AGUADO, PEDRO DE

Chronicler of the conquest of Venezuela and Colombia; b. Valdemoro (Madrid), 1538; d. probably Bogotá, 1609? He became a Franciscan and in 1560 was included in an expedition of 50 missionaries who were being sent to Peru. He left Spain in 1561 and disembarked in Cartagena. After doing missionary work among the native tribes, he became guardian of the Franciscan convent in Bogotá and enlarged the establishment. As provincial, he went to Spain in 1573 on important business. He must have just written the Recopilación historial, based on Medrano's account, for he referred to it as having been completed in the petition he presented at court in 1575. After reworking the chronicle, he presented it in 1579 to obtain permission for publication. Although permission was granted, the work was not published then. In 1583 he was back in Bogotá and in 1589 he was commissary in Cartagena.

Aguado wrote with the ideas of the counter reformation, presenting events as being the work of men in the exercise of their free will and asserting that therefore men were subject to disciplinary punishment if they acted against the right conscience. The work was divided into two parts, and it was not until 1906 that a partial version of the first part was published in Bogotá. In 1913 and 1915 the second part was published in Caracas. The entire work was published by the Academy of Madrid as Historia de Santa Marta (1916–17) and Historia de Venezuela (1918–19). It was published under the title Recopilación historial in Bogotá in 1956. The manuscripts have been preserved in the Academy of Madrid, and copies are in the library of the Royal Palace.

Bibliography: p. de aguado, Recopilación historial, 4 v. (Bogotá 1956–57) 1:14–23. a. lÓpez, "Historiadores franciscanos de Venezuela y Colombia: Fray Pedro de Aguado y Fray Pedro Simón," Archivo Ibero-Americano 14 (1920) 207–235. g. morÓn, Los cronistas y la historia (Caracas 1957). o. fals borda, "Odyssey of a Sixteenth-Century Document: Fray Pedro Aguado's Recopilación historial," Hispanic American Historical Review 35 (1955) 203–220. d. ramos, "El cronista Pedro Simon," in Noticias historiales (Caracas 1963).

[d. ramos]