It was said that Francisco Pizarro (1478-1541), a bastard son, was finally recognized by his father. But this one, instead of worrying about his well-being and his future, did not send him to educate and entrusted him with the care of a herd of pigs. One day, the future conqueror could not prevent the animals from disbanding. In order not to face the consequences of the loss, instead of going home, he went to Seville and there he embarked for America.
Already in the 19th century, one of his biographers, the writer Manuel José Quintana, said that this episode seemed more like fiction than history. He reached this conclusion after comparing the different chroniclers: what Francisco López de Gómara affirmed was denied by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, while Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas did not enter into the matter.
In the three hundred years that followed the death of Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru had no biographers. That is the emphatic statement made by the Hispanist Henry Kamen in Poder y gloria (2010). It must have been an American, William H. Prescott, who was the first to write an accurate study of Extremadura, in 1847. To the best of Prescott’s knowledge, no Spaniard had ever attempted this task using original documents.
Frederick Alexander Kirkpatrick, in The Spanish Conquistadors, from 1934, questioned whether the Spanish colonization would have been particularly cruel. The English, in occupying Ireland, had not been more humane. Far from the black legend, although without ceasing to recognize the excesses committed, the British historian was convinced that the conquest of America was a feat that left all the superlatives short.
Following an old cliché, Kirkpatrick pointed out that Pizarro could not read and was unable to sign even when he was a marquis, after completing the annexation of the Inca Empire, but he had other, more valuable qualities: courage and unfailing perseverance.
In 2005, Bernard Lavallé published an important biography, Francisco Pizarro and the conquest of the Inca Empire, with the merit of moving away from heroic literature and inserting his character “within his complex and changing links with the networks of diverse nature with which was bound.”
From this perspective, Extremadura would be like the tip of an iceberg, as the most visible manifestation of a social network. His existence would not be conceivable without his brothers and lieutenants, outside of the network of interests that he united and separated a group of men around the same adventure.
There is no other way, for Lavallé, to understand experiences that, otherwise, would be reduced to more or less fictional anecdotes. Thus emerges a man of action, capable of killing and killing when it benefits his goals, but without falling into the whirlwind of sadism and greed into which some of his men plunged.
As it could not be less, Pizarro continues to divide his scholars into supporters and detractors. María de Carmen Martín Rubio belongs to the list of the former. In Pizarro. The Unknown Man (2014), this researcher presents his character as an extraordinary hero who would not have been just a great soldier, capable of undertaking an incredible feat in a hostile environment, with hardly any means.
The author, convinced that the lights should not be buried in the shadows, follows in the footsteps of Guillermo Lohmann and also highlights the good governor who founded up to nine cities, organized mining exploitation and was concerned with indigenous welfare, as the ordinances would demonstrate in those that established punishments for those who mistreated the native population.
The other side of the coin is provided by Esteban Mira Caballos in Francisco Pizarro (2018). An encyclopedic connoisseur of the 16th century archives, this Americanist deviates from many clichés, such as the hero of genius. Not surprisingly, all the Castilian warriors in the Indies looked alike. There were some kind of action protocols that were applied in similar situations, such as the arrest of the indigenous monarch. This was done in Mexico with Moctezuma and in Peru with Atahualpa.
Mira Caballos starts from a moral premise: the conquest was a tremendous injustice. Some were invaders; others, the invaded. However, his story incorporates multiple nuances that enrich our vision of a highly complex scenario. Although he does not sympathize with the conquerors, Mira Caballos points out, contrary to certain radical historiography, that his was not a will to exterminate: empty territories were useless, with no one to work them.
Nor do we find here an idealization of the natives. The Incas oppressed other peoples who took advantage of the arrival of the Europeans to rebel. Another issue is whether supporting Pizarro was profitable for those towns. For our biographer, they only managed to get out of the frying pan to fall into the fire.
