Mendoza, Pedro de (1487–1537)

Pedro de Mendoza (b. 1487; d. 23 June 1537), first adelantado (frontier military commander) of Río de la Plata (1536–1537). Born in Guadix, Spain, Mendoza probably served in the Italian campaigns of Charles V. As part of an attempt by the Spanish crown to control Portuguese expansion in the New World, he was charged with populating the Río de la Plata area in 1534. Although he fell seriously ill before departing Sanlúcar da Barrameda, he had recovered sufficiently by August 1535 to embark on the expedition, which was composed of eleven ships and more than 2,000 men (and a few women) drawn primarily from the Basque region, Andalusia, and the Low Countries.

In February 1536, Mendoza founded a fortified city on the banks of the Río de la Plata, a city that he christened Santa María del Buen Aire. Within a year he and his men were forced to abandon their settlement because of the hostility of the Querandí Indians and the resultant lack of food. Suffering from hunger, recurring sickness, and Indian attack, Mendoza decided to return to Spain in early 1537; he died at sea. Those who had remained in Buenos Aires were compelled to abandon it in 1541 and to withdraw 1,000 miles upstream to the city of Asunción.

See alsoBuenos Aires; Río de la Plata.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Enrique Udaondo, Diccionario biográfico colonial argentino (1945), pp. 582-587.

Additional Bibliography

Aguirre, Gisela. Pedro de Mendoza. Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1999.

                                   Susan M. Socolow