Los afanes del adelantado de guatemala, pedro de alvarado, por descubrir y poblar en el mar del sur documentos y exploraciones

Abstract

The Pacific Ocean -the South Sea- was a Spanish ocean par excellence during the XVI century. Discovered by Balboa in 1513, it was later crossed by both, Ferdinand Magellan and García Jofre de Loaisa. Later on, there were the expedition of Álvaro de Saavedra, who set out to the Moluccas Islands in 1527, an expedition entirely funded by Hernán Cortés, and that of Hernando de Grijalva who, with the same sponsorship, crossed the Pacific Ocean be­tween 1536 and 1538 and got lost on the Moluccas Islands. Less known are the ef­forts made by Pedro de Alvarado, Gover­nor of Guatemala, to discover new islands and land in the South Sea. For that reason, he signed and Agreement with the Crown on the 5^th of August of 1532. Pedro de Alvarado's first maritime expedition, on the 23^d of January of 1534, set out to Peru, but we do not know whether he intended to do so. The Navy ended up selling it to Diego de Almagro at one hundred gold pesos. Alvarado was not deterred: in 1536, he set out to Spain and got the Crown to sign another Agreement, in 1538, to discover the South Sea. However, the Governor of Guatemala died in a horse accident on the 24^th of June of 1541 in New Galicia, to the northwest of Mexico, and he could not see his dream of discovering and peopling the South Sea come true.