central area of present-day Bolivia, on August 15, 1571, by Captain Gerónimo de Osorio, following the orders of Álvarez de Toledo, with the aim of creating a center of agricultural production to supply food to the mining cities of the region, mainly the City of Potosí.

- The Villa Deleitosa de Oropesa, some twenty km southeast of Cuzco, today in the Oropesa District, Quispicanchi Province.

- The Villa Rica de Oropesa, today Huancavelica, in central Peru, on August 4, 1572, in view of the mining wealth of the area, since a settlement was needed to house the entrepreneurs and workers of the mines.

- The city of Córdoba de La Nueva Andalucía, today Córdoba, in the center of present-day Argentina, founded by Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera on July 6, 1573.

- The Villa de San Bernardo de la Frontera de Tarixa, today Tarija, currently belonging to southern Bolivia, founded on July 4, 1574, by Captain Luis de Fuentes y Vargas in a valley discovered by explorers, on the banks of the river named the Nuevo Guadalquivir River, since in former times it bore many similarities to the Guadalquivir River of Andalusia, Spain.

- The city of Salta, in the present-day territory of Argentina, founded by Hernando de Lerma on April 16, 1582.

On the other hand, he did not encourage new entradas (incursions), since experience had already shown the harmful effects caused by the settlement of unprepared settlers in lands of scarce resources, where they did nothing but provoke uprisings and abuse the Indians.

Armada of the South Sea

Between 1577 and 1579 the coasts of the Viceroyalty of Peru were suddenly raided by the English privateer Francis Drake.

After sailing along the Brazilian and Patagonian coasts, Drake entered the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan; he ravaged the coast of Chile and appeared suddenly at Callao on July 13, 1579. But believing the Viceroy's forces to be very great, he did not land and limited himself to cutting the moorings of the ships anchored in the port and plundering a ship loaded with merchandise coming from Panama. He then continued his voyage toward California and returned to England via Oceania and the Cape of Good Hope, being the second to sail around the world, after the Spanish expedition of Ferdinand Magellan and Elcano. Queen Elizabeth I of England granted him the title of Sir aboard his ship, the Golden Hind.

In the face of these acts of privateering, Viceroy Álvarez de Toledo provided for the fortification of the coast and the increase of warships. He created the Armada of the South Sea for the purpose of providing naval protection for the silver of Potosí. It patrolled the entire Pacific coast, from Tierra del Fuego to Central America. It consisted of two galleons and four smaller vessels and was based at the port of El Callao.

Also, to prevent new enemy incursions, in October 1579 Álvarez de Toledo sent an expedition to the Strait of Magellan under the command of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, the first to cross the strait from west to east.

Written work

• Toledo, Francisco de: Informaciones de Francisco de Toledo, Virrey del Perú.

Bibliography

• Various authors: Los Álvarez de Toledo. Nobleza viva. Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Educación y Cultura. María del Pilar Gracía Pinacho, Ed. Spain, 1998.
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