This ancient surname can be traced to southern Spain under Roman rule, 98 years before Jesus was born. General Vivio Pacieco was an ancestor of Lucio Viminio Pacieco, who served under Julius Caesar in Andalucía.  Pacieco's descendants also settled in Portugal.

In the late 1500's, a Pacheco family line from Trujillo, Spain, appeared in Mexico. A Pacheco was also a conquistador in Mexico's Yucatán peninsula.

In North America, a 40-year-old soldier named Luis Pacheco served in Santa Fe in 1632.

Captain Alonso Pacheco lived in what is now New Mexico before 1668, but his descendants lost their surname through marriage. Governor Pacheco arrived in New Mexico in 1641.

Prior to 1800, several Pachecos lived in Santa Fe and San Juan Pueblo, while others returned to Mexico. Many of the Pachecos in California came from Sonora families. Bartolomé Ignacio Pacheco was born about 1765 at Fronteras and raised 14 children at Mission Santa Clara.

Source: Instituto Genealógico e Histórico Latinoamericano.

The Romans were settled in the former indigenous settlement, which had been built on a granitic hill. Turgalium was the name that they assigned it. When in the VIII century the Arabs invade the city, they called it Torgelo and in January 1232, the Christian troops reconquer it. Today its name is Trujillo.

The official description of its shield is: " In field of silver, the image of Our Lady of the Victory with the child
Jesús in the arms, putting on a battlement wall and laying on two towers, quite all of “gules” and “mazonado”
of silver "

During the Reconquest, they granted privileges to the gentlemen who took part in the military campaigns
confirming the right on their properties with a Jurisdiction granted by Alfonso X in 1256. For that Trujillo turns into a free locality detached to the Wreath.

It is one of the most ancient cities of Spain. In 1432 the king Juan I granted it
the title of "Very noble and Very loyal City of Trujillo". During the reign of the
Catholic Kings there was in Spain a struggle of pertaining to nobility decrees
and in Trujillo it was very radical. For this reason they gave the orders to trim
the towers of its strong houses in order that the height of these was not
overcoming those of the rest of the houses, rendering useless the “matacanes”
and closing all the arrows. (The Bejarano´s, Altamirano´s, Chaves´, Añasco´s).

In the suburbs of the city were settled the Jewish minority, which was important, located in the streets of Gurria, Tiendas and Carnicerías, today Hernando Pizarro.

We emphasize the quantity of religious buildings, parishes and convents because of its worship was very important.

Let´s talk about its illustrious sons as Diego García de Paredes, Francisco
Pizarro, Francisco de Orellana, Nufrio de Chaves, Maria de Escobar,
Francisco Becerra... Discoverers, cartographers, confessors of kings,
writers, stone-cutters, conquerors... on these there are different opinions,
some people shame to hear certain names and facts, another people proud
of its stones do not forget to those who are intimately related to them, men
and women who tackled an exploit that still now five hundred years later
can look like a real odyssey.

Trujillo was during the XV century, and before the conquest of America, a resplendent city with seven magnificent doors of wood with golden breads to access to the “Villa”. It acquired importance and progressive growth and in 1790 it was the most important district of Extremadura, but in the Independence war, the Frenchmen inflamed, stole and plundered the city. It was turned into a heap of rubbles.

The next centuries were of a gradual setback and Trujillo was losing the importance that had had previously until our days because now the city  have 5000 inhabitants less than 50 years ago. Anyway today it is possible to see that the city has been advanced a lot in its rehabilitation. The economy of Trujillo is based on the tourism. It offers to the visitor more information and better services. Anyway we expect that continue forward the improvement of the city and the promotion to achieve the longed
"Heritage of the Humanity " which certainly is deserved.

[165] The people who left Extremadura for the Indies in the sixteenth century represented nearly all ranks of society and a variety of occupations. They included distinguished officials and high ecclesiastics, secular priests and notaries hoping to find positions, artisans planning to establish themselves with their trades, people responding to the urging of relatives who had gone before them, and young men and women employed as servants. Emigrants were married and single, adults and children, and traveled in combinations of all kinds: cousins, siblings, friends and acquaintances, uncles and nephews, parents and children, employers and servants, unrelated individuals recruited for out-of-the-way destinations such as Florida and the Philippines.

Emigrants left under varying circumstances as well. Some had their journeys paid by relatives, others borrowed money or sold virtually all their belongings to finance the move, or traveled as employees or as part of the entourage of a wealthy individual or an official. Some took capital or merchandise to help make their start in the New World, but others were utterly dependent on the assistance of relatives they expected to join to establish themselves. They traveled to a number of destinations, a choice that seldom was random but in any case not necessarily final. Choice of destinations changed over time and was conditioned by circumstances both at home and in the Indies; hence not surprisingly an examination of destinations, as of most other aspects of migration, reveals some differences between the neighboring cities of Cáceres and Trujillo.

[166] Discussion of the composition, choices, and activities of the emigrant group requires both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the information available. Motivation, individual preferences and capabilities or limitations, or the personal arrangements made by departing emigrants cannot be quantified; yet they reveal much about both the context from which emigrants emerged and the life they expected to find in the New World and so are essential to the study of the movement from Spain to the Indies. Quantitative analysis, on the other hand, can illuminate some of the overall patterns in choices, arrangements, and the social or demographic composition of the movement, thereby providing a basis and framework for other kinds of nonquantifiable considerations. It must be borne in mind, however, that data collected on localities such as Cáceres and Trujillo in the sixteenth century are often far from complete and must be viewed in many instances as suggestive rather than definitive.

Logically, discussion of emigration from Extremadura would begin with an effort to convey some notion of the size of the movement. Records show that some 410 individuals from Cáceres emigrated to the New World in the sixteenth century and 921--more than twice as many--left Trujillo in the same period. ⁽¹⁾ In addition, 25 people left the villages of Cáceres's jurisdiction and i6o the villages around Trujillo. ⁽²⁾ These figures are doubtless low--the gaps in the passengers lists in Seville alone would so indicate--but one can only speculate about just how low they are or what a reasonable estimate of the actual numbers would be. ⁽³⁾ The volume of emigration from Cáceres probably reached at least 500 and from Trujillo well over 1,000.

Even though the figures must be assumed to be somewhat low, they provide a notion of the scope and volume of the movement, which likely was small enough not to cause any real alarm or disruption at home but large enough to be known and noticeable to almost everyone in these modestly sized cities. Furthermore the impression made by departures for the New World often was a function not so much of numbers alone as of other factors.

After visiting the court and securing the capitulaciones (charters, titles) for the exploration and conquest of Peru, Francisco Pizarro returned in 1529 to his home town of Trujillo to recruit young men for the venture. The story is that on a Sunday morning he attended [167] mass in the parish church of San Andrés, following which he stood under a tree in the courtyard, had the capitulaciones read aloud, and invited all who were interested to join him in the enterprise. ⁽⁴⁾ It is well known that a number of young men from Trujillo, including his four half-brothers, as well as others from Cáceres and the surrounding villages responded to his call. Recruitment efforts, which were public and sometimes conducted in a quasi-military fashion, the departure of important officials of the government or church, the concentration of departures in certain years or periods, such as the group of twenty-two men from Cáceres who left for Santo Domingo in 1535 (by which time Mexico had surpassed the Caribbean as the principal destination for emigrants), ⁽⁵⁾ and the fact that the distribution of emigrants was not necessarily random or equal in all sectors of society all worked to place emigration in the public limelight and endow it with a visibility that consideration of numbers alone might not convey.

Last, the visibility of emigration in a sense was guaranteed by the nature of local society itself. If mobility and leaving home to seek opportunities were accepted as normal, likewise the structure of family and society presupposed the possibility (if not the likelihood) that departing or absent individuals would return. Since emigrants retained their place at home in some senses, people were much aware of the fact that they had left. In information compiled to verify the 1558 census of Madroñera, a small village near Trujillo, a man named Diego de Valencia testified that "he has a nephew who is in the Indies that he doesn't know if he's dead or alive and that be is an hidalgo and that he is the son of Cristóbal de Valencia, deceased, and that he has a mother in this place." ⁽⁶⁾

The gross figures for the cities and villages also bring to mind another point, the greater size of the movement from Trujillo and its district compared to that from Cáceres. Leaving aside the villages, the city of Trujillo itself was somewhat larger than Cáceres, but only by perhaps 10 or 12 percent. Clearly population base alone cannot account for the striking difference in volume, and other factors and influences must have come into play. The larger size of the Trujillo emigrant group not only was rooted in certain differences but creates others in turn. The data base is larger, and therefore may provide a more reliable basis for analysis; at the least, the representativeness of the Trujillo group seems more reliable [168] than is the case for Cáceres.

A larger movement in itself may have fostered greater complexity and variety, so that such differences as the higher proportion of hidalgos in the Cáceres group, the larger percentage of people emigrating in family groups from Trujillo, and the apparently greater participation of people from the pueblos of Trujillo's jurisdiction than those of Cáceres's ultimately may be tied closely to the considerably greater size of the movement from Trujillo.

Analysis of the initial destinations chosen by people leaving Spain (see tables 6 and 7) yields some interesting results, although certain factors limit the use and interpretation of this data. For some departing emigrants the information on destination is missing; for other individuals it is only known that they were in the Indies at some time, not where they went or when. Still others, in their determination to secure a license for the Indies, would state their willingness to go, for example, to New Spain, New Granada, or anywhere in the Indies. ⁽⁷⁾ Though this last kind of case was exceptional, far more common and relevant to the concerns here was the practice of moving on from the initial destination to another area that offered greater attractions.

Virtually everyone from Cáceres and Trujillo who went to Cuba in the second decade of the sixteenth century went on to participate in the conquest of Mexico-- hardly surprising, especially given that Hernando Cortés was also an extremeño. He was from Medellín, a town not far south of the southern limits of the jurisdiction of Trujillo, where he in fact had relatives. Santo Domingo and Tierra Firme, important destinations for the first generation of emigrants, continued to draw substantial numbers in the 1530s; but again probably many of these people moved on to Peru. Similarly, up until about the middle of the century New Granada served many as a stepping-stone to Peru, and not until the 1550s and 1560s did the region begin to take on some independence from Peru and attract people from Extremadura in its own right. The appointment of two men from Trujillo to the governorship of Popayán in the 1560s--Diego García de Paredes, who was killed by Indians on the Venezuelan coast before he could take office, and two years later (in 1565) don Alvaro de
 

[171] Mendoza--probably helps account for the nearly forty people from Trujillo who went to New Granada in that decade. Last, the destinations used here are intended to give a sense of regional movement and preference, but they do not show exactly where extremeños settled in the New World. In Peru they might establish themselves in Lima, Cuzco, Arequipa, Charcas, Quito, or elsewhere, in New Granada in Santa Marta, Cartagena, or Popayán. Even Mexico, despite the high degree of centralization of settlement in and around the great capital city, offered other foci of attraction such as Puebla de los Angeles. The small number of people who went to Yucatan (mainly with Francisco de Montejo in 1527) are included here in the figures for New Spain, but in fact Yucatan was conquered and settled quite separately from central New Spain. ⁽⁸⁾

Given all these qualifiers, what does analysis of intended destinations reveal? The patterns of destination from both Cáceres and Trujillo changed over time, away from the Caribbean and toward the mainland centers of New Spain and Peru, which is to be expected and accords with the findings for the movement from Spain as a whole. Of particular interest here, however, were early events that had a significant impact on choices of destination, since these early events and choices set in motion patterns and cycles that would affect emigration for years to come. The first of these was the appointment of Frey Nicolás de Ovando, Comendador de Lares of the Order of Alcántara and member of a leading cacereño family close to the crown, as the governor of Hispaniola.

Appointed in 1501, Ovando left Spain the following year accompanied by a huge expedition of some 2,500 people. ⁽⁹⁾ The group included Francisco Pizarro, and Cortés would have figured in it as well had not a lastminute accident and injury forced him to delay his departure. Ovando governed Hispaniola for seven years, during which time he contributed considerably to the consolidation of royal rule and the growth of royal revenues from the island. He returned to Spain in 1509, shortly before his death. The departure and sojourn in the very recently discovered New World of such a prestigious figure as Ovando influenced cacereños to move in some numbers to the Indies at an early time; it is notable that, despite the overall much higher rate of emigration from Trujillo, in the first two decades of the sixteenth century emigrants from Cáceres outnumbered those from Trujillo almost two to one.

[172] For Trujillo the decisive moment came more than two decades later, when Francisco Pizarro returned to Spain and his home town to recruit. In the decade 1521-1530 emigration from Trujillo to Peru equaled that to New Spain, despite the fact that only in the last year (1529-1530) of that decade did the Peruvian enterprise first directly involve people still in Spain, whereas Mexico had been conquered and opened for Spanish settlement and exploitation by 1521 or so. After 1530 in every decade Peru was far and away the greatest center of attraction for people from both cities, the only exception being the 1570s when nearly 120 people set off for New Spain from Trujillo. Even so, although Peru was the principal destination overall for emigrants from both cities, only a third of the cacereños went first to Peru while nearly half of the Trujillo people went there directly. But people whose first destination was Santo Domingo, New Granada, or Tierra Firme often moved on to Peru, so probably well over half of all emigrants from the region ended up there at some time.

Clearly it requires little explanation that returnees from America to sixteenth-century Extremadura were called "peruleros." ⁽¹⁰⁾ Pizarro's recruitment campaign, his position of leadership during the conquest and the years immediately following, and the strong favoritism he and his brothers accorded to relatives and friends from Trujillo and its region guaranteed that Peru would be the favored destination of emigrants. Connections linking Peru to Trujillo and Cáceres were established immediately and maintained through the continued recruitment of family members by people already in Peru and the forging of a perception that identified Peru with the Indies enterprise itself.

Potential emigrants from Trujillo especially tended to use "Peru" synonymously with "las Indias," leading to such anomalies as one person's stated intention of going to "la ciudad de Mexico que es en los reinos del Peru que llama la Nueva España" ("the city of Mexico which is in the kingdoms of Peru called New Spain"), or a reference to "un perulero vecino de Mexico." ⁽¹¹⁾ While the volume of emigrants to Peru subsided noticeably during the 1540s, the turbulent decade of Gonzalo Pizarro's rebellion, it picked up immediately thereafter despite the suspicions harbored by licensing officials in Seville who for a while questioned potential emigrants from Trujillo as to whether they were related to the Pizarros. ⁽¹²⁾

[173] Summarizing choice of initial destinations by decades in some cases disguises specific movements, such as the departure of the 22 cacereños for Santo Domingo in 1535 already mentioned, while it draws attention to others, such as the nearly 25 people who left Cáceres for the Philippines in the 1570s or the unprecedented 120 or so people who went to New Spain from Trujillo in the same decade. Movements to specific destinations that can be pinpointed in time raise the question of recruitment and organization of emigration.

Probably the most notable single year was 1540, when a total of 58 men and 2 women appeared in the passenger lists headed for Tierra Firme, Nombre de Dios, Santo Domingo, or no specified destination (the dates of departure and order of the listing, however, make it clear that the last were associated with the people going to Tierra Firme and Santo Domingo and no doubt they were going there as well). Of the group, 38 men and 2 women were from Trujillo, 14 from its towns, and 6 from Cáceres. ⁽¹³⁾ In 1544 another 10 men from Trujillo and 2 from Cáceres set off for Nombre de Dios, all but one of them on the same boat. ⁽¹⁴⁾ Even if it is not possible in many cases to determine why or how such groups formed and moved together, their very existence suggests that to a great extent emigration was a collective rather than an individual phenomenon.

Discussion of destinations leads quite directly, then, to the question of organization. How did people move to the New World? Was the movement largely the result of personal initiative and decisions? Did formal or official recruitment play a major part? The evidence suggests that organization of emigration in fact took place on both these levels, sometimes in combination and sometimes not. A young man in Trujillo or one of its towns in 1540, for example, might hear that some appointed official was looking for people to accompany him to the Indies, in this case perhaps preferably young men. His brother would decide to go with him. A couple of close friends also were thinking about going, and they all would end up going together. In such cases, which obviously occurred time and again, the context in which a given individual emigrated existed at two levels. One was personal, in that the young man [174] would travel to the Indies with a sibling or friends. The other might be called formal, in that the actual means and the organization of the move hinged on external factors.

In other words, while the motivation for emigrating might be personal, the way someone went did not necessarily depend on personal ties and possibilities but might have been linked to other circumstances. Both these organizing principles are important in terms of understanding the overall nature of the movement. Juan Gutiérrez de Ulloa of Cáceres in 1577 journeyed to Peru where his brother, Licenciado Fray Antonio Gutiérrez de Ulloa, was inquisitor of Lima, and doubtless he went to join him. He traveled, however, as a criado. ⁽¹⁵⁾ Thus at one level personal ties and connections--the desire to join his brother--motivated him to emigrate, though the actual means by which he did so were the arrangements he made to serve as a criado.

An even clearer example might be the case of two young men from Trujillo, Juan de Plasencia, a twenty-five-year-old carpenter, and his twenty-two-year-old brother Bartolomé Rodríguez. In Trujillo they petitioned jointly in 1576 for a license to go to the Indies. Both went to the same place--New Spain--but as criados of different men. ⁽¹⁶⁾ Thus Bartolomé Rodríguez emigrated with his brother, but he traveled as a criado. External or formal arrangements often enabled an individual to make an intended move, but they did not necessarily motivate the move or determine the personal circumstances that also might come into play.

The departure for Peru in 1555 of a number of people from Cáceres and Trujillo, many of whom were attached directly or indirectly to the entourage of the new viceroy, the Marqués de Cañete, shows on a larger scale how these different modes of emigration coexisted. The group that went to Peru that year included eighteen people from Trujillo and seven from Cáceres. At least four of the Trujillo men officially formed a part of the viceroy's entourage, and one woman traveled as the servant of an oidor of the audiencia of Lima, Dr. Gregorio de Cuenca.

There was one merchant's factor and six working artisans (a shoemaker, two tailors, two locksmiths, and a blacksmith), of whom two were half-brothers. Among the group also were a woman named Costanza Rodríguez, described as "moza y hermosa," and her two sons, accompanied by two of her brothers. She was going to join her husband, Diego de Trujillo, a wealthy veteran of Cajamarca who had returned to Trujillo in 1535 [175] but left again for Peru in 1546. ⁽¹⁷⁾ Probably the most prominent member of the Cáceres-Trujillo group was a man from a branch of the Ovando family who took three criados from Cáceres, one of whom was his first cousin. Another was a more distant relative, whose two older brothers had preceded him to Peru. ⁽¹⁸⁾

What emerges, then, is the picture of a group of individuals, of whom many had personal ties that bore on their decision to emigrate and the way they did so. Two brothers departed together, a woman accompanied by her sons and brothers went to join her husband, a young man traveled as the criado of an older relative, another went to join his brothers. These personal arrangements and motivations were subsumed under the more general organization of the viceroy's entourage. The departure of the viceroy in 1555 perhaps accounted for the timing of the group's departure and served as a catalyst for some members of the Cáceres-Trujillo group to emigrate; the large number of artisans in the group suggests that some effort was made to attract working artisans. But to view this group solely in the context of the viceroy's entourage is to obscure some other circumstances and relationships that were just as significant.

Tables 8 and 9 are designed to convey some notion of how extremeños went to the Indies. Again, as in the data for destinations, these categories and figures are not definitive or comprehensive but are intended to show the variety of arrangements by which emigrants traveled and to give a sense of change over time. There are limitations to the approach, precisely because of the dual aspect of organization suggested above. Since the categories (with the exception of the last, which shows how many individuals went to join relatives) are mutually exclusive, they cannot account for individuals who left under more than one kind of arrangement, such as two married couples from Cáceres recruited to go to Florida in 1563. In addition, people who belonged to some of the larger groupings, such as the 1535 contingent to Santo Domingo or the 1540 group to Tierra Firme and elsewhere, have been counted as individuals traveling alone because there is no basis other than surmise or intuition for categorizing them as recruits, although they probably were.

Despite these problems the scheme still shows clearly that the majority of emigrants did not travel alone, especially after around 1540, but were accompanied by family or relatives, friends,

* Number in () indicated the number of women in the total figure

*Number in () indicates the number of women in the total figure.
^Includes one married couple

[178]servants, or slaves, or were themselves employed as servants, formed part of an entourage, or were recruited for some expedition. Emigrants who might in fact have made the journey alone often intended to join relatives already in the New World. Others, whose arrangements for the journey are not known, once in the Indies associated so closely with relatives or other extremeños that we could reasonably assume that they had either traveled together or expected to join each other. Some individuals who appeared in the passenger lists by themselves, such as a woman with the title "doña," never would have traveled alone. All these factors negate the image of the lone venturer setting off for the unknown. Such individuals no doubt existed, but after 1540 they were a minority among emigrants.

The figures in the tables show that women began to take their place among emigrants after 1530 and became a substantial presence after 1550, mostly traveling with spouses and families or other relatives, or as criadas. The increasing number of family units moving to the Indies went hand-in-hand with the growing numbers of women, as would be expected. A total of 56 families, accounting for 253 people or 27 percent of the entire group, left Trujillo, most of them after 1550; 13 families with 56 people, or about 14 percent of the total group, left Cáceres, a notably smaller percentage. Despite the smaller proportion of families in the Cáceres group, however, from both cities the volume of emigration of families was sufficiently large to constitute a significant element in the demographic composition of the movement, giving further weight to the argument that relatively few emigrants, especially after midcentury, were unattached individuals.

Exactly why the number of families leaving Cáceres was proportionately a good bit lower cannot be determined, of course. Perhaps the best explanation is the one offered at the beginning of the chapter, that the greater size of the Trujillo group in itself generated significant differences. The larger volume of emigration would have a kind of snowball effect, encouraging more people to consider such a major undertaking as uprooting and moving an entire family. The larger number of emigrants who had preceded the trujillanos also meant an increased likelihood that they would have relatives or friends in the Indies to help them make a new start.

At least fifteen of the Trujillo families intended to join relatives-[179] parents, siblings, an aunt, uncle, or cousin--and one accompanied the wife's father back to Mexico where he had already been living for a number of years. Furthermore a fairly large number--almost a fifth--of the heads of family were artisans, and Licenciado Diego Gonzalez Altamirano went to Peru to serve on the audiencia; so it appears that many of the families from the start anticipated a reasonably secure future at the end of the journey, based on assistance from relatives or the possibility of establishing a trade. Less is known of the Cáceres group, which included two farmers among the heads of family and Licenciado Diego García de Valverde, who went to New Granada in 1557 to serve as fiscal (treasurer) of the audiencia, accompanied by his wife, son, nephew, sister, and possibly a brother, as well as five criados, two of them from Cáceres. ⁽¹⁹⁾

It should be becoming clear that the recruitment of emigrants took a number of forms, from the personal recruitment of individuals and families by relatives already in the Indies, to the more formal employment of criados by a potential emigrant, or to organized, official or semiofficial efforts to attract individuals to relatively unknown destinations. Some movements, like the group that accompanied the viceroy to Peru in 1555, comprised more than one of these elements. Table 10 summarizes information about the large group that went to New Spain from Trujillo in the 1570s.

The table actually begins with 1568 because the departure for New Spain in that year of Gonzalo de las Casas, the wealthy son of the encomendero of Yanhuitlan (southeast of Mexico City), probably was a key event. His father, Francisco de las Casas, was a cousin of Cortés who was present in Mexico from at least 1523, returning to visit Spain for a year in 1526. Gonzalo became his heir in 1536, at which time he might have been living in Mexico. When he left Trujillo in 1568 he took with him three sons by two different women. ⁽²⁰⁾

In what sense was Gonzalo's move significant? As did other prominent individuals, he probably directly and indirectly attracted his fellow townspeople to follow. He served as fiador (guarantor) for the carpenter Andrés Hernández, who went to Mexico in 1580 with his wife and children, an apprentice, and his nephew Alonso Sánchez, also a carpenter. ⁽²¹⁾ He also might have been responsible for persuading the famous Trujillo master stonecutter and architect, Francisco Becerra, who had worked on las Casas's

*Number in party from Trujillo.

[185] house on the plaza in Trujillo, to leave Spain for Mexico. Once established in Mexico, las Casas had called for Spanish artisans to come to work on the convent of Yanhuitlan. Becerra, in turn, in 1573 either took with him or attracted soon after two young men (Alonso Pablos and Martín Casillas) who had been his apprentices in Trujillo. ⁽²²⁾ He might also have been partly responsible for the apparently thwarted attempt of Diego de Nodera, another master stonecutter, to obtain a license for the same destination the following year; certainly Nodera and Becerra knew each other and had worked together in Trujillo. ⁽²³⁾

Another pivotal event in this decade was the return to Trujillo of Alvaro Rodríguez Chacón. He first went to Mexico around 1550 (perhaps a little earlier), leaving behind his children by his first wife, who had died. In New Spain he had remarried; he was "casado y arraigado." He returned in late 1574, according to his statement and that of other witnesses, for the sole purpose of taking back his children "por estar pobres y sin remedio."

His arrival in Trujillo also set off a kind of chain reaction. He obtained permission to take back his three sons, along with two servants. His daughter Teresa González had married and had four children of her own, and she and her family all decided to go. Her husband, Cristóbal Hernández Tripa, explained that his father-in-law would pay their passage because he was rich. Last, Cristóbal Hernández's brother Hernán González, also apparently at loose ends and with few means of his own, asked permission for him and his family to accompany his brother, claiming that the latter was in a position to help them. González was married to a woman from Plasencia, where they had lived after their marriage with her parents, later moving to Trujillo and living with his parents. Witnesses described them as being poor and without property or goods of any kind. ⁽²⁴⁾

The group that moved to New Spain in the 1570s, then, is of interest because it is possible to see how different forms of recruitment functioned and often reinforced each other. Alonso González, a priest who went to Mexico in 1576, almost immediately sent home for his sister and her husband and children, authorizing them to collect the 42 ducados a man in Trujillo owed him to help defray their passage. In his letters, one of which he sent with a criado of Gonzalo de las Casas, he told them that although New Spain was not quite what it had been, anyone willing to work could earn a [186] living.

A witness for the información (testimonial) of his brother-in-law in Trujillo in 1578 said that he had heard González had a capellanía and was doing fairly well ("medianamente") even though he had only been there a short time. Juan Rubio and his wife said they were extremely poor and that their total worth was no more than 60 ducados. They made a living by selling wine for a innkeeper, receiving 1 real per pitcher, and their older children helped out by hauling firewood. ⁽²⁵⁾

In contrast to the informal mechanisms that operated to attract people from Trujillo to New Spain in the 1570s, official recruitment and organization must have been responsible for the eighteen young men from Trujillo and its pueblos who went to Santa Marta in 1536. ⁽²⁶⁾ The group included one pair of brothers, and many among them went on to Peru. Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón apparently recruited people in the region for his expedition to Florida in 1563, attracting seven cacereños (two married couples), a man from Casar de Cáceres, and two from Berzocana. ⁽²⁷⁾ The recruitment of a number of people from Cáceres and nearby towns to go to the Philippines in 1578 is of much interest because it is the only case for the region in which the process by which official or formal recruitment took place is known in some detail.

In 1578 the king appointed don Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa captain-general and governor of the Philippines, in which post he succeeded a cacereño, Dr. Francisco de Sande, whose governorship had begun in 1575. Despite its brevity, Sande's tenure in that office was significant, because the islands had already attracted several cacereños before the recruitment effort of 1578. This precedent surely encouraged some people to respond. ⁽²⁸⁾ In July 1578 Ronquillo de Peñalosa received royal authorization to take at his own cost 600 men, 200 of them married, from Spain to the Philippines, via Panama. He was told not to bother obtaining informaciones for these people in order to speed the process of gathering recruits.

The following month he named Señor Agustín de Arceo of Segovia captain, charged with finding recruits and accompanying them to the Philippines. The language used was military, although the royal cédula explicitly prohibited Ronquillo from assuming the privileges of a military recruiter; he was not to request or demand lodging, play military instruments, or raise a flag. Arceo was to "go with said company of people raised in this way . . . to [187] serve His Majesty in populating the said islands . . . and accompany [them] until they embark from the port of San Lúcar de Barrameda." He was authorized to name whatever officials he might need before arriving at San Lúcar and then "to designate the persons who seem most suitable as ensign [alférez] and sergeants for the said company." ⁽²⁹⁾

Calling himself "captain-elect to raise . . . people in this villa and Trujillo and Badajoz and Plasencia and their jurisdictions and other parts of their district for the Philippines," Augustín de Arceo in turn signed a power of attorney in Cáceres in October 1578 naming Benito Sánchez of Arroyo del Puerco (a town formerly in Cáceres's termino) as his sergeant. Sánchez was authorized to recruit and register people and make the appropriate agreements. The following month Arceo, saying he wished to leave Cáceres in order to proceed with the expedition and with those "soldiers" already registered in Cáceres and other places, gave power of attorney to a vecino of Cáceres to complete the arrangements for those whose licenses were not yet in order. The actual terms of the contracts were not specified; but since all the men included in the register of the Casa de Contratación were listed as carrying arms of some sort, presumably the recruits agreed to provide their own arms in return for their passage and probably some guarantee of support or assistance once they reached their destination. ⁽³⁰⁾

The expedition as a whole included some 233 single and 56 married men, the majority of whom came from the central and western regions of the peninsula--Castile, la Mancha, and Extremadura. There were 8 men from Cáceres proper, half of them married, 5 from Caesar de Cáceres, and 1 each from Sierra de Fuentes, Aldea del Cano, and Casas de Don Antonio (a village near Cáceres, although not under its jurisdiction), forming a fairly sizable local contingent within the total group. ⁽³¹⁾ The cacereños included a pair of brothers, and three of the married couples had children. Most of the men on the expedition, including the cacereños, were in their twenties. For the married men especially emphasis seems to have been placed on attracting people with skills, and twenty-three different occupations were represented. The 4 married men from Cáceres were farmers, the most common occupation among the group as a whole.

Responding to an organized recruitment campaign for some [188] little-known destination no doubt was a much riskier proposition than setting off for the more secure centers of Spanish settlement, and one wonders what promises or expectations persuaded people to join some of these ventures. In the case of the 1578 Philippines expedition, at least one ship went down soon after departure, and it is not known if the cacereños ever reached their destination. Two brothers who set off for "la China" in 1575 did not even survive the trip across Mexico. ⁽³²⁾

Another risky undertaking was Francisco de Orellana's 1545 expedition to explore the Amazon river. Despite its ultimate (if qualified) success--a small group did complete the journey downriver and reached Isla Margarita off the Venezuela coast--the venture was in most senses a disaster from the outset. Orellana, a relative of the Pizarros, had been in the Indies for perhaps fifteen years before joining Gonzalo Pizarro's expedition to "la Canela" in 1541. The chronicler of that expedition, Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, also from Trujillo, credited Orellana with exceptional linguistic abilities; he was able to learn and understand Indian languages with ease. ⁽³³⁾ Trying to find food, Orellana separated from Pizarro, got lost, and could not get back to the main expeditionary party. He arrived in Cubagua in September 1542, and by mid-May of 1543 was at the court in Valladolid in Spain, where after some months he got the capitulacion for the discovery of "Nueva Andalucía."

From the start Orellana experienced difficulties in organizing and financing the expedition. His stepfather, Cosme de Chaves, came to his aid by selling 30,000 maravedís in rents (juros or censos) to raise 1,100 ducados for him, but this hardly sufficed. ⁽³⁴⁾ Despite shortcomings in preparations, Orellana, accompanied by his wife, Ana de Ayala (whom he had married in Seville), Diego García de Paredes, and others from Trujillo and elsewhere, set out in 1545; but the group had to linger five months in the Canaries and Cabo Verde islands, where nearly a hundred people died and another fifty stayed behind. They also lost the ship carrying the brigantine they planned to use on the river itself. Once they got there, many more died of hunger on the river, and Orellana himself died in November 1546. Only twenty-five men, including Diego García de Paredes, and Orellana's widow, who lived on into the 1570s in Panama, reached Isla Margarita. ⁽³⁵⁾ Extremeños considering ventures to exotic and unknown places could reflect upon the [189] remarkable success of the Pizarros and their followers, as well as the deprivations and disappointments of Orellana's expedition to the Amazon.

To this point discussion of emigration has indicated the variety of contexts in which extremeños emigrated and some of the factors that operated to attract them to one destination or another--the presence of relatives or acquaintances who had preceded them, the departure of officials or prominent individuals for certain places, and formal recruitment. It has also pointed to some of the ways emigrants financed their passage. The terms on which they left, the financial and personal arrangements made before departure, and the type and amount of assistance emigrants received naturally varied considerably, but all emigrants faced the same problem: how to pay for the journey. Certainly the costs were far from negligible. The price of passage alone to Veracruz (New Spain) or Nombre de Dios (Panama) rose from around 7 to 9 ducados in 1536, to twice that by midcentury, to 18 to 22 ducados in 1580. The additional cost of provisions could increase expenses by 35 to 50 percent; so by 1580 the total cost of the journey per adult passenger was somewhere between 30 and 40 ducados (11,250 to 15,000 maravedís). Purchase of cabin space meant another additional expense. In 1555 a cabin for four adults, two children, and their baggage on a ship to Nombre de Dios cost 80 ducados (30,000 maravedís). ⁽³⁶⁾

How, then, did emigrants finance the journey? Those who had something to sell often did so, or if necessary and possible, they borrowed money. Young hidalgo men might sell off rents or borrow from their siblings, whereas commoners, with more limited means at their disposal, might sell part of a house or vineyard or the like. ⁽³⁷⁾ Many people left in debt to relatives or acquaintances, but most were confident they would soon be able to make good on these loans. Cristóbal de Ovando Paredes, member of a noble family who later became one of the wealthiest returnees in Cáceres, left for Peru in 1560 owing an older brother a fairly substantial 152,958 maravedís (over 400 ducados). ⁽³⁸⁾ Antonio de Cotrina received 100 ducados from his mother at the time he first went to the Indies in [190] 1557 as a criado of Licenciado García de Valverde. Clearly the investment paid off, because on a subsequent trip to the New World Cotrina took his brother Juan with him at his own expense, as well as a servant. ⁽³⁹⁾ Yet another returnee to Cáceres, Tomás Casco, said he had received15,000 maravedís and other assistance from Elvira Cotrina which enabled him to make his trip in 1540. He repaid the debt and gave her a portion of the profits of his sojourn. ⁽⁴⁰⁾

Relatives in the New World not only sent back money for the journey but often made all the arrangements for the trip. The two brothers of Francisco Gutiérrez, a farmer from Cáceres who had moved to Albuquerque, sent money for the passage for Gutiérrez and his family to join them in Puebla de los Angeles; they also arranged for him to purchase a black slave for the family's service and sent instructions for obtaining a license in Seville. ⁽⁴¹⁾ Juan Carrasco, a native of Zorita (in Trujillo's jurisdiction) living in Peru, gave his power of attorney to Francisco Calderón de Tapia, who was leaving Peru in 1581 for a visit to Spain, to bring back his wife and children. Francisco Calderón, originally from Trujillo, brought back his own children as well. ⁽⁴²⁾ Antonio Gutiérrez Bejarano and his wife, Man Rodríguez, from Cáceres and Trujillo, who were living in the port of Paita near San Miguel de Piura in Peru, in 1568 sent 42 ducados to three men in Seville, asking one to bring their two daughters to Peru. Their daughters, aged seventeen and nineteen, had been living in Seville with their maternal grandmother since their parents' departure fifteen years or so previously. One of them had married, and her husband decided to accompany them to Peru. ⁽⁴³⁾ Examples of these kinds of arrangements abound in the documents.

Some emigrants were fortunate enough to have sufficient means at their disposal not only to finance the journey but to provide themselves with at least a modest stake as well. A member of one of Cáceres's noble families, Alonso de Torres, was a minor when in 1561 he decided to emigrate, stating that his "aim and desire always has been to go to the Indies and seek my fortune and gain with which better to serve God, our Lord, and his Majesty." He secured his father's permission to go and his consent to release the portion of the inheritance owed him from his mother. Torres received his legacy of 350 ducados from his father, 100 of which he invested in [191] several types of cloth. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ Rodrigo Bravo, who first went to Peru in 1555 as a criado of the viceroy, applied for a license to return to Peru in 1571 asking to take 800 ducados free of duty "because he is taking them in cloth and merchandise and other things." ⁽⁴⁵⁾ Again, the documents furnish other such examples.

As has been suggested before, service as a criado was a common way to finance the journey. Virtually every emigrant of any means at all took along at least one criado, and many took more than one. Important officials in particular took numbers of them. Diego de Vargas Carvajal, appointed "Comisario de Perpetuidad" to gather information about encomiendas in Peru in 1560, took with him ten criados from Trujillo, among them a pair of brothers and a married couple with a child, and one from Madrigalejo (one of Trujillo's towns), in addition to seven other criados from Plasencia, Ledesma, Las Brozas, Benavente, Córdoba, and Salamanca. Two of his sons also went with him. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Licenciado Antonio Gutiérrez de Ulloa, the inquisitor of Lima, took six criados from Cáceres--one of them a priest, who was accompanied by his nephew--and two others to Peru in 1570. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ Once there, the inquisitor and his brother Juan Gutiérrez de Ulloa, who had joined him, sent back to Cáceres for Juan del Valle. According to Valle's father, the boy's mother "grew up in the house and service of Licenciado Antonio Gutiérrez de Ulloa. . . and said Juan [his son] served Juan Gutiérrez de Ulloa, brother of the inquisitor." In 1578 Juan del Valle said they had sent for him "to favor me." ⁽⁴⁸⁾

Unfortunately there is little evidence on the kinds of arrangements made between servants and their employers, since these were surely made informally. Usually it is impossible to know whether a criado had been in the service of his employer previously or not. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ In the only real contract between an employer and a criado found, Diego Martín Barquero of Cáceres agreed to accompany cacereño Martín de Figueroa to "las Indias de Petumel" and then to serve him for two months after their arrival. Figueroa agreed to pay his servant's passage and provide him food and drink, and in return Diego Martín would serve him in whatever was necessary and "be willing and honest." ⁽⁵⁰⁾ Figueroa's stipulation that his criado serve him for two months once they got to the Indies is perhaps telling. It is unlikely that many of the people who went to the New World as servants retained that status for long with so [192] many opportunities at hand. While patterns of deference hardly disappeared once people had crossed the Atlantic, the circumstances in which emigrants found themselves often modified the patron--client relationship considerably. A cacereño named Alvaro de Cáceres, a leading citizen of Puebla de los Angeles and successful entrepreneur involved in the cacao trade with Guatemala and Soconusco, accompanied a Señor Francisco de Ovando (also from Cáceres) on his first trip to New Spain. While clearly Alvaro de Cáceres soon ceased to be primarily Ovando's criado, their connection endured even as it changed. In testimony of 1573 witnesses stated that Ovando had stayed in Cáceres's house in Puebla before departing for the "tierra nueva" and that Cáceres had provided his patron with clothing and other necessities. ⁽⁵¹⁾

After figuring out how to finance their passage to the New World, most emigrants had to make other preparations before leaving, such as arranging for the care of children left behind, the administration of properties, or the payment or collection of rents or debts owed or due to them. Before leaving they signed over their powers of attorney, often to relatives but frequently to friends or procuradores de causas (solicitors) to handle their affairs. Some emigrants assigned their power of attorney (poder) to more than one individual, and might continue to do so after establishing themselves in America, so that poderes proliferated almost to the point of chaos. A cacereño named Jerónimo Holguín, who was in Peru in the 1550s, 1560s, and 1570s, had at least seven different men handling his affairs in Cáceres, with one at times straightening out business mismanaged by another. ⁽⁵²⁾

As was true for many other aspects of the move to America, arrangements emigrants made could take the form of legal contracts and transactions executed before notaries, or they might be made through informal agreements with relatives or friends. Seldom did extremeños execute wills before departing, although they might formalize certain provisions for inheritance before they left--transfers of property, specification of who would receive what portion of an estate, or the like. Juan Gómez of Trujillo, who lived in the huertas of las Alamedas, gave his brother power of attorney [193] so that he could enjoy any income from his property in the huertas while he was away and inherit his property if he failed to return. ⁽⁵³⁾ In another instance don Jerónimo de Ocampo in 1575 decided to prepare a will before leaving for the "conquest" of the Philippines.

He directed that, in the event of his death, rents should be bought from the "estate which I acquire and earn in the Indies" to pay for a weekly mass to be recited in the family chapel in the monastery of San Francisco. He also said his father had given him everything he needed for the journey, and he made his parents his heirs. Member of a noble family, Ocampo was one of many younger sons hoping to find his place outside Cáceres and Spain. ⁽⁵⁴⁾

One of the most detailed sets of instructions for the management of property and children was left by Gonzalo de Valencia, a vecino of Trujillo who owned property in Madroñera. When he and his wife left for Peru in 1551 they decided not to take their children. He placed their son in the care of his brother Amaro de Torres and his wife, and his daughter joined the household of Alonso Ruiz, the returnee from Peru who acquired the señorío of Madroñera a few years later. Valencia authorized his brothers Alonso de Valencia and Amaro de Torres to rent out his house and yard in Madroñera and to collect a censo of 5,000 maravedís, to be used to feed and care for his children after settling a debt he owed to a Trujillo merchant. Another house he owned in Madroñera, next to his father's, he designated for his brother Alonso de Valencia's use, provided he did not turn it into a stable and that he let Amaro de Torres stay there when he came to Madroñera to harvest his wheat. ⁽⁵⁵⁾

It was not at all unusual for parents to leave children behind, especially young ones, or they might take only their older children. They would place children with relatives or in a noble household, perhaps in the hopes that, once established, they would be able to send for them, as did the couple living in Paita who sent for their two daughters in Seville. Regardless of the intentions of their parents, however, such children could have a difficult time, since in effect they became orphans, often wholly dependent on the generosity of relatives or the service they provided to the households that accepted them for their survival.

Felipe Rodríguez, a silversmith, and his wife went to Peru, probably in the 1550s, leaving their son Rodrigo Alonso de Boroa in Trujillo. He asked for a license to join his father in 1570, saying his father was wealthy and [194] had sent for him via a merchant (Baltasar Díaz, a native of Albuquerque) who was returning to Peru. Witnesses described Rodrigo Alonso as "very poor and needy, alone and abandoned." ⁽⁵⁶⁾ Andrés Gómez, a tailor married to a woman from Madroñera who asked to go to Peru in 1577, said that when his parents went to Peru (again, probably in the 1550s), they left him "en poder de un caballero que se llamaba Diego López de Ribadeneyra" because he was too young to go. He apparently had had little contact with his parents since that time and did not know if his father was living. ⁽⁵⁷⁾

Other parents, of course, continued to show concern for their children. Inés Alonso Cervera, who left several young children in Trujillo and in the 1570s was a wealthy widow living in Lima, sent for her son, García de Escobar, and his family and urged her daughters to come as well. In a letter of 1578 she said she had sent 700 reales for Escobar and one of his sisters in the last fleet and was sending another 40 ducados for them.

She had left one or more of her daughters with her aunt and worried that this aunt would do little to help them: "I understand that she is fed up with doing things for me, because I've seen from experience that since I've been here, I haven't had one word from her, and by your [her son's] letters I've seen how little she did for my daughter Juana Gutiérrez." The recipient of these letters, her son, in 1578 petitioned to go to Peru with his family and possibly one of his unmarried sisters, and another sister also planned to go with her husband, who stated that he had never received a dowry and his mother-in-law was rich. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ Another emigrant, Pedro Alonso Carrasco, a native of Zorita and long-time resident of Cuzco, arranged for his daughter to marry his nephew but apparently never sent the dowry, although he often had sent money and letters to his daughter and son in Zorita in the past. In 1567 his son-in-law asked to go to Peru to collect the promised dowry of 5,000 pesos. ⁽⁵⁹⁾

Not only children but women as well could be left "desamparada" by absent husbands. A pharmacist from Cáceres named Juan de Ervás apparently made no provision for his family when he went to the Indies. His brother Francisco Alvarez, a vecino of Lierena, had 6,000 maravedís that Ervás had left to cover a debt. In 1569 a notary of Cáceres asked Alvarez to give the money to Ervás's wife, Elvira Baez, "to maintain her and her children because of their great need." The notary said that if Juan de Ervás returned and [195] decided that the money should not have gone to his family, he himself would repay it. Elvira Baez's son, Fray Hernando de Ervás, seems to have taken his family's welfare more to heart; he sent his mother 870 ducados from Lima in 1575. ⁽⁶⁰⁾

The stories of some potential emigrants or of the families they left behind, told by themselves or by people who knew them, raise the question of the social and economic status of the people who left. Were emigrants broadly representative of their home society? Did certain factors tied to social and economic organization and structures make it more likely that some people would leave and others stay? The discussion of society and emigration in Extremadura to this point certainly indicates a positive response to these questions; nonetheless it is worthwhile to consider specifically how the information on emigrants supports such conclusions.

Virtually all the literature on sixteenth-century Spanish emigration and on the formation of society in Spanish America points to the fact that Spaniards from many ranks of society and a wide range of occupational groupings went to the Indies almost from the very beginning. It was only at the extremes of the socioeconomic spectrum--the highest-ranking and wealthiest nobles, or the paupers at the bottom of society--that participation was very limited. The study of emigration from Cáceres and Trujillo substantiates this picture. The absence of extremes, however, should not be taken to mean that neither hidalgos nor people who were in genuine economic difficulty went to the New World.

But in a sense the wide and varied spectrum that ranged from the younger son of a noble family to the artisan struggling against poverty who might be fortunate enough to have a relative in the Indies to help him out constituted the middle classes of Spanish society and the source of the great majority of emigrants to the New World. At the very extremes, the wealthy nobles did not need to leave, and the true paupers were so marginal they had no possibility of leaving. Those who found the means to emigrate and did so were all united in one respect: they were looking for a chance to better their condition in life, and they had some possibility of doing so, whether because of position, connections, skills, or simply being in the right place at the right time. [196] They were united in another sense as well. They were, for the most part, working men and women, and even the hidalgos among them were used to a life of physical activity. Given their experience and the life to which they were accustomed, they were prepared to withstand the discomforts, dangers, and tedium of a major relocation to a degree that in retrospect appears rather astonishing.

Hidalgos not only were present in some numbers among the emigrants, but they often played a leadership role, taking entourages of family and retainers and acting as centers of attraction for other emigrants to follow, as did Gonzalo de las Casas when he went to New Spain to succeed to his father's encomienda in 1568. A number of hidalgos actually went to the Indies as officials of the state or church, and an official royal appointment naturally reinforced and enhanced their authority and prestige and role as patrons. The representation of hidalgos in the emigrant group overall was substantial. From Trujillo at least 12 percent and Cáceres nearly 22 percent of the emigrants were hidalgos, and possibly around 10 percent of the emigrants from Trujillo's pueblos were also. These figures include only those people whose hidalguía can be established clearly from the documentation. ⁽⁶¹⁾

The difference in representation of hidalgos in the Cáceres and Trujillo groups to some extent may reflect the rather distinct structure and composition of the two cities. Cáceres had a high percentage of hidalgos among its population compared to other extremeño cities, perhaps as high as 17 percent. ⁽⁶²⁾ While Trujillo shared Cáceres's reputation of being home to many nobles and hidalgos, there exists a general and not exactly quantifiable impression that Trujillo's nobles on the whole (not taken individually) were not quite so noble (that is, wealthy and powerful) as those of Cáceres. ⁽⁶³⁾ While this last suggestion certainly could be disputed, the early and enthusiastic participation of members of some of Cáceres's most prominent noble families in the Indies is undeniable and no doubt set an important precedent. The role of Frey Nicolás de Ovando, governor of Hispaniola from 1502-1509, has already been mentioned.

If the cacereños did not produce a leader comparable to Francisco Pizarro, the Trujillo group on the other hand could not offer anything that compared to a trio like Francisco de Godoy, Lorenzo de Aldana, and Perálvarez Holguín -- three first cousins from important families of Cáceres, all of whom were in Peru in the [197] 1530s and 1540s and participated in the civil wars-or others such as Antonio de Ulloa, Gómez de Solís, and Hernando de Moraga. The Pizarros were hidalgos but not nearly of the same rank; only one daughter--the youngest-of Captain Gonzalo Pizarro (the patriarch of the family) was addressed as doña, whereas all the cacereño hidalgos just mentioned were sons of women who used the title and belonged to families that traditionally held seats on the city council.

Gonzalo Pizarro's references in his letters to Lorenzo de Aldana especially and to other nobles from Cáceres express a certain deference, and he seems to have taken pride in being associated with individuals of their status. ⁽⁶⁴⁾ Since the early noble emigrants from Cáceres to the Indies attracted or by their example encouraged family members to follow them, the contribution of noble families to the emigration movement was notable throughout the sixteenth century. ⁽⁶⁵⁾ The participation of the Trujillo nobility seems to have begun later and never reached the same levels, although certainly there were families such as the Loaysas whose involvement in Peru was comparable to that of cacereño families.

Consideration of hidalgo participation leads to the question of the relevance of family structure and position within the family to the decision to emigrate. The standard image of younger sons going off to the Indies corresponds to the realities of the noble family, which increasingly emphasized preservation of family fortune and titles in the direct male line. The corollary to this strategy was the assumption that other sons would seek other careers, and these often took them away from home. Emigration to America soon came to figure significantly among the options available to younger sons, and this was true as well for illegitimate children who also usually found only limited opportunities at home.

In his will of 1575 don Diego de Ovando de Cáceres, who had no legitimate children, placed his illegitimate son Hernando de Ovando under the guardianship of his (don Diego's) brother and heir, don Francisco de Torres. Don Francisco de Torres was to administer Hernando's legacy of 300 ducados, which his father said he must use to travel to the Indies, go to war in the king's service, or establish himself in the house of some nobleman, and for no other purpose. ⁽⁶⁶⁾ Francisco Pizarro and Diego García de Paredes (son of the famous military hero of the same name) are two of the best-known illegitimate sons who left Trujillo hoping to find better opportunities in [198] the New World, and the list of younger sons of hidalgo families of both cities who did the same is long indeed. Fray Jerónimo de Loaysa, the first bishop and archbishop of Lima, was himself a younger son in one of Trujillo's noble families.

While inheritance and family position played an important part in determining who among the hidalgo group might emigrate, nonetheless the classic formula of second (and younger) sons going off to seek their fortunes cannot explain everything about the emigration of hidalgos. Personal preferences and decisions often played a part and mitigated what otherwise might appear to be a kind of socioeconomic determinism. Surely some people with no strong economic impetus for leaving responded to the appeal of adventure (especially in the early years) and the successes of friends or relatives who had gone before them. Hernando de Moraga Galindo from Cáceres was reputed to have left behind considerable wealth, but supposedly for reasons having to do with some personal involvement he preferred to remain in the Indies. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ Gómez de Solís, captain in the civil wars and a wealthy encomendero in Peru, clearly had little interest in returning to Cáceres either.

His father tried to lure him back home, bypassing his eldest son to promise Gómez the family entail established in 1555 should he return and purchasing a seat on the city council for him. But eventually both Gómez and his younger brother Juan de Hinojosa, also in Peru, renounced all claims to the family legacy in favor of their older brother. ⁽⁶⁸⁾ Hernando Pizarro, the only legitimate son of his father, Captain Gonzalo Pizarro, set off for Peru with his illegitimate halfbrothers, guessing quite correctly, as events proved, that the family's future lay outside Trujillo and across the Atlantic.

Just as economic motivation cannot be reduced to a question of who inherited and who did not (Francisco de Godoy, who returned very wealthy from Peru in the 1540s, also inherited his father's entail), neither can social position in itself explain the decisions made by individuals. Andrés Calderón Puertocarrero, a noble and mayorazgo, apparently called himself a merchant when he went off to Peru in 1562. Subsequent testimony regarding a murder he committed in Peru indicates that he might have lost or squandered much of his inheritance; ⁽⁶⁹⁾ therefore, in his case, economic motivations probably overrode social conventions that held that direct involvement in commerce was antithetical to noble status.

[199] Neither do considerations of inheritance and position in the family necessarily account for hidalgo families that as a unit might have been losing the struggle to maintain their economic and social position. Such a situation might have propelled a number of children to leave home, as happened in quite a few instances in Cáceres, where virtually entire generations set off for the New World. In one family five siblings--Hernando Alonso, Gonzalo, Jerónimo, and doña Menda de los Nidos, and their sister, doña Juana Copete de Sotomayor--all emigrated to Peru in the 1520s, 1530s, and 1540s.

Lorenzo de Ulloa, an early settler and encomendero of Trujillo (Peru) and member of a branch of the Ovando family, had three brothers and a sister follow him to Peru. ⁽⁷⁰⁾ These families and others like them surely were experiencing economic strains. Pedro de Ovando de Saavedra, whose two sons died en route to the Philippines in the 1570s, frankly declared his poverty in his 1577 will, saying he had had many children and very little wealth. ⁽⁷¹⁾ Perhaps the only comparable example the Trujillo group offers of large numbers of siblings from an hidalgo family emigrating is that of the Pizarros; but given Francisco's royal authorization and position of leadership, their case was hardly typical.

The prospect of impoverishment or the uncertainty occasioned by the death of one or both parents might have influenced orphans or sons who had recently lost their fathers to emigrate; conversely the death of one or both parents also could provide, through their legacy, the necessary means to finance passage overseas. Bernardino de Moraga, a minor and orphan in 1572, went to Chile in 1578. ⁽⁷²⁾ Both parents of Martín de Chaves had died by the time he left for Peru in 1534 (at which time he might still have been a minor), as had his grandfather, Martín de Chaves, the family patriarch. Two of Chaves's brothers had already left Trujillo by the time he went to Peru, and at least one was in the Indies. ⁽⁷³⁾ The parents of cacereño Miguel Criado Figueroa were also both deceased when he asked for permission to join his brother in Peru in 1578. ⁽⁷⁴⁾ Another young man from Cáceres named Juan de Vita y Moraga was twenty years old and an orphan in 1574 when he presented an información describing himself as "pobre e hidalgo." He intended to join a maternal uncle in Peru whom he had heard was "very rich and old" and was called "Galindo." ⁽⁷⁵⁾ He failed to mention his father's brother Pedro de Vita, who had gone to Peru in the 1540s [200] but possibly was no longer living. Pedro de Vita himself had left Cáceres in 1546, two years after his own father's death. ⁽⁷⁶⁾

Hidalgos facing possible impoverishment or at least economic strains who decided to emigrate had their counterparts at the other end of the spectrum of people who left Extremadura for America. While it probably is true that the most poverty-stricken and marginal people could not have emigrated, it is clear that some emigrants were suffering real economic stress, even allowing for the standard tendency to exaggerate the severity of economic circumstances. Some examples of what appears to have been genuine economic hardship have been mentioned already, such as that of the sister and brother-in-law of Alonso González, the priest who went to Mexico in 1578; the family subsisted by reselling wine and delivering firewood. Two sisters in Trujillo named Isabel García la Castra and Isabel García la Cuaca, who described themselves as poor spinsters, in 1578 asked to go to New Spain with the five young children they had between them to join relatives. One witness testified that because they were so poor and already too old to serve anyone, the only way they could get by would be by running an inn or tavern or employing themselves in some disreputable fashion. They had a half-brother, Francisco García, who had gone to New Spain ten or twelve years before and sent them money regularly. ⁽⁷⁷⁾

A drastic change in economic circumstances led Alonso Blanco, also a vecino of Trujillo, to ask permission to go to New Spain the same year with his four children "because of having been a rich and prominent man. . . and having come to great poverty and need." Witnesses affirmed that he had been rich ("ha sido hombre rico y. . . ha tenido muy buena hacienda") and had owned a good posada (inn), which he had lost six years previously. Blanco had acted as guarantor for some vecinos of Trujillo who purchased royal rents. They took off, leaving Blanco to pay. Since he could not, he was imprisoned and 1400 ducados worth of his property sold, leaving him very poor and forcing him into the service of don Hernando de Chaves, whom he served as squire for three years. The relative Blanco planned to join in New Spain was a priest named Martín Blanco (a vecino of Cabeza del Buey) who had come through Trujillo about ten years before and said mass in Blanco's house. Ironically at that time Alonso had given the priest the money he [201] needed to go to the Indies. Blanco sold his only remaining property, part of a house, to pay for the trip to America. ⁽⁷⁸⁾

For other prospective emigrants poverty probably did not make such a sudden and dramatic appearance. There can be no doubt that a substantial sector of the population lived close to the threshold of poverty much of the time, even if they had skills or some property in land or livestock. Andrés Gómez, the tailor whose parents had left him in the household of a nobleman when they went to Peru, was said to be so poor that he had to sew for other artisans to earn his living. ⁽⁷⁹⁾ Witnesses said that Lorenzo del Puerto, a shoemaker who wanted to take his wife and family to New Spain in 1577, was very poor and slowly losing what little he had because he lacked the necessary capital to invest in his business; without such capital, one witness said, one "dies of hunger." ⁽⁸⁰⁾ Juan Díaz of Garciaz, the son of a letrado, Bachiller Juan Díaz, in 1584 asked for a license to go to Peru for four years to live with his brother Alvar Sánchez, who was rich and had sent for him. Juan Díaz said he needed the money to support his father, who was poor, and to help marry his sisters. ⁽⁸¹⁾

Still, it must be remembered that people's perceptions of economic threat and poverty could be relative, depending on their own expectations and past experience. Inés de Cabañas, a wealthy native of Trujillo living in Lima in the 1560s and 1570s, wrote to her brother Sancho de Cabañas asking him to come to Peru in 1574, saying it grieved her to hear that he had been forced into service ("me pesó mucho en saber que sirvía a nadie"). Sancho de Cabañas said he was very poor and his only income was10,000 maravedís yearly which he received from a caballero in Trujillo, which did not suffice to support him, his wife, and child. ⁽⁸²⁾ Baltasar Alvarez, who wanted to go to Peru in 1570 to live with his uncle Diego de Trujillo (the encomendero of Cuzco who had been at Cajamarca) said he was so poor that he "has served in the house of Diego del Saz, merchant." ⁽⁸³⁾

One might suggest that having any kind of steady income or position at all would place individuals like Sancho de Cabañas or Baltasar Alvarez far ahead of those whose livelihood was even less predictable, yet they saw themselves as being in need. Although the majority of potential emigrants provided little or no detail about their economic status or condition, it seems likely that many of them were people who barely managed [202] to keep themselves from poverty and that they saw the move to America as a chance to improve their situation substantially. While some exaggeration probably was involved, it is no coincidence that so many letters from America contained references to misery and economic frustration back home in Spain.

In terms of the hidalgo-commoner distinction, the composition of the emigrant group roughly reflected their distribution in the home society. Beyond that the group differed from local society in general mainly in the ways one would expect, given the nature of the undertaking. Single young men were heavily represented, especially in the earlier decades of the sixteenth century. This is well in keeping with the presumption that young people not yet fully established with household or occupation would be most likely to consider moving as well as a reflection of the relative uncertainty of life in the Indies in the earlier years. With the consolidation of Spanish rule and settlement, the Indies began to attract more women and families by the second half of the century.

The emigrant group also substantiates common-sense perceptions of the circumstances that might motivate some people to emigrate and others not. While members of leading noble families certainly went to America, they seldom did so as family units. The noble who was in a position to marry well and establish a household almost by definition was wealthy or at least had good prospects, in which case he had no motivation to leave. Certainly there were exceptions, especially if there were some strong attraction, as in the case of Gonzalo de las Casas or Francisco de Orellana (of Orellana la Vieja), who went with his wife, doña María de Mendoza from Seville, and children to Peru in 1565 to join his father.

His father had been part of the group that went to Santa Marta in 1536 and had been in Peru almost thirty years. Only a few years before, his aunt (his father's sister) and her husband also had gone to Peru, taking their daughter and a criado who probably was a relative. ⁽⁸⁴⁾ Yet for the most part, with the exception of officials such as Licenciado Diego González Altamirano of Trujillo or Licenciado Diego García de Valverde from Cáceres, the hidalgos among the heads of family who emigrated were from the middle or lower levels of that group, and probably most were relatively poor.

One point that holds for hidalgos and commoners alike is that family ties and considerations were of crucial importance in conveying [203] people to the New World, determining where they would go and when, so much so that the role of family in emigration should be emphasized yet again. Cycles and traditions of emigration developed and operated because of these family ties and strategies. We have seen that when Francisco de Orellana went to Peru in the 1560s he went to join his father and followed his uncle and aunt by a few years. Discussion of emigration has touched on many instances of relatives who emigrated together or went to join others who had preceded them. In addition returnees from the Indies often directly and indirectly encouraged members of the younger generatíon to go.

The degree of involvement of some families in the Indies could be remarkably high, as in the case of the Castro family of Trujillo. Francisco González de Castro went to the New World as part of the group of young men from Trujillo and elsewhere who left in 1540. In the 1560s he was royal treasurer in Santa Marta and had sent for his nephew Juan de Castro, a pharmacist, to join him since he had never married and had no heirs of his own. Juan de Castro departed for Cartagena in 1569, as did his uncle Pedro de Castro, who left Trujillo with his wife and three children. This was Pedro's second trip, since he had previously been with his brother Francisco in Santa Marta. Two other brothers, Diego González de Castro and Juan de Castro, also were in New Granada. Juan de Castro went there as a merchant in 1555, and Diego probably lived in Popayán, where he returned in 1574.

A witness in Trujillo in 1566 said that Francisco's three brothers (Diego, Juan, and Pedro) lived in the interior and one of them had a repartimiento de indios. Subsequently, in 1578, yet another nephew, Alonso de Castro, went to Santa Marta as the criado of the newly appointed bishop. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ Between the two generations, then, ten members of the family went to Santa Marta and New Granada. A first cousin named Juan de San Juan, a tailor, also was there; he took his wife and son to New Granada in 1555 (the same year Juan de Castro went), but had returned to Trujillo by 1568. ⁽⁸⁶⁾ This was a family of tradesmen and artisans; one brother of Francisco González de Castro who stayed in Trujillo was a cerero (waxmaker), and his brothers-in-law included a tailor, pharmacist, and silversmith. They were upwardly mobile and saw opportunities in the Indies they could not find at home. There were a number of other families, in Cáceres as well, [204] such as the Ovandos and the Sandes (whose stories are told elsewhere) ⁽⁸⁷⁾ or the Vitas and Moragas, mentioned earlier, that formed similarly strong ties to the Indies.

Family obviously played a crucial role in emigration from beginning to end. Family fortunes or position within the family helped determine who might emigrate or when, and assistance from family and relatives either at home or in the Indies often enabled emigrants to make the journey. Once in America, emigrants again often received crucial assistance from relatives already established there. Finally, the recruitment of relatives at home by people who were in the Indies or had returned to Spain fostered cycles of emigration which worked to forge and maintain ties between Cáceres and Trujillo and people and places in the New World. The sense of familiarity that resulted from these multiple and continued connections encouraged continuing emigration.

People at home in Extremadura came to know about Peru or Mexico and people and events there not through vague reports or the very few printed and published descriptions available but as a result of continued contacts maintained through letters, visits, and information and messages brought back by returnees, merchants, and other individuals who moved back and forth with some frequency. In June 1570 Vasco de la Llave, a vecino of Trujillo, described a conversation he had during a trip to Seville in January of that year in which he talked to Bartolomé Díaz, a merchant from Albuquerque recently returned from Peru. He had asked Díaz about "people from this city [Trujillo] who are in those parts." ⁽⁸⁸⁾ Witnesses in Trujillo especially constantly stated that they knew of people and events in Peru or elsewhere from people who had come from there or from letters they or others had received from emigrants.

In order to understand the way emigration developed in the sixteenth century it is essential to take into account the rather rapid formation of networks and connections which usually were tied to family and place of origin and served to provide a familiar or semifamiliar context in which people moved from Extremadura to the New World. While networks and cycles of emigration often hinged on family relationships, they certainly were not confined to these. Cristóbal de Solís, a priest ordained in 1558 who was the illegitimate son of Alvar García de Solís, a prominent priest in [205] Trujillo serving as vicar and beneficiado of the church of San Martín, decided to go to Peru in 1577. He stated that he had there "priests [who are] close relatives and intimate friends of mine." He mentioned two priests, Sancho Casco and Juan Casco, living in Cuzco and Lima, who were his relatives. The first was his brother-in-law, having been married to Solís's now deceased sister. He also said that trujillano Bachiller Gonzalo de Torres, provisor and vicar of Popayán, was a close friend of his father. ⁽⁸⁹⁾
 

Seville played an important part in the formation and maintenance of networks. Emigrants from Cáceres and Trujillo, after all, took only the first step when they left their home towns; they departed for the Indies from Seville, a booming city of some100,000 people that for some extremeños might have seemed as much a world apart from their towns and villages as would the Indies themselves. In Seville potential emigrants had to deal with the licensing authorities at the Casa de Contratación if they meant to depart legally, and everyone had to arrange passage on a ship for themselves and anyone who accompanied them, as well as the purchase of provisions, space for baggage, or sleeping accommodations. All of this usually meant a stay in Seville of some duration before departure for the Indies.

During this time emigrants would have to make fairly complicated arrangements that doubtless could prove confusing and costly if one did not know exactly what to do and how to avoid falling into the hands of some of the less than scrupulous people who dealt in the business of securing licenses or passage on outward bound ships. Although people in the Indies sometimes assisted relatives about to make the journey by sending detailed instructions or directing them to a friend or merchant in Seville who would help them, of considerable importance were the people from Cáceres and Trujillo who at any given time would be living in Seville, either temporarily or permanently. These people from home probably served as important contacts for emigrants, assisting them in making their arrangements, attending to their business as well as that of people at home in Extremadura, and dealing with the Casa de Contratacíon, through which all money and goods sent back to Spain had to pass.

[206] Despite the distance that separated Seville from Cáceres and Trujillo, many people traveled there on business for themselves or others, often in connection with people and affairs of the Indies, although not necessarily. ⁽⁹⁰⁾ A number of extremeños, including people who later went to or returned from the Indies, took up residence in Seville for short periods or permanently. Alonso Delvás, who went to New Granada in the 1550s, lived in Seville for a while before he left Spain. Witnesses from Trujillo testified that they had been in his house there and that he had married in Seville. ⁽⁹¹⁾ In 1551 Pedro Barrantes, returnee from Peru and regidor of Trujillo, authorized one of his criados to sell houses he owned in Seville. ⁽⁹²⁾ Antón de Andrada, younger son of a cacereño noble family that held the title "señor de Espadero," went twice to the Indies and evidently lived in Seville before and between his trips. He first went to Florida in 1563. On his second departure, in 1576 to New Spain, he took with him an illegitimate son by a Sevillian woman who must have been born shortly before he went to Florida, as well as his wife, also from Seville, two children, and other relatives. ⁽⁹³⁾

Some returnees, such as Antonio Cotrina who started out as a criado of Licenciado García de Valverde and became an entrepreneur in the Indies trade, and Juan Cano, a cacereño who married one of the daughters of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma and became a wealthy encomendero, established themselves in Seville rather than in Cáceres once they were back in Spain. A merchant named Francisco Sánchez de Melo, a vecino of Seville active in the Indies trade, was a trujillano by origin. He had a niece in Trujillo, Ana de Melo, and in 1557 and 1559 respectively the brothers Pedro and Baltasar de Melo, who must have been his relatives, went to Peru and Tierra Firme as his factors. Pedro de Melo, who returned to Spain in 1575, decided to live in Seville also.

As a vecino of Seville he donated a censo to Ana de Melo, niece of Francisco Sánchez de Melo, in the 1580s. Diego de Trujillo, the encomendero of Cuzco, in a letter of 1564 mentioned that Francisco Sánchez de Melo was coming with a load of merchandise, and the following year two vecinos of Trujillo authorized Diego de Melo (possibly Ana de Melo's father) and a criado of Francisco Sánchez de Melo to collect a debt from a man in Seville. ⁽⁹⁴⁾ Men like Antonio Cotrina and Francisco Sánchez de Melo, as well as others who perhaps had never been to the Indies but were involved in the affairs of those who were, or still others who were living in Seville for other reasons [207], all served as key contacts both for people at home in Extremadura and people in the Indies.

Given the distance, the volume of movement between Alta Extremadura and Seville may seem surprising, but the presence of numbers of cacereños and trujillanos who were available to serve as witnesses for emigrants' petitions for licenses makes it clear that traveling to Seville and spending time there were commonplace. Another returnee who took up residence in Seville, Luis García Polido, in 1562 was pursuing a suit for hidalguía. Most of the witnesses in Cáceres testified that they had been in Seville, including a wool carder who claimed to be 101 years old, an hidalgo, and a labrador; the latter two said they had been to Seville several times. ⁽⁹⁵⁾ Merchants and arrieros, naturally, moved back and forth between Extremadura and Seville frequently, and they often collected money from the Casa de Contratación or elsewhere for extremeños. In 1578 Juan Barrantes (son of returnee Pedro Barrantes and his wife doña Juana de Paredes), doña María de Ribera (widow of Juan Cortés, another returnee who had been at Cajamarca), and Licenciado Diego González Altamirano all gave their power of attorney to an arriero of Trujillo, Andrés de Illescas, to collect rents in juros they held in Seville. ⁽⁹⁶⁾

Since it was a center for trade, business, and industry, as well as the hub of the Indies enterprise, Seville exercized considerable attraction for extremeños, offering possibilities for employment and upward mobility. Because people traveled there frequently and at times took up residence while still maintaining contacts with people in their home towns, potential emigrants from Extremadura could look to acquaintances or relatives who were in Seville or at least knew the city for advice and assistance. As a result emigrants moved through the various stages of the emigration process in a familiar or partially familiar context, guided and supported by a network that connected people in Extremadura, Seville, and the Indies. Surely this network, which was developing by the middle of the sixteenth century, became an important element in the process by which people emigrated. It facilitated the move to America and thereby perhaps encouraged more people to emigrate, since, along with the assistance of family and relatives, the existence of such a network tended to diminish uncertainty and the sense of risk.

Despite the number and variety of personal and informal arrangements and connections that affected and facilitated emigration [208] and the relative unimportance of official organization overall, the movement of people to the Indies did not, of course, take place in the absence of legal restrictions or structure. The Spanish crown was, in theory at least, quite concerned about who would be permitted to go to the Indies and under what circumstances. Legislation was designed to exclude what were judged undesirable elements--moriscos, gypsies, conversos--and the desire to monitor the quality and condition of emigrants brought into existence the rather cumbersome process that regulated emigration. ⁽⁹⁷⁾ Potential emigrants who wished to comply with the legal requirements had to present evidence that they were not among the undesirables and also that, once in the Indies, they would not be a burden but rather productive members of society. It was for this reason--certainly a benefit to future historians--that emigrants presented often lengthy testimony regarding their background and what they planned to do in the Indies (establish themselves in a trade, join relatives, and so on). Letters from relatives in the Indies sometimes accompanied and buttressed this testimony.

The multitude of legislation certainly was not enforced to the letter. As seen in the case of the recruitment campaign for the Philippines, the officials themselves felt free to ignore requirements as they deemed appropriate. But the laws constituted an ideal framework that in principle governed emigration and could be brought to bear in particular cases, especially where the posting of bonds (fianzas) was involved. Merchants, married men leaving wives behind, individuals going to the Indies on short-term business all could be required to post bond against their promised return. García Ramiro of Trujillo posted a fianza of 100,000 maravedís when he went to Peru in 1555. He planned to collect the estate left by his brother Juan Ramiro and return in three years. Diego Hernández also took out a license to go to Peru for three years in 1567, under a bond of 200,000 maravedís, to collect the estate of his father who had died in Cuzco. ⁽⁹⁸⁾

Clearly the movement of people to the Indies was a complex and varied phenomenon. The term "emigration" is modern and perhaps anachronistic; certainly it did not exist in the sixteenth century. [209] Since there was no special term for going to the Indies, it is questionable whether a general concept of emigration existed. Obviously many people went to America with the intention of settling and remaining there, while others set out with short-term objectives and clear intentions of returning, although in the end they did not necessarily do so. Some who expected to remain might have changed their minds, and yet others probably had no fixed intentions when they departed. There was change over time; as society in the New World stabilized and consolidated, it offered increasingly attractive prospects for permanent settlement. Yet in many cases even those emigrants who obviously had settled down and made new lives in America retained not only strong attachments to home but the lingering, if unrealistic, expectation or desire that they would some time return. It was not uncommon for individuals sending for or writing to relatives to express a wish to return to visit while acknowledging the impossibility of traveling so far at a relatively advanced age. ⁽⁹⁹⁾

The ambivalence of many people who established themselves in America but continued to look "homeward" to Spain, and their attachment to home and to relatives and acquaintances from home also in the Indies, are reflected in the experiences of extremeños in the Indies.

1. The term "emigrants" generally refers to individuals who intended to leave Spain, regardless of whether they reached their destinations in the Indies, since it may be impossible to prove if someone who planned to emigrate actually did so. The figures are based on a number of sources. The most important published sources are Peter Boyd-Bowman, Indice geobio gráfico de cuarenta mil pobladores españoles de América en el siglo XVI, 2 vols. (Bogota, 1964, Mexico, 1968) and the Catálogo de pasajeros a Indias durante los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII, 5 vols. (Seville, 1940-1946, 1950). Vicente Navarro del Castillo, La epopeya de la raza extremeña en Indias (Menda, 1978) is useful but contains many errors and must be utilized with caution. Material from the following archives supplied additional names of emigrants: Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Archivo Histórico Provincial de Cáceres (AHPC), Archivo Municipal de Trujillo (AMT), and the Archivo del Conde de Canilleros (ACC). James Lockhart gave me access to his files for Spaniards in early Peru, which yielded another group of emigrants

2. The figures for Trujillo's jurisdiction include villages that, strictly speaking, were no longer under its jurisdiction by the middle of the sixteenth century. Berzocana and Cañamero, with fourteen and nine emigrants respectively, had removed themselves from Trujillo's jurisdiction early in the sixteenth century but continued to be closely tied to the city thereafter. They furnished soldiers for military levies raised in Trujillo's district, and people from Berzocana at least continued to refer to themselves as being from "tierra de Trujillo" well into the sixteenth century. Similarly Orellana la Vieja, although it was never part of Trujillo's district as such, for centuries belonged to one of the city's leading families and as a result was closely associated with the city.

3. The incompleteness of the passenger lists is evidenced by the number of emigrants found in local archives or other sources not found in the registers in Seville. For the gaps in the passenger lists see Auke Pieter Jacobs, "Pasajeros y polizones: Algunas observaciones sobre la emigración española a las Indias durante el siglo XVI," Revista de Indias 172 (1983): 440. The concentration of Boyd-Bowman's published work in the first half of the sixteenth century means that information for that period is much better than for the second half. In addition, there exists the possibility that local notarial records, which yielded a number of names of emigrants or returnees, have a certain bias toward the upper and middle classes of society, which had greater means and necessity of going before notaries. The representativeness of these sources may be somewhat skewed as a result.

4. The capitulaciones were dated July 26, 1529. See Tena Fernández, Trujillo histórico, 344-345.

5. See Peter Boyd-Bowman, Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the New World (1493-1580) (Buffalo, N.Y., 1973), 28.

6. AGS Expedientes Hacienda 189-56 (averiguación del padrón de Madroñera, 1558). In 1558 Alonso Ruiz, a man who had been at Cajamarca and returned to Spain to marry the sister of his partner in Peru, Lucas Martínez Vegaso (from Trujillo) and become a vecino and regidor of Trujillo, became señor of Madroñera.

7. See información of Francisco Jiménez, zapatero, vecino of Trujillo, who petitioned for a license in 1574 to go to the Indies with his wife and children, AGI Indif. General 2055. In the same year Andrés Hernández, herrero, of Trujillo asked to go to Peru and, if not there, to Mexico or "el reyno nuevo," AGI Indif. General 2087.

8. Society in the New World being what it was, and Spaniards there as mobile (or even more so) as ever, settling in one area hardly precluded contacts with people in another or moving once or twice in the same region. See chap. 6 for discussion of activities in the Indies.

9. For the career of Frey Nicolás de Ovando, see Ernest Schafer, El consejo real y supremo de las Indias (Seville, 1935 and 1947), 1: 31: and Troy Floyd, The Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, 1493-1526 (Albuquerque, 1973), 51-54. See also Ursula Lamb, Frey Nicolás de Ovando, Gobernador de Indies (1501-1509) (Madrid, 1956). For the Ovando famliy see Altman, "Spanish Hidalgos," Cáceres": 323-344.

10. In the documents I found only one use of the term "indiano" in Trujillo, in testimony of 1549 by Juan de la Jara, who had a brother-in-law living in Peru AGI Justicia 1176, no. 2, ramo 8.

11. Informaciones., of Hernán González (1575) and another Hernán González (1547), both of Trujillo, in AGI Indif. Gen. 2056 and 2055.

12. A witness for Alonso Mellado-vecino of Santa Cruz de la Sierra who petitioned to go to Peru in 1579 as the page of a priest named Domingo Rodríguez (also of Santa Cruz)-said Mellado "is not a relative or relation of the Pizarros but rather is a labrador," AGI Contratación 5227. See also información of Francisco Rodríguez, AGI Indif. Gen. 2087 (1574-1575).

13. See Catálogo, 3, nos. 1100-1579 for these listings.

14. AGI Indif. Gen. 2048.

15. Catálogo, 5, no. 4877. He went as criado of Alonso Gutiérrez de Toledo.

16. AGI Contratación 5224, Catálogo, 5, no. 4168.

17. For Costanza Rodríguez, see Catálogo, 3, no. 2977, and AGI Indif. Gen. 2093. For Diego de Trujillo's biography, see Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 362-365. Trujillo dictated a chronicle late in life, in 1571, which has been published, with biographical notes, by Raul Porras Barrenechea, Los cronistas del Perú (1528-1650) (Lima, 1962), and Miguel Muñoz de San Pedro, ed., Tres testigos de la conquista del Perú. 3d. ed. (Madrid, 1964).

18. Cosme de Ovando Paredes, who later succeeded to his father's entail at the death of his older brother, was accompanied by his first cousin Cristóbal de Ovando; Francisco Gutiérrez (who might also have been a relative, since his father was a Diego de Ovando), and Lorenzo de Ulloa "el mozo," younger brother of the encomendero Lorenzo de Ulloa; see Catálogo, 3, no. 2952. For the members of the family in the Indies, see Altman, "Spanish Hidalgos."

19. Catálogo, 2, no. 3632: and Navarro del Castillo, La epopeya, 155.

20. Boyd-Bowman, Indice, 2, 110. 3124; Catálogo, 4, no. 897, Robert I. Himmerich, "The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521-1555" (Ph.D. diss. UCLA, 1984), 239. Gonzalo de las Casas's daughters stayed and married in Trujillo. One married a son of Juan de Herrera, a returnee from Peru and regidor of Trujillo, and another a son of Juan de Escobar, brother of Fray Diego de Chaves (confessor of Philip II) and brother-inlaw of the famous captain in Peru, Pedro Alonso de Hinojosa (Muñoz de San Pedro, Croñicas trujillanas, 273, 267, from manuscrito de don Esteban de Tapia). His eldest son Francisco inherited the encomienda.

21. Navarro del Castillo, La epopeya, 401; AGI Indif. Gen. 2060. 22.

22. See Solís Rodríguez, "Francisco Becerra," 335-336.

23. Nodera's father, also named Diego de Nodera and a maestro de cantería, was a long-time resident of Mexico City. He had died in Mexico by 1573, when his widow Catalina Alonso testified in Francisco Becerra's información; Solís Rodriguez, "Francisco Becerra," 304. Nodera (the father) had a long-term business partnership with a Sevillian merchant named Luis de Córdoba, and he returned to Spain from Mexico on business at least once. Córdoba mentioned Nodera in a letter to his wife written from Puebla in 1566; see Enrique Otte, "Cartas privadas de Puebla del siglo XVI," Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas, 3 (1966): 3 1-36. Diego de Nodera was twenty-three years old in 1573 when he requested a license to go to Mexico to collect his father's estate and money that Luis de Córdoba still owed him, his petition apparently was rejected. AGI Indif. Gen. 2056

24. For Alvaro Rodríguez Chacón, see AGI Indif. Gen. 2054, 2055, and 2056; and Catálogo, 5, no. 3507. For Cristóbal Hernández Tripa and his wife Teresa González, see AGI Contrat. 5222, Indif. Gen. 2056, and Catálogo 5, 110. 3843. For Hernán González, see AGI Indif. Gen. 2056. He described his brother in these terms: "tiene comodo y posibilidad para nos aprovechar y remediar . . . con su hacienda."

25. AGI Indif. Gen. 2059.

26. Eleven of the men were from Trujillo, three from Santa Cruz, two from Orellana, and one each from Garciaz and Herguijuela.

27. The recruits for Florida are listed in AGI Contrat. 5220.

28. Francisco Medrano went to the Philippines in 1575 under a bond of 200,000 maravedís to stay eight years, taking two criados from Cáceres; see AGI Contrat. 5222, and Catálogo, 5, no 3659. Don Jerónimo de Ocampo made his will in the same year before departing for the Philippines (AHPC Pedro González 3829). Alonso and Hernando de Ovando, sons of Pedro de Ovando de Saavedra, also left that year, taking a criado from Cáceres and another from Medellín (AHPC Pedro González 3830, and Catálogo, 5, nos. 3656 and 3657).

29. The document with the cédulas authorizing recruitment and listing the expedition members is in AGI Contrat. 5227.

30. Information on recruitment for the expedition is in AHPC Pedro González 3830.

31. Ocana sent twenty-two recruits (four married), Escalona fourteen (one married), Ciudad Real thirteen (four married), Valladolid ten (two married), and Segovia, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Maqueda six each. Córdoba, with sixteen recruits (four married) was the only city in Andalusia to contribute more than four people.

32. In 1578 their father was trying to collect the estate of his two sons, Alonso and Hernando de Ovando, see AHPC Pedro González 3830.

33. Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, Relación del nuevo descubrimiento del famoso río grande que por el nombre del capitán que le descubrió se llamó el río de Orellana, introd. by Jose Toribio Medina (Cáceres, 1952), 101, n. 116.

34. Carvajal, Relación, 148, 167.

35. Muñoz de San Pedro y Nectario Marío, El gobernador y maestre de campo Diego García de Paredes, 286.

36. See Nicholas L. Scrattish, "New Perspectives on Castilian Migration to the Audiencias of Mexico and Lima, 1540-1580" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, 1975), 120-121. It is difficult to say what the costs of passage meant for prospective emigrants from different levels of society, although Scrattish is probably correct in suggesting that for many workers and artisans the expense was a deterrent to making the trip. He notes (p. 122) that dockyard workers in Seville in 1556 earned 5 reales (170 maravedís) a day, which means that in a year of steady employment they might earn 50,000-60,000 maravedís. Unskilled laborers and even skilled workers and artisans in smaller towns and cities earned much less than that. It is reasonable to assume, then, that workers and tradesmen usually could not make the trip without some form of assistance. What the cost of passage meant for hidalgos, especially young unmarried men, is less clear. Prior to departure these young bachelors probably lived in the households of fathers, relatives, or other nobles; thus whatever income they had was above and beyond the expenses of daily life (food, shelter) and could be invested in passage to the New World much more readily than the salary of a worker or artisan. For a vivid picture of passengers' experience at sea, see Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain (Baltimore, 1986), chap. 7: "Shipboard Life."

37. Inés González, a single woman of thirty, who went to Tierra Firme in 1579 as a criada of Diego Hernández de Aguilar, had lived with her aunt since her mother's death. Her aunt said "now she has sold what little she had to go to the Indies", see AGI Contrat 5227.

38. AHPC Diego Pacheco 4101

39. Cotrina's mother Isabel González mentions the sum in her will of 1579; see AHPC Alonso Pacheco 4103. For Cotrina's second trip, see Catálogo, 5, no. 1693.

40. Navarro del Castillo, La epopeya, 151, and AHPC Pedro de Grajos 3925.

41. AGI Indif. Gen. 2049. Letters of 1559 from Antonio and Andrés Pérez to their brother Francisco Gutiérrez appear in Otte, "Cartas privadas," 28-31.

42. AGI Indif. Gen. 2093.

43. AGI Indif. Gen. 2083.

44. AHPC Pedro de Grajos 3926.

45. AGI Indif. Gen. 2085.

46. See Schafer, El consejo de Indias, 2: 287-288, for the Comisarios de Perpetuidad. The Catálogo, 4, nos. 468-475, 483, and 485-487, lists Diego de Vargas Carvajal's criados and his two sons, don Diego and don Lorenzo de Carvajal.

47. See Catálogo, 5, flos. 2826-2828, 2830, and 2831; and AGI Indif. Gen. 2088.

48. AGI Indif. Gen. 2048, 2091.

49. Witnesses testified that Mateo Jiménez, a twenty-four-year-old bachelor from Trujillo who accompanied Luis del Saz to Peru in 1592, had been in Saz's service ("le ha servido y sirve de ordinario"). Jiménez was living with his mother. AGI Contratación 5237.

50. AHPC Pedro González 3829. This might have been the same Diego Martín Barquero who was apprenticed in 1571 to a shoemaker for two and a half years for eight ducados, in return for room, board, and shoes. The timing is right, since if he had been apprenticed in 1571, by 1576 he would have been an official, perhaps in his late teens or around twenty, the age when many young men emigrated.

51. AGI Justicia 215, no 1. I have not been able to clarify the reference to the "tierra nueva." Possibly it was New Granada ("nuevo reino de Granada").

52. For Jerónimo Holguín, see, for example, AHPC Pedro de Grajos 3926 and Alonso Pacheco 4101.

53. AMT García de Sanabria A-1-1 (1551).

54. AHPC Pedro González 3829. Martín de Chaves of Trujillo also made a will, in Seville, in 1534 before leaving for Peru; see AGI Justicia 1176, no. 2, ramo 1.

55. AMT García de Sanabria A-1-1. At one point Valencia referred to Amaro de Torres's wife, Mayor Martínez, as his sister and at other times called Torres his brother. If the relationship was close, people might use the terms brother and brother-in-law interchangeably, so Torres might have been his brother-in-law. Gonzalo de Valencia was going to Peru to work for the encomendero Lucas Martínez. Gonzalo's father, Martín de Valencia, had been sent by Alonso Ruiz to Peru to work for Martínez in the 15405, which would explain Valencia's connection with Ruiz. See Efraim Trelles Arestegui, Lucas Martínez Vegaso: Funcionamiento de una encomienda peruana inicial (Lima, 1982), 175.

56. AGI Indif. Gen. 2084.

57. AGI Indif. Gen. 2089.

58. AGI Indif, Gen. 2090; informaciones of García de Escobar and Juan Martín, sillero.

59. AGI Indif. Gen. 2082. In Justicia 405, no. 2, ramo 2, Pedro Alonso Carrasco gave his poder to his brother Florencio Carrasco and his son Bartolomé González Carrasco and other vecinos of Zorita

60. AHPC Diego Pacheco 4103, Pedro González 3827. One also sees, of course, the opposite process in effect, some emigrants feared to leave their dependents behind. Domingo Rodríguez, clárigo presbítero of Santa Cruz, in 1578 asked to take his twelve-year-old nephew Pedro Alonso with him to Peru "because he is an orphan and leaving him in this country he would suffer toil and need as a resulted of being . . . abandoned" (AGI Indif. Gen. 2090). Another priest, Bachiller Gaspar González from Trujillo who also went to Peru in 1579, took with him two sisters and a brother and his five-year-old niece, all of whom were "orphans and poor and under my authority . . . and I support them" (see AGI Contrat. 5227 and Indif. Gen. 2090).

61. The actual percentage of hidalgos is probably higher, but ambiguous cases were not counted. In dealing with relatively small cities where certain surnames are associated with noble lineages-such as Calderón, Orellana, Chaves, Vargas in Trujillo, or Ovando, Ulloa, or Golfín (Holguín) in Cáceres-it is tempting but not accurate to count everyone with these apellidos as hidalgos. Although even in the sixteenth century there still was a close relationship between surname and kinship group-one occasionally sees a statement to the effect that all the Carrascos of Trujillo and Zorita are hidalgos, for example (see testimony of Francisco Regodón for Alonso Carrasco, AGI Justicia 418, 1559)-in most cases hidalgos did not have exclusive claim to an apellido.

62. Gerbet, La noblesse, 151-152 (and table 1, p. 150), compares the figures for some cities in Extremadura. She arrives at an estimate of 17 percent (percentage of adult male population who were nobles) for Cáceres, compared to 4 percent for Plasencia or 5 percent for Mérida. The strength and consolidation of the provincial nobility in Cáceres compared to Plasencia or Mérida might have been due at least in part to the absence of great señors dominating the city (Plasencia was under the bishop and Mérida under the Order of Santiago). In his chapter "La sociedad" in Historia de Extremadura, 3: 550, Julio Fernández Nieva estimates that hidalgos formed 15 percent of Cáceres's population in the late sixteenth century and 12.6 percent of Trujillo's.

63. Gerbet, La noblesse, 151-153.

64. See, for example, references to Antonio de Ulloa, Lorenzo de Aldana, and Gómez de Solís in Pérez de Tudela, ed., Documentos relativos a don Pedro de la Gasca, 1: 80 (letter from Gonzalo Pizarro to Francisco de Carvajal, February 1546), and to Lorenzo de Aldana and Gómez de Solís in a letter of April 1547 from Gonzalo to Francisco Hernández Girón, 2: 46.

65. See Altman, "Spanish Hidalgos."

66. AHPC Pedro González 3829.

67. For Hernando de Moraga, see Navarro del Castilo, La epopeya, 161; and Roa y Ursúa, El reino de Chile, no. 151.

68. For the mayorazgo, see AHPC Pedro de Grajos 3924; the codicil to the will of Solís's father, Francisco de Solís, is in AHPC Pedro de Grajos 3925 (1556); the donation of their inheritance that Solís and his brother Juan de Hinojosa made to their brother Francisco de Ulloa Solís was executed in La Plata in 1559 (see inventory of bienes of another brother in Cáceres, Lorenzo de Ulloa Solís, 1579, AHPC Alonso Pacheco 4104).

69. Andrés Calderón Puertocarrero was listed as "mercader" when he went to Tierra Firme in 1562; see Catálogo, 4, no. 2281. For testimony regarding the murder in Peru of Gonzalo Almonte, a merchant from Guadalcanal, see AGI Justicia 1062, no. 1, ramo 2.

70. Altman, "Spanish Hidalgos."

71. AHPC Pedro González 3830. Pedro de Ovando de Saavedra actually died several years later, in 1584.

72. AHPC Alonso Pacheco 4102; Roa y Ursúa, El reyno de Chile, no. 1829.

73. See his will in AGI Justicia 1176, no. 2, ramo 1.

74. AGI Indif. Gen. 2091.

75. Doubtless Juan de Vita y Moraga was referring to Hernando de Moraga Galíndez y Gómez, who had been in Peru in the 1540s but by the 1570s probably was in Chile; see n. 67 above. Juan de Vita's información is in AGI Indif. Gen. 2055.

76. References to Pedro de Vita are in AHPC Diego Pacheco 4100 and Pedro de Grajos 3924 and 3926. There are a number of other such cases. Juan Altamirano de Hinojosa was twenty-three years old and Alonso de Carvajal twenty-two when they went to Popayán in 1563 as criados of Diego García de Paredes; both were hidalgos and their fathers deceased
(see Catálogo, 4, nos. 2781 and 2782, and AGI Contrat 5220).

77. AGI Indif. Gen. 2059. Their brother was called the "hijo bastardo" of Alonso García, tailor; probably all three were his children. The quote regarding the sisters' economic situation is: "son tan pobres que si no es usando mal de sus personas o poniendo taverna o bodega o algun mesón no se podrán sustentar porque para servir a nadie son ya mayores."

78. AGI Indif. Gen. 2059. Alonso said his relative Martín Blanco was "canónigo en la iglesia de Mexico." Fritz Schwaller has told me that there was no such canon in Mexico in the 1570s.

79. AGI Indif. Gen. 2089 (1577). He was described as "pobre y necesitado y tanto que con otros oficiales anda a coser para ganar de comer."

80. AGI Indif. Gen. 2058.

81. AGI Indif. Gen. 2094.

82. AGI Indif. Gen. 2087.

83. AGI Indif. Gen. 2085.

84. For Francisco de Orellana, see Catálogo, 4, no. 4027; and AGI Indif. Gen. 2081. For his father, Rodrigo de Orellana, see Navarro del Castillo, La epopeya, 335. Rodrigo's sister doña Beatriz de Orellana and her husband García Ruiz de Orellana went to Peru in 1559, taking as their criado Luis de Orellana, probably a relative, all vecinos of Orellana; see Catálogo, 3, no. 4293.

85. For Francisco González de Castro, see Catálogo, 3, no.1210, and the información of his nephew Juan de Castro in AGI Indif. Gen. 2083. For Pedro de Castro, see Catálogo, 5, no. 1381, and AGI Indif. Gen. 2083; he said he was over forty in 1568. For Juan de Castro see Catálogo, 3, no. 2481. A Diego de Castro went to Popayán in 1574, see AGI Indif. Gen. 2087. All are mentioned in testimony in AGI Indif. Gen. 2083. For Alonso de Castro, see AGI Contratación 5227.

86. Catálogo, 3, no. 2509, and AGI Indif. Gen. 2083.

87. See Altman, "Spanish Hidalgos" and "Emigrants and Society."

88. AGI Indif. Gen. 2084, información of Rodrigo Alonso de Boroa.

89. Cristóbal de Solís's información appears in AGI Indif. General 2089. For his father see AMT Pedro de Carmona A-1-9 and García de Sanabria A-1-1-3. Sancho Casco, clérigo presbítero, went to Peru in 1571; see AGI Indif. Gen. 2085. Nothing is known about Juan Casco other than Solís's reference to him in his información.

90. Seville was about 250 kilometers from Cáceres or Trujillo. José Luis Martín Martín writes in "Las funciones urbanas en la Transierra occidental" in La ciudad hispánica, 1: 405, that the medieval traveler could easily cover 50 km a day, even on foot. Thus the trip from Alta Extremadura to Seville would take about five days.

91. Testimony about Alonso Delvás appears in the información of his brother Francisco Delvás, a silversmith, who wanted to go join him in New Granada in 1568 taking his wife and three children; see AGI Indif. Gen. 2083.

92. AMT García de Sanabria A-1-1.

93. AGI Contratación 5220, 5224. For Andrada's family in Cáceres, see Lodo de Mayoralgo, Viejos linajes, 48.

94. See Catálogo, 3, no. 4183, and 4, no. 766, for Baltasar de Melo For Pedro de Melo, see Catálogo, 3, 110. 3557; AGI Indif. Gen. 2162A; and Acedo, "Linajes," Vargas, 48 a49, for donation to Ana de Melo. The last also refers to the poder that Ana de Melo gave to her husband in 1581 to settle accounts with her uncle Francisco Sánchez de Melo. Diego de Trujillo's letter appears in AGI Indif. Gen. 2084 (información of his nephew Baltasar Alvarez). For the poder of 1565, see AMT Pedro de Carmona A-1-9-1.

95. AHPC Diego Pacheco 4113.

96. AMT Pedro de Carmona B-1-23.

97. This process is described by Auke Pieter Jacobs in an article entitled "Emigration from Seville, 1550-1650" that will appear in a forthcoming volume edited by Ida Altman and James Horn, "To Make America": European Emigration in the Early Modern Period.

98. AGI Contrat. 5218, Indif. Gen. 2082.

99. Inés Alonso Cervera wrote a letter in 1578 to her son García de Escobar from Lima to this effect; see AGI Indif. Gen. 2090.