The early part of the administration of Gonzalo de Guzman was chiefly
occupied with the investigation of his predecessors' stewardships, and
with controversies with the municipal councils. There was also a
controversy with the Crown over the payment to him of a salary for his
services, which he requested of the King, and which the King ordered to
be paid to him, but which he did not receive. Then came complications
over the royal treasurership in the island. Christopher de Cuellar had
been succeeded in that office by Pedro Nunez de Guzman. The latter died,
leaving a considerable fortune, and the colonial government at
Hispaniola immediately designated Andres Duero to succeed him
temporarily, until the King should make a permanent appointment; the
expectation apparently being that Duero would be confirmed in the
office. Unfortunately for the success of this design, however, the
temporary appointment had been made without consulting the royal
officials; who were not unnaturally piqued and offended. The result was
that a protest was made to the King, not only against the method of his
appointment but also against Duero himself. To this the King listened
sympathetically, and he presently overruled the appointment of Duero,
and in place of him named Hernando de Castro as temporary treasurer,
until such time as he could have conditions investigated and could
select some fitting man as a permanent incumbent.
Oddly enough, Castro had once before supplanted Duero, as the royal
factor in Cuba. This office had first been held by Bernardino Velasquez,
upon whose death Andres Duero had been appointed to hold it temporarily,
only to be speedily replaced by Castro. The latter appears to have been
one of the most enterprising men of affairs of that time, and to have
done more than most of his contemporaries for the industrial and
economic development of the island. He became engaged in commerce
between Spain and the West Indies at an early date, and paid much
attention to agriculture, which he believed would be the chief permanent
industry of Cuba. It was he who introduced the cultivation of wheat and
other staples, with a view to making the island self-supporting, and for
such activities he received the formal thanks of the King.
Unfortunately, he too somewhat compromised himself by attempting to
appropriate as his own the native Cubans who had been the serfs of
Bernardino Velasquez and whom Duero, the factor pro tempore, had seized.
Soon after the replacing of Duero with Castro as treasurer pro tempore
the former died, and then the latter was in turn replaced by the
permanent appointment of Lopez Hurtado, who held the place for many
years, and who was distinguished at once for his honesty and his
irrepressible cantankerousness. He seemed to have a mania for
faultfinding; though doubtless there was much legitimate occasion for
the exercise of that faculty. To his mind, almost every other man in
Cuba was a knave, and he never wearied of reporting to the King, in
interminable written messages, his complaints and accusations. Not only
in spite of but also because of this he was a most useful public
servant.
Pedro Nunez de Guzman, who died in 1527, left, as we have seen, a
considerable fortune. Practically all of it was left to his widow, and
her the thrifty Gonzalo de Guzman presently married, and thus got
himself into one of the most serious controversies of his whole career.
A part of the fortune of Pedro consisted of about two hundred Cuban
serfs. These Gonzalo de Guzman, as Repartidor, transferred to the widow,
and then, of course, when he married her, they became his property. This
roused the animosity of the honest but cantankerous Hurtado, who thought
that the Cubans should have been given to himself, as their former
owner's official successor; according to the example set by Hernando de
Castro, as already related. Hurtado accordingly wrote to the King a long
letter on the subject, which, though it did not cause intervention in
that special matter, attracted the King's attention to the complications
which the Guzman marriage was producing.
The mother of the late Pedro Nunez de Guzman next appeared as a party to
the controversy. This lady, Dona Leonora de Quinones, who had remained
in Spain, complained that a great injustice had been done to her and to
her other children by the transfer of Pedro's entire fortune to his
widow and thence to the latter's second husband, and she applied to the
Spanish courts for relief. The result was a series of lawsuits, which
scandalized the Spanish courts for a term of years. In these suits many
prominent Cubans were involved, and nearly the whole population of the
island took sides for one or the other of the parties. Street brawls
occurred over it, and the violence culminated in a physical scuffle in
the aisle of the cathedral, between Gonzalo de Guzman and the Alcalde of
Santiago, in which the latter had most of his clothes torn from his
back, and for which Guzman was required to do penance.
The King had given his assent to the Guzman marriage, and was unwilling
to withdraw it, or to censure Guzman for taking and striving to retain
all of Pedro's estate. Nevertheless he remonstrated with the litigants
for the fury of their controversy, which he truly told them was not only
a disgrace to the island but was also a grave practical injury to it.
The conflict continued, however, until all the resources of the law
courts were exhausted. By that time many of the lawyers were
considerably enriched, but a still large part of the estate was
confirmed in the possession of Gonzalo de Guzman and his wife. All this
militated against the confidence with which Guzman had been regarded,
and hastened steps for the subjection of him to the fate of his
predecessors.
We have seen that Guzman had been commissioned to investigate the
administration of his predecessor, Altamarino, and that he had performed
that congenial task with energy and zeal. Now came his own turn to
undergo the same treatment. It was only a little more than two years
after his accession to the governorship that the King or the Crown
officials in Spain concluded that it would be well to have his affairs
looked into. For the performance of this work Juan Vadillo was selected,
in the autumn of 1528. He was a notably efficient man. He had been
employed for some time by the crown as a debt-collector in Cuba,
Hispaniola, Jamaica and Porto Rico, and had been highly successful in
that work; wherefore it was thought that he would subject Guzman's
administration to a particularly thorough examination.
He declined, however, to accept the commission; for a variety of
reasons. One was, that he had thitherto taken his orders and received
his commissions directly from the King, and he considered it beneath his
dignity now to be an underling of a mere Admiral of the Indies--or of
the widow of the Admiral, since the commission for this job was to be
given by the widow of Diego Columbus. Another reason was found in the
terms on which the commission was to be granted. He was to be governor
of Cuba for thirty days. During that time he was to conduct his
investigation of Guzman's administration. Then, with the assumption that
thirty days would afford him ample time to complete the work, he was to
restore the governorship to Guzman, apparently quite irrespective of the
result of his inquest. Still another reason was, that his instructions
were not sufficiently explicit. It was not, for example, made clear
whether he was to replace Guzman as repartidor as well as in the
governorship. A final reason, perhaps not least of all, was that the
salary offered was not sufficient.
While thus declining to accept the commission, Vadillo manifested his
fitness for it and his serviceable interest in Cuban affairs by pointing
out to the sovereign various grave defects in the administration of
Cuban affairs, particularly in that of the repartidor's functions. One
important object of the repartimiento system was to assure a suitable
distribution of native labor throughout the island. It was in fact
operating to just the contrary effect. Some parts of the island were
overcrowded, while others were almost entirely destitute of labor. These
representations had their effect at court; not, it is true, in the
ordering of correction of the evils, but in confirming the desire to
have Vadillo investigate insular affairs.
After more than two years' delay, then, on February 27, 1531, another
summons was sent to Vadillo. This time it was not a request but a
peremptory order to go at once to Cuba and undertake the work. The
conditions were, however, materially changed. He was to have his
commission from the King. He was to be governor for sixty days instead
of thirty. He was to be repartidor, also, in conjunction with the Bishop
of Cuba. He was to have an adequate salary. And at the end of his
investigation of Guzman's administration he was to hand the governorship
over, not necessarily to Guzman again, but to anyone whom he might
choose, until the widow of Diego Columbus should make a permanent
appointment.
On these conditions Vadillo accepted the commission and entered upon his
work with the efficiency and zeal that had marked his former
undertaking. He quickly found that there was much need for
investigation, and of thorough reforms. The whole administration had
become demoralized by the personal jealousies and local feuds which for
years had been raging. Bribery, slander, false arrest, even murder, had
been resorted to by political partisans for the accomplishment of their
ends, until something like chaos had been precipitated upon the unhappy
island. It was in November, 1531, that Vadillo arrived at Santiago de
Cuba on his formidable errand. He purposed to spend a few weeks in
preliminary surveys of the ground, announcing that his sixty days'
incumbency of the governorship would begin on January 1.
On the latter date the actual house-cleaning began. The tremendous
indictment which Guzman had made against Altamarino was a petty trifle
in comparison with that which Vadillo launched against Guzman. There was
scarcely any conceivable form of maladministration which was not charged
against the governor. He had, said Vadillo, interfered with freedom of
suffrage at elections. He had levied and collected taxes for which there
was no warrant in law. He had appointed and commissioned notaries,
although he had no legal power to do so. He had failed to compel married
men either to return to their wives in Spain or to send for their wives
to come to Cuba. He had permitted illicit trade in slaves. He had been
biassed and partial in his administration of justice. All these and
other accusations were made with much circumstance and with a formidable
array of corroborative testimony, against Guzman as governor. Against
him as repartidor it was charged that he had been guilty of gross and
injurious misrepresentations to the Crown and to the people; that he had
assigned natives as serfs to his relatives and friends in defiance of
law; and that he had made the distribution of native labor inequitable.
All these charges were indignantly denied by Guzman, who defended
himself with much vigor and shrewdness. But Vadillo found him to be
guilty of almost every one of them, and sentenced him to pay a heavy
fine and to be removed from office, both as governor and as repartidor.
Against this judgment Guzman made appeal to the Council for the Indies,
in Spain. In order to bring all possible influence to bear upon that
body, he himself went to Spain, in August, 1532, carrying a vast mass of
documents, and accompanied by Bishop Ramirez, who was returning to Spain
to be consecrated. This ecclesiastic had been Guzman's most staunch and
zealous partisan during the investigation. He had gone so far as to
threaten with excommunication anyone who should testify against the
governor, and had actually excommunicated Vadillo. Against this act
Vadillo had protested to the King, and the King had reprimanded the
Bishop and had compelled him to withdraw the writ of excommunication.
Guzman therefore took the Bishop along with him, partly so that the
latter might be formally consecrated and have his conduct if possible
vindicated, and partly to aid himself in his appeal to the Council for
the Indies.
Vadillo did not trouble himself to go to Spain to counteract Guzman's
appeal. A month before the departure of Guzman and the Bishop he left
Cuba for Hispaniola, conscious of having done his duty. He had been a
fearless and thorough investigator and a just judge; and he had rendered
to Cuba and to the Spanish crown services far greater than he ever
received compensation or credit for. Indeed, he did not enjoy so much as
the gratitude of the people of Cuba, most of whom were partisans of
Guzman or of some other political leader, and had become so accustomed
to the corrupt ways which had been followed for years that they were
inclined to resent any attempt at reform.
Upon the expiration of his sixty days' incumbency, Vadillo designated
Manuel de Rojas to be governor in his stead, until an appointment of
permanent character could be made by the Admiral at Hispaniola. Rojas
was reluctant to accept the place, knowing that he would find it more
arduous and even perilous than before, but he was finally prevailed upon
to do so, apparently more through a sense of public duty than for any
expectation of personal advantage.