The Conspiracy of 1566 in New Spain (Part 2)
- Steven Perez
- Nov 12
- 6 min read
In preparation for the criminal trial of Don Martín Cortés, Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca, hundreds of witnesses were summoned to give their depositions according to a list of 93 questions. The defense sought to paint the charges against the marqués as false accusations resulting from the rivalry between the late viceroy Luis de Velasco and his allies on one side, and the marqués and his brothers on the other. They also attempted to show that the marqués was a faithful and loyal vassal who had no desire to rebel against the king and was incapable of organizing any effort to do so.
Antonio de Carvajal II (the younger), witness number 26, was summoned to testify on 9 October 1566. Antonio was sworn in as a regidor (city council member) and resident of Mexico City, stating that he was about 30 years old, more or less. He admitted to having been the guest of the marqués in his home on several occasions but that this would not prevent him from telling the truth in the inquiry. Antonio related how everyone had been looking forward to the arrival of the marqués in New Spain (he had grown up in Spain in the court of the Emperor Charles V and then his successor King Felipe II) but had alienated members of the ruling class shortly after his arrival. To demonstrate this point, Antonio described how the marqués had told an associate of Antonio’s that he had “not come to New Spain to make friends but to serve the king and his officials.”
Despite his aloofness toward the elites of Mexico City, as a member of the criollo class of encomenderos, the marqués was a natural ally in their attempt to dissuade the king from going through with the abolishment of the inheritance of encomiendas. A royal decree from the king had arrived indicating that the new laws were about to take effect. Antonio stated that the marqués had presented a proposal in a session of the city council to name attorneys on behalf of the encomenderos to go to Spain to petition the king and had offered to provide financing for this purpose. The marqués had also maneuvered to get his brother Martín Cortés named as one of the emissaries.
The bulk of Antonio’s testimony focused on the background to the rivalry between the viceroy Luis Velasco and his allies, and the marqués and his brothers. The marqués styled himself the rightful ruler of New Spain as his father’s heir, which brought him into increasing conflict with the viceroy over all sorts of matters. The viceroy’s younger brother Francisco de Velasco was married to Beatriz de Andrada, daughter of Leonel de Cervantes and Leonor de Andrada. The entire Cervantes clan, related to the viceroy through marriage, therefore took his side in the dispute.
Antonio had an inside perspective on this rivalry, as his sister María de Carvajal was married to Leonel de Cervantes (the younger). He related how Luis de Velasco II, the viceroy’s son, often spoke to him with hostility regarding the marqués and his honor, saying he was responsible for turning the visiting oidor from the Council of Indies against his father and would welcome any harm that came to the marqués. He also recounted how there had been a fight between the Cervantes clan and allies of the marqués that had resulted in a stabbing. It had involved Alonso de Villanueva (brother of the aforementioned Agustín de Villanueva), Baltazar de Aguilar (the first informant about the conspiracy) and other Cervantes family members against Bernardino de Bocanegra and his brother Fernando de Córdoba. After the incident, the marqués had gone to visit Bernardino and Fernando but not Alonso and Baltazar. The Cervantes family took great offense at the marqués taking sides and threatened revenge. From that time forward, the members of the Cervantes family generally refused to enter the home of the marqués. After the altercation, Luis de Velasco II visited Antonio de Carvajal at his home to see Antonio’s maternal cousin Juan de Valdivieso, who happened to be there that day. Luis inquired where they stood on the rivalry and Juan assured him that they were on his side.
Antonio then recounted another incident that illustrated the enmity between the two sides. One day, when leaving his house, he had run into Baltazar de Aguilar and Alonso de Villanueva on the street along with another fourteen or fifteen of their family members and friends. Antonio had joined up with them because he saw that his brother-in-law Leonel de Cervantes was among them. Unbeknownst to Antonio, the group had gathered with the intent of provoking the marqués.
The group had gone through the main plaza and arrived at the casas reales (government offices). Looking toward the street that continued toward Coyoacán, Antonio had spotted the marqués and called out to the group “There comes the marqués. Let’s go another way so we don’t run into him and make it seem as though we were trying to find him.” Baltazar and Alonso had replied, “That’s how we’re going, so let’s continue.”
Antonio had turned to his brother-in-law Leonel and had said, “I don’t want to get involved in this business,” as they appeared to be up to no good. Leonel had agreed, so the two left the group and went another way while the rest continued to confront the marqués. Fifteen minutes later, they had encountered the Cervantes group on another street. Baltazar and Alonso had scolded Leonel for having left them since he was their relative. Upon running into the marqués—stirrup to stirrup, as they had put it—they had refused to doff their caps in the customary sign of respect, and the marqués had remained silent. Their action was against decorum and had been meant to offend the marqués.
Antonio also recounted how the prior year, learning of the dispute between the Cervantes clan and the marqués, Friar Diego de Olarte, provincial head of the Order of San Francisco, had gone to speak with Leonor de Andrada, grandmother of all of the Cervantes men, asking her to help him reconcile the two groups. Leonor summoned her grandchildren to meet with the friar at her home and Antonio had also attended the meeting.
Friar Olarte had said, “Gentlemen, we have assembled your graces together to ask you to stop these hostilities, because I, on behalf of the marqués, regret them and wish to be your friend and that everyone be his, and so I, on his behalf and mine, will do whatever you have to offer. If it is necessary for the marqués to make some recompense for your grievance, I will arrange it, because it is not his intention to have offended anyone, and I do so in the presence of your grandmother as a third party so that my good wishes may be bring about this peace.”
To which Baltazar de Aguilar had replied, “We have every reason to be enemies of the marqués for having shown more friendship to others, even though he owes it to us, in addition to his insulting actions against us. Thus, we will not be his friends, nor is there any reason to discuss this further. In addition, we cannot give Your Reverence any answer because Don Luis de Velasco (the viceroy) is not here, and we follow his lead in this matter.” And with that, they had taken their leave of the friar and their grandmother, rebuffing their attempts to persuade them otherwise.
Lastly, Antonio’s testimony helped establish the marqués as a faithful and loyal servant of the king. The marqués had patriotically celebrated the Spanish victory over the French at Santa Elena, which drove them out of the territory and allowed the founding of the first capital of Spanish Florida (Charlesfort, South Carolina today). The marqués had very few offensive or defensive weapons of any kind, as Antonio had himself observed once when entering his bedroom at his residence. Furthermore, he was certain that the marqués had no guilt whatsoever in the plot to rebel against the king. The marqués wore a locket with the king’s portrait and Antonio noted that on many occasions the marqués would kiss the locket and say, “King Don Felipe, may God our Lord grant you such happy successes in everything that you deserve and that I wish for you, and may he take days (of my life) away from me and give them to you, because there is no man in the world who owes his king as much as I do for the great favors he has done me.” Antonio ended by saying there was nobody in all the land who had been treated more unfairly in this scheme. Little did Antonio know or probably even suspect at the time that some of this testimony would be used against him in the future.
To be continued in a future blog post. Subscribe to the blog to receive email updates.
Sources:
Archivo General de Indias
Proceso contra Martín Cortés: rebelión Nueva España
Patronato, 211, R. 2 (Contains summary of all witness testimony)
Patronato, 208, R. 1 (Antonio de Carvajal’s full testimony starts on Image 1346)
So will there be a Part III to this story or will the consequences of Antonio's testimony be part of another saga?