Alvarado Xicotencatl, Leonor (1524–1583)
Alvarado Xicotencatl, Leonor (1524–1583)
Leonor Alvarado Xicotencatl (b. 22 March 1524; d. 1583), the first prominent ladina (child of Spanish and Indian parents) born in Guatemala.
Daughter of the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado and of Luisa de Xicotencatl, a Tlascalteca Indian princess, doña Leonor was born at Utatlán, the capital of the Quiché, and was brought up by her godparents. Alvarado arranged her marriage to his friend and chief lieutenant, Pedro de Portocarrero, about 1541. She escaped death when a mudslide resulting from a flood and earthquake covered the capital at Almolonga and killed her stepmother, doña Beatríz de la Cueva, in 1541.
After the death of Portocarrero in 1547, doña Leonor married Francisco de la Cueva, the brother of her stepmother. From this marriage were born the children who were Pedro de Alvarado's descendants in Guatemala. Her second husband died in 1576, and doña Leonor died seven years later, at the age of fifty-nine. Her remains were buried in the Cathedral at Santiago (now Antigua Guatemala), beside those of her father and her stepmother.
See alsoCueva de Alvarado, Beatriz de la .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
José Milla, La hija del adelantado, 4th ed. (1936), a novel.
Adrian Recinos, Doña Leonor de Alvarado, y otros estudios (1958).
Additional Bibliography
Vega, Carlos B. Conquistadoras: Mujeres heroicas en la conquista de América. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2003.
David L. Jickling