Toledo y Figueroa, Francisco de (1515–1582)

Francisco de Toledo y Figueroa (b. 10 July 1515; d. 21 April 1582), viceroy of Peru (1569–1581). Don Francisco de Toledo, as he signed himself, was born in Oropesa, New Castile, the third son of the third Count of Oropesa. Through his mother he was closely related to the dukes of Alba and distantly to Emperor Charles V. In 1535 he became a member of the Order of Alcántara.

After many years in the crown's military and diplomatic service, Toledo was appointed viceroy of Peru in 1568. The journey to his new post took him from February to September of 1569. He left ship in the extreme north of Peru and traveled by land to Lima, the capital, inspecting settlements on the desert coast as he progressed.

Peru had a thirty-five-year history of interrupted government and rebellion. Toledo immediately showed himself to be suspicious of any group with power on whatever level: the audiencias (courts) of Lima and La Plata, the secular and regular clergy, the encomenderos, the cabildos (town councils), and, of course, the independent Inca state of Vilcabamba. After a critical examination of their actions during his administration, he attacked, and generally managed to reduce, their authority and autonomy.

Among his other duties, Toledo was ordered to make a Visita General (general inspection) of his viceroyalty. To visit the entire territory, from New Granada (now Colombia) to Chile, was clearly impossible. But in October 1570 Toledo began a tour of the heartland of his jurisdiction that lasted more than five years and took him through the major administrative, economic, and population centers of the Central Andes: Huamanga, Cuzco, Potosí, La Plata, and Arequipa. No other viceroy in the Spanish Empire ever knew his territory as intimately as Toledo came to know his through this exacting personal inspection.

During the visita, Toledo achieved the elimination of Inca resistance at Vilcabamba and the execution of the last independent Inca ruler, Túpac Amaru; the reducción (resettlement) of many native people in new towns for more efficient government, evangelization, and extraction of their labor; the final formulation of the mita supplying workers to Spanish mercury and silver mines at Huancavelica and Potosí; and full adoption of a silver-refining process utilizing mercury. These last two measures stimulated a vast growth in silver production. Toledo also issued a multitude of regulations on other administrative, economic, and social matters.

Much of what is attributed to Toledo alone, such as the reducción program and the mining mita, had origins in earlier administrations, but he certainly gave final and legal form to such schemes. Many of his actions seemed, then and later, highly damaging to the native people. For them, he was, and still is, criticized. He was determined that Peru should submit to firm Spanish control and serve Spain's purposes. To those ends, he used whatever means seemed necessary, enforcing the rules with an intolerant and impatient authoritarianism. He enthusiastically praised the efforts of the first inquisitors in Peru, who had traveled with him to Lima. To justify his attacks on Vilcabamba, Túpac Amaru, and other descendants of Inca rulers and nobles, he gathered evidence designed to show that the Incas had been tyrants and that therefore Spaniards had been, and were, fully justified in destroying them.

The rigors of the Visita General left Toledo tired and ill. The final five years of his administration were far less active than its first half. Nevertheless, he laid a solid foundation for future Spanish administration of South America. His legislation became a model for governors throughout the empire. He was in a substantial sense the organizer of Spanish Peru, comparable to Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza in Spanish Mexico.

See alsoMendoza, Antonio de; Peru: From the Conquest Through Independence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Roberto Levillier, Don Francisco de Toledo, supremo organizador del Perú. Su vida, su obra (1515–1582) (1935).

Arthur Franklin Zimmerman, Francisco de Toledo: Fifth Viceroy of Peru, 1569–1581 (1938).

Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America, (1949: repr. 1965), esp. pp. 135-137, 165-172.

John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (1970), esp. chaps. 20-23.

Lewis Hanke, ed., Los virreyes españoles en América durante el gobierno de la casa de Austria: Perú (1978).

Karen Spalding, Huarochirí: An Andean Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule (1984), esp. pp. 156-168, 209-227.

Guillermo Lohmann Villena and María Justina Sarabia Viejo, eds., Francisco de Toledo: Disposiciones gubernativas para el virreinato del Perú, 1569–1574, 2 vols. (1986, 1989).

Additional Bibliography

Gómez Rivas, León. El virrey del Perú don Francisco de Toledo. [Toledo]: Instituto Provincial de Investigaciones y Estudios Toledanos, Diputación Provincial, 1994.

Merluzzi, Manfredi. Politica e governo nel Nuovo Mondo: Francisco de Toledo viceré del Perú (1569–1581). Roma: Carocci, 2003.

                                       Peter Bakewell