The Dresden Codex is a pre-Columbian Maya book of the eleventh or twelfth century of the Yucatecan Maya in Chichén Itzá. The Maya codex is believed to be a copy of an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier. Historians sa...

Pedrarias Dávila (Pedro Arias de Ávila) y Ortiz de Cota, was a Spanish colonial administrator. He led the first great Spanish expedition in the New World. In 1519 he founded Panama City and moved his capital there in 1524. Moreover, he w...

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to gene...

Ferdinand II, called the Catholic, was in his own right the King of Sicily from 1468 and King of Aragon from 1479. As a consequence of his marriage to Isabella I, he was King of Castile jure uxoris as Ferdinand V from 1474 until her death i...

Juan de la Cosa was a Spanish cartographer, conquistador and explorer. He made the earliest extant European world map to incorporate the territories of the Americas that were discovered in the 15th century, sailed with Christopher Columbus...

Francisco Hernández de Córdoba is usually reputed as the founder of Nicaragua, and in fact he founded two important Nicaraguan cities, Granada and León. The currency of Nicaragua is named the córdoba in his memory. Cordoba was an officer of...

Diego Columbus was the 2nd Admiral of the Indies, 2nd Viceroy of the Indies and 3rd Governor of the Indies. He was the firstborn son of Christopher Columbus and wife Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, and was born in 1479/1480 in Porto Santo, Portuga...

Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalva's exploration of the coasts of Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and in the conquest of Mexico le...

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was a Spanish explorer of the New World, and one of four survivors of the 1527 Narváez expedition. During eight years of traveling across what is now the US Southwest, he became a trader and faith healer to variou...

Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a Spanish conquistador, who participated as a soldier in the conquest of Mexico under Hernán Cortés and late in his life wrote an account of the events. As an experienced soldier of fortune, he had already parti...

Antonio de Mendoza was the first viceroy of New Spain, serving from April 17, 1535 to November 25, 1550, and the second viceroy of Peru, from September 23, 1551 to July 21, 1552. He became viceroy in 1535 and governed for 15 years, longer t...

Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor from 1519-1558; he was also King of Spain from 1516-1556, officially as Charles I of Spain, although often referred to as Charles V ("Carlos Quinto" or "Carlos V") in Spain and Latin America. He was the son...

Francisco de Montejo y León (el Mozo) was a Spanish conqueror, he was born in 1502. Founder in 1542 of the City of Mérida, capital of State of Yucatán, Mexico. Son of Francisco de Montejo. Circa June of 1527 at the age of 26 years he sailed...

Luis de Velasco, marqués de Salinas (known as Luis de Velasco, hijo to distinguish him from his father), Spanish nobleman, son of the second viceroy of New Spain, and himself the eighth viceroy. He governed from January 27, 1590 to November...

The Florentine Codex is the common name given to a 16th century ethnographic research project in Mesoamerica by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Bernardino originally titled it: La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana (in En...