When Historians Are Correct

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest
outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.
Joseph Conrad

History is the version of past events that
people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte


Recently, Francisco Linares, President of the Patronato de Panamá Viejo, and Gustavo García Paredes, Rector of the Universidad Nacional de Panamá, unveiled a bust of Pedrarias Dávila at the site where the capital of this nation was founded. Although I find the idea of honoring Dávila distasteful, it is the prerogative of the Patronato to pay homage to whomever they wish. Pedrarias Dávila is, after all, the founder of Panamá City.

What stunned me, however, was that Mr. Linares and Mr. García Paredes called upon scholars and students of history to help revise Dávila’s dastardly reputation. They claim that he was a good man whose only interest was to serve his monarchs.

In his speech, Mr. Linares, suggested that Pedrarias Dávila was a visionary, a man who fully comprehended the strategic importance that Panamá’s location would have for the conquest of South America—this, he argued, even before the Pacific was discovered.

Please.

Mr. Linares then stated that history has treated Pedrarias Dávila unfairly because of his rivalry with the charismatic discoverer of the Pacific, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa.

Jumping quickly on this odd revisionist bandwagon, Mr. García Paredes labeled Pedrarias Dávila an obedient servant of the Spanish Crown who was only following orders to murder and enslave the natives, take possession of their lands, and send plenty of gold to the Old World. The rector of Panama’s National University added that no person in his or her right mind should expect anything other than extreme violence as a result of such an enterprise. Thus, he said, it is our obligation to reevaluate Pedrarias Dávila’s historical legacy; to treat him objectively, as a man of his times whose only desire was to serve the emerging Spanish empire.

I am not making this up.

Let’s say that for a fraction of a second I’m willing to give Mr. Linares and Mr. García Paredes the benefit of the doubt and ask: have historians really given Pedrarias Dávila a bum rap?

The problem is that I have read good deal about Pedrarias Dávila. Invariably, the authors conclude that, to state it simply, Pedrarias Dávila was not a nice person. In fact, his cruelty and lust for power place him on the same plane with some of history’s worst tyrants. The facts are well-documented. Let’s examine just a few.

• Before Pedrarias Dávila arrived in Panamá, Balboa had worked out a truce with most of the local caciques. If Spain had followed his model for peaceful coexistence, much human suffering could’ve been avoided. However, under Dávila’s orders his captains ignored the truce and set forth on a campaign of enslavement and genocide.

• Balboa’s achievements earned him the gratitude of the Spanish Crown who created a special title for him: Adelantado del Mar del Sur. But it also earned him Davila’s envy. In league with Francisco Pizarro—another Conquisitador whose cruelty is well known, and who also wanted Balboa out of the way so the conquest of the Inca Empire could be all his—Pedrarias engineered Balboa’s capture, trial, and beheading (this, in spite of Balboa being Dávila’s son-in-law). Moreover, the governor moved quickly on the administration of “justice” because he suspected, correctly, that a royal document ordering that Balboa not be harmed was on its way across the Atlantic. Alas, it arrived too late.

• Because of the repeated complaints of Pedrarias Dávila’s cruelty and unscrupulous behavior, the Crown relieved him of the governorship of Panamá and assigned him the governorship of Nicaragua.

• As governor of Nicaragua, Davila’s first act was to behead Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, the man he had sent to conquer and settle this province, effectively eliminating any competing authority.

• Dávila ordered the capture of all Indians who, if strong enough, were sold as slaves and shipped to the mines of South America.

• Dávila ruled the Indians with an iron fist. He would not tolerate rebellion. To discourage dissent, he had two dozen dogs that had been especially trained to hunt and kill humans. In the most notorious and well-documented case, after members of the Chontales people killed two Spaniards in a surprise attack, Dávila ordered that fifteen chieftains be torn apart in the plaza of León Viejo. He presided over the ghastly event from a seat of honor.

• His cruelty was such that Fray Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destrucción de la India is based in part on Dávila’s treatment of Indians (but because of the gravity of the accusations the publisher did not allow the Dominican friar to use names). It is not surprising, then, that El Protector de los Indios fled Nicaragua in fear of his life.

• As a result of Davila’s excesses, both against the indigenous and against his own men, the Spanish Crown, in an unusual move, eventually prohibited him from administering justice—although he was allowed to remain governor.

• Incredibly—or perhaps not so—after Dávila’s death his family continued behaving along similar lines. Rodrigo de Contreras, his son-in-law, inherited the governorship and only lasted a year because he was tried and found guilty of corruption and excessive cruelty. Isabel de Bobadilla, Pedrarias’s wife, established one of the first houses of prostitution in the colonies: hiring Spanish women, and enslaving the Indian ones. On February 26, 1550, Pedrarias Davila’s grandsons, Hernando and Pedro, led the first criollo rebellion against the Spanish Crown because some family properties had been confiscated. In the process they murdered Fray Antonio de Valdivieso, bishop of Leon Viejo. Dávila’s descendants then led a group of rebels to Panamá Viejo. They took the city, but within a few days the loyalists regained it and Hernando was executed. Pedro fled into the jungles and was never heard from again.

So ends the saga of Pedrarias Dávila and his clan.

I concede that Pedrarias Dávila was a man of his times and that he was far from being the only Spaniard who ruled by way of terror. However, to the members of el Patronato de Panama Viejo, I say: Honor Pedrarias if you feel you must, but please don’t ask us to waste our time searching for a nonexistent loophole. If we do this, then all war criminals, including Hitler, should be reconsidered in light of “their times.”

History has already passed judgment on Pedrarias Dávila, and he has been found guilty.

Rightfully so.