Ibarra, Diego (c. 1510–1600)

Diego Ibarra (b. ca. 1510; d. 1600), Mexican miner. A hidalgo from Guipúzcoa and a knight of Santiago, Ibarra came to New Spain in 1540 during the time of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and participated in the wars against the Chichimec tribes and the Caxcanes in Jalisco. Ibarra, Juan de Tolosa, Cristóbal de Oñate (1504/1505–c. 1570), and Baltazar de Temiño de Bañuelos (1530–1600) are credited with discovering and opening the great silver mines of Zacatecas and founding that city on 1 January 1548. After amassing a great fortune in the mines, Ibarra married Ana de Valasco y Castilla, a daughter of Viceroy Luis de Velasco. In 1561 he loaned his nephew Francisco Ibarra 200,000 pesos to explore Nueva Galicia and Nueva Vizcaya. In 1576, Ibarra succeeded Francisco (d. 1575) as governor of Nueva Vizcaya. Ibarra organized an expedition of conquest into Sinaloa in 1583. He dedicated some of his fortune to constructing parish churches, the most notable of which being the parochial church at Pánuco. Ibarra moved to Mexico City later in life and finally to Tultitlán, where he died in 1600.

See alsoMixtón War .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Peter Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546–1700 (1971), pp. 11-12.

Phillip Wayne Powell, Soldiers, Indians, and Silver: The Northward Advance of New Spain, 1550–1600 (1952), pp. 11-14.

Additional Bibliography

Bakewell, Peter, editor. Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas. Aldershot and Brookfield: Variorum, 1997.

                                       Aaron Paine Mahr