HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 313

and campaigns against the Muslims in
North Africa. He established important con-
nections through marriage and friendships
with senior Crown officials. These led to his
appointment as governor of the colony of
Castilla del Oro (commonly referred to as
Darién and corresponding to present-day
P ANAMA ) in 1514. He was almost immedi-
ately involved in disputes with various con-
quistadores, and several of these rivals to
his power were executed by his order. The
most notable of his victims was V ASCO
N ÚÑEZ DE B ALBOA , who had been the first
European to reach the Pacific (1513). Bal-
boa had taken great pains to establish
friendly and cooperative relations with the
natives of the region, but Pedrarias carried
out a series of military campaigns that anni-
hilated most of them and reduced the sur-
vivors to virtual serfdom. Although
Pedrarias essentially destroyed all of the
work of his predecessors, he replaced their
settlements by a structure of tight adminis-
tration that assured the stability of the area
thereafter. Darién was a zone of intense
activity during the era of the Pedrarias
regime as it was a transit point for Span-
iards seeking gold and glory in South Amer-
ica and anxious to pursue the opportunities
opened up by the realization that the Pacific
provided a new route to Asia. Pedrarias
encouraged trade, commerce, and construc-
tion and even made some tentative attempts
to create a forerunner of the Panama Canal.
He was, however, determined to keep all
such activities under his personal control.
Suspicion and jealousy governed all of his
administrative actions. F RANCISCO P IZARRO
and his partners were particularly ham-
pered in their efforts to launch the conquest
of P ERU by the interference of Pedrarias. In
1523 Pedrarias completed the establish-

ment of his personal domination of what is
now N ICARAGUA by deposing and executing
the officer whom he had sent there to com-
plete the conquest. Nicaragua became, in
fact, Pedrarias's own stronghold when the
new ministers in Spain dismissed him as
governor of Darién in 1526. He withdrew
to Nicaragua and maintained his authority
there until his death five years later.
Pedrarias is remarkable among the
founders of Spain's New World empire for
the fact that he took up his governorship at
an age when most men of his era were dead
or retired. In a setting where his rivals were
often 30 or 40 years younger, he displayed
an adroit cunning and a ruthless brutality
that eliminated or at least intimidated all
competitors. Although not himself an active
explorer, he was constantly alert to new cir-
cumstances and eager to take charge of new
domains. His founding of what is now Pan-
ama City (1519) reflects his perception of
the shifting patterns of travel and commu-
nication that were replacing the original
Spanish focus on the Caribbean. Pedrarias
was perhaps the harshest and most fright-
ening figure of his time but certainly must
rank high among the conquistadores for
transforming mere conquered lands into a
foundation for imperial expansion.

Pedro I (Pedro IV of Portugal,
Peter I) (1798-1834)
king of Portugal and emperor of Brazil
The son of J OHN VI, the nine-year-old Pedro
accompanied his father to B RAZIL in 1807
when the royal family fled the French inva-
sion. Finally returning to L ISBON in 1821,
John left Pedro in Rio de Janeiro as regent
and advised him to join the incipient inde-
pendence movement and take Brazil for