author
active 16th century Pedro de Aguado
A Spanish Franciscan friar and chronicler of the early colonial world, he left one of the important firsthand histories of the New Kingdom of Granada and nearby regions. His writing brings together missionary experience, travel, and the turbulent story of conquest and settlement in 16th-century South America.
2 Audiobooks
Historia de Venezuela, Tomo II
by active 16th century Pedro de Aguado
Historia de Venezuela, Tomo I
by active 16th century Pedro de Aguado
About the author
Born in Valdemoro, near Madrid, probably in 1538, Pedro de Aguado became a Franciscan and traveled to the Americas in the 1560s. He spent about fifteen years in the New Kingdom of Granada, where he worked as a missionary among Indigenous communities and gathered material on the people, places, and conflicts of the region.
He is best known for Recopilación historial, a large historical work completed in Spain between roughly 1576 and 1583. Although it was not published in his lifetime, it became an important source for the early history of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, and surrounding areas.
Much about his life remains uncertain, including the exact year of his birth and death, but his reputation rests on the scale of his research and the detail of his chronicle. For readers interested in the first decades of Spanish America, his work offers a vivid window into the ambitions, violence, and religious mission of the 16th century.