The first governor of Maynas was Diego Vaca de Vega[es], who in 1619 obtained the authorization and assistance necessary for the formation of a new government from the Real Audiencia of Quito. On December 9, 1619, the act of founding the city of San Francisco de Borja was signed; In 1634 the foundation was completed and the city council, councilors and other officials were elected. He divided the Maynas Nation into 24 encomiendas. In 1637, the governor of Maynas, Vaca de la Cadena, obtained the first Jesuits from Quito. The priests Cuxia and Cueva were appointed by provision of the Audiencia of Quito, after consultation with the bishop of Quito, as the founders of the Mainas missions with the Curato de Borja as a stopover, where they arrived on February 6, 1638. The Jesuits of Quito began the missions in the governorate and then spread along the Amazon and Ucayali rivers.[1]
In 1656, the governorate, dependent on the Audiencia of Quito, was to include the city of San Francisco de Borja and all the provinces, nations and rivers, where the so-called Quito Jesuits, were founding the missions. By this decision, the governorate included the Ucayali River in a general and indefinite manner, because since previous years the Jesuits had spread along the Ucayali River to the high grasslands whose possession was ratified by King Charles II, according to the real cédula of 1689, which declares:
[...] that the Missions and Reductions of Upper and Lower Ucayali to the pajonales where the conquests of Father Ricter had reached. They belonged to the Jesuit Missionaries of Quito; and the successor king, Count of Monclava ordered that if said Jesuits had been dispossessed, they would immediately be replaced. It is assumed that these sites of the Pajonales are near the junction of the Jauja with the Apurímac, from where it is called Ucayali, at 11 degrees of southern altitude.
Based on the conformity of the facts of the conquest of the missionaries of Quito, the governorate extended over the Ucayali River to the area occupied by the nations of the Campas (or Cambas) Indians, that is, bathed by the Paucartambo, Santa Anna, Urubamba, Apurimac and Jauja, that is, up to the boundaries of the Real Audiencia of Charcas, today Bolivia. The viceroy of Peru not only did not provide help to the Jesuits but was their greatest opponent, so much so that the King of Spain Charles II intervened through the Royal Decree of 1689 in defense of the rights of the Jesuits of Quito and the Presidency of Quito. In 1685 Father Samuel Fritz, who was one of the Quito Jesuits of German origin, had spread throughout the Amazon to near the mouths of the Atlantic Ocean; but he was stripped of his Great Omagua Missions by the Portuguese. In 1698 Father Richter and the clergyman Bárgez were martyred.
Map of Quito that includes the Franciscan missions in Sucumbíos and those of the Jesuits in Maynas.
In the context of the difficulties in sending religious to the Marañón and the pressures to repatriate them to Europe, the decision was made to intervene from the Court of Madrid. A Father Procurator was in charge of recruiting people, providing them with resources and faculties. Despite the adversities, in September 1684, Father Manuel Rodríguez assigned seven Jesuits to Quito, among whom Juan Gastel of Austria, Samuel Fritz and Enrique Richter of Bohemia stood out. His mission in Marañón, starting in August 1685, focused on carrying out missionary conquests that surpassed the previous ones. The Jesuits faced challenging conditions, such as isolation, the tropical climate, and hostility from the local population. Juan Gastel was sent to Borja, Samuel Fritz to the Omaguas mission in the Amazon, and Enrique Richter to the Alto Ucayali Reductions. The Jesuit missions in Maynas, at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century, housed more than a thousand people, but climatic difficulties, diseases, isolation and the hostility of the indigenous people hindered their development, despite the efforts of the missionaries from Quito, Cuenca and Loja. Comparatively, these Amazonian missions faced greater challenges compared to the Jesuit missions among the Guaraní, whose populations ranged between 36,000 and 141,000 people between 1643 and 1732, respectively.[1][2]
On December 12, 1744, upon the death of the governor of Toledo, the Jesuits obtained from the Presidency of Quito the suppression of the Maynas governorate. A senior justice, Francisco Matías de Rioja, was chosen for Borja. This provision was approved by the viceroy of New Granada on November 28, 1746, and by the king of Spain in 1748. In 1745 a Royal Provision ordered: "that the jurisdiction of the Napo River be added to the Government of Quijos" that is, reincorporate to Quijos the territory of lower Napo that belonged to it through a cédula. On May 1, 1754, according to Basabé's Report, Maynas was only a possession and the territory of Bajo Napo was reincorporated into the Government of Quijos. The Royal Decree of September 2, 1772 provided:
[...that] those currently serving cease the exercise of the three Governments of Borja, Quijos and Macas, subrogating themselves to those that I (the King) will appoint [...] whose Governors will be responsible for corresponding with each other, reciprocally communicating everything what was offered to them and seemed important to that end. It is consulted on the subordination of these Governors to a Governor General to establish themselves in Pebas or another place on purpose to prevent the Portuguese invasions [...] and that the Bishopric of Quito place a Vicar General in La Laguna
It is known that as a consequence of the Esquilache Riots, it was decided to expel the Jesuits, something that affected the missions that were deployed in this governorate. Regarding the expulsion, there is testimony about the journey and the adventures that the Jesuits had to endure towards Europe, especially those who were in the missions, such as that documented through a letter from missionary Javier Crespo to Spanish functionary José Diguja[es].[3]
As a consequence of this, in 1773 the king of Spain appointed Juan Francisco Goméz de Arce governor of Maynas. On February 15, 1779, the Council studied the project of erecting "an episcopal village in the City of Huánuco", "whose jurisdiction would embrace the entire border of those mountains of Tarma de Cajamarquilla...; it was resolved to consult if it was not of the case to be established "by placing a Bishop who has residence in the City of Borja [...] report whatever is offered and appears." The Royal Decree of July 12, 1790 ordered the Maynas Missions to be handed over to the Franciscans of Quito.[4]
On March 24, 1794, Calvo's appointment clearly and explicitly distinguished the military government from the political government. In 1802 by Royal Decree, the governorate of Maynas was segregated from the Viceroyalty of New Granada and formed an integral part of the Viceroyalty of Peru with which, after the Peruvian War of Independence, it became part of the territory of the Protectorate of Peru and its subsequent republic, being the focus of a longstanding dispute between the governments of Peru and Ecuador until the signing of the Brasilia Presidential Act in 1998.
List of governors
The following is a list of governors (gobernadores) since 1715:[5]
The History of Ecuador covers human habitation in the region reaching back 8,000 years.
The Viceroyalty of Peru, officially known as the Kingdom of Peru, was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in South America, governed from the capital of Lima. Peru was one of the two Spanish viceroyalties in the Americas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Iquitos is the capital city of Peru's Maynas Province and Loreto Region. It is the largest metropolis in the Peruvian Amazon, east of the Andes, as well as the ninth-most populous city in Peru. Iquitos is the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road that is not on an island; it is only accessible by river and air.
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Maynas is one of the eight provinces in the Loreto Region in northeastern Peru. Its capital, Iquitos, is also Loreto's regional capital and the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest.
The Ecuadorian–Peruvian territorial dispute was a territorial dispute between Ecuador and Peru, which, until 1928, also included Colombia. The dispute had its origins on each country's interpretation of what Real Cedulas Spain used to precisely define its colonial territories in the Americas. After independence, all of Spain's colonial territories signed and agreed to proclaim their limits in the basis of the principle of uti possidetis juris, which regarded the Spanish borders of 1810 as the borders of the new republics. However, conflicting claims and disagreements between the newly formed countries eventually escalated to the point of armed conflicts on several occasions.
The Captaincy General of Venezuela, also known as the Kingdom of Venezuela, was an administrative district of colonial Spain, created on September 8, 1777, through the Royal Decree of Graces of 1777, to provide more autonomy for the provinces of Venezuela, previously under the jurisdiction of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo and then the Viceroyalty of New Granada. It established a unified government in political (governorship), military, fiscal (intendancy), ecclesiastical (archdiocese) and judicial (audiencia) affairs. Its creation was part of the Bourbon Reforms and laid the groundwork for the future nation of Venezuela, in particular by orienting the province of Maracaibo towards the province of Caracas.
Mateo de la Mata Ponce de León was a Spanish colonial official in Peru. He was president of the Audiencia of Quito from 1691 to 1699. From March 2 to August 15, 1716 he served as interim viceroy of Peru.
The Spanish missions in South America comprise a series of Jesuit Catholic religious outposts established by Spanish Catholics in order to spread the Christian doctrine among the local natives.
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The First Ecuadorian–Peruvian War took place between 1857 and 1860. The conflict began when Ecuador attempted to sell Amazon basin land claimed by Peru in order to settle a debt with British creditors. When diplomatic relations between the two countries broke down, prior to the fragmentation of the Ecuadorian government into several competing factions, the Peruvian government ordered a blockade of Ecuador's ports in order to force the cancellation of the sale, and the official acknowledgement of Peruvian ownership of the disputed territories. By late 1859, control of Ecuador was consolidated between General Guillermo Franco, in the city of Guayaquil, and a provisional government in Quito headed by Gabriel García Moreno. Peruvian President Ramón Castilla sailed to Guayaquil with several thousand soldiers in October 1859, and negotiated the Treaty of Mapasingue with General Franco in January 1860. The signing of the treaty indicated Ecuadorian compliance with all of Peru's demands, and temporarily marked the end of the territorial dispute between the two countries. However, in September 1860, the forces of the provisional government, commanded by García Moreno and General Juan José Flores defeated Franco's government at the Battle of Guayaquil, ending the civil war in Ecuador. The new government disavowed the Treaty of Mapasingue, followed shortly afterwards by its Peruvian counterpart; this re-opened the territorial dispute.
Samuel Fritz SJ was a Czech Jesuit missionary, noted for his exploration of the Amazon River and its basin. He spent most of his life preaching to Indigenous communities in the western Amazon region, including the Omaguas, the Yurimaguas, the Aisuare, the Ibanomas, and the Ticunas. In 1707 he produced the first accurate map of the Amazon River, establishing as its source the Marañón.
The Real Audiencia de Buenos Aires, were two audiencias, or highest courts, of the Spanish crown, which operated in Buenos Aires. The jurisdiction of the first covered the territory of the Governorate of the Río de la Plata and operated from 1661 to 1671. The second began to function in 1783 and had jurisdiction over the parts of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata not covered by the Audiencia de Charcas, that is to say the intendancies of Buenos Aires, Córdoba del Tucumán, Salta del Tucumán and Paraguay. In 1810, after the May Revolution, it was suspended, and in 1813 the Assembly of the Year XIII permanently abolished it. The Audiencias operated in the city's cabildo building.
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The Colombian–Peruvian territorial dispute was a territorial dispute between Colombia and Peru, which, until 1916, also included Ecuador. The dispute had its origins on each country's interpretation of what Real Cedulas Spain used to precisely define its possessions in the Americas. After independence, all of Spain's former territories signed and agreed to proclaim their limits in the basis of the principle of uti possidetis juris, which regarded the Spanish borders of 1810 as the borders of the new republics. However, conflicting claims and disagreements between the newly formed countries eventually escalated to the point of armed conflicts on several occasions.
The General Command of Maynas was a governorate and general command of the Spanish Empire that existed from 1802 to 1822. It replaced the governorates of Quijos and Governorate of Maynas, excluding the latter's village of Papallacta.
The Governorate of Quijos, also known unofficially as the Province of the Quijos prior to 1577, was one of the provinces established at the eastern part of the Real Audiencia of Quito during in 1559, varying between the Viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada until its ultimate reincorporation to Peru through the real cédula of July 15, 1802, as part of the General Command of Maynas.
The Governorate of Bracamoros was a governorate (gobernación) of the Spanish Empire established during the 16th century in an area of the Amazon rainforest originally populated by the now extinct Bracamoros people.
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