The Basque Juan de Garay: colonizer and conqueror, the search for the city of the Caesars and his tragic death

That Spaniard, who at the age of fourteen or fifteen had come to America to never leave again, was risky, brave, ambitious and confident, a characteristic that would lead him to make a fateful mistake that would cost him his life. Some say he was born in 1527 and others in 1529, and it was agreed to establish 1528 as the year in which he came into the world. Juan de Garay could be from Orduña or from neighboring Villalba de Losa. At age 7, when a devastating fire in his village caused the villagers to move to neighboring towns, he went to live with his uncle Pedro de Zarate. As a teenager, he embarked to Peru with his uncle in the army of Blasco Núñez.

In America, he was on every expedition he was summoned on. He participated in the conquest of Tucumán and part of the territory of present-day Bolivia. He was linked with Nufrio or Ñuflo de Chavez, who founded Santa Cruz de la Sierra on February 26, 1561, and who would die murdered in an ambush set by the indigenous people. Garay was part of the council of that newly emerged city and was an alderman for eight years. There he married Isabel de Becerra. His children were Jerónima, Maria, Ana, Juan, Thomas, Christopher and another Juan, natural son.

He went on an expedition of a hundred people to Asunción. It was with his wife, young children and mother-in-law. Many colonizers and conquistadors became obsessed with finding a way to the ocean, even before Garay. In Asunción, he was interested in founding a town on the Rio de la Plata as a gateway to the ocean and the other side of the world. This was required by the production of metals in Potosí and the commercial growth of Tucumán. There was an important lobby of prominent Spanish figures living in these lands, who managed profitable businesses, including slavery.

Despite the strong opposition of the Spaniards who managed Asunción, who prevented the installation of a port closer to the sea, Garay got down to work. They took advantage of a caravel that would take former lieutenant governor Felipe de Cáceres, accused of heresy, to Spain and set out to found a port or village on the current Paraná River.

It was an expedition in which Garay invested his assets, prepared a large brig, eight cargo boats and several rafts. They brought plants and tools. A part of his men went overland, with horses, mares and cows. He made the phrase “Open doors to the earth” popular.

They left on April 14, 1573. They sailed downstream to the Patos Lagoon. The caravel carrying the detainee continued towards Spain. Garay waited for the expedition that was coming overland and in September he arrived at the old fortress of Sancti Spiritu, the first Spanish settlement built in what is now Argentina.

There were moments of great uncertainty when the group was surrounded by indigenous people. Providentially, Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera saved their lives, who, together with his men, came from founding Córdoba.

Garay and Cabrera argued about who was entitled to those lands. Finally, about to take up arms, Cabrera returned to Cordoba. There the Sevillian Gonzalo Abreu Figueroa ended up imprisoning him and beheaded him.

On November 15, 1573 Garay founded the city of Santa Fe, 25 leagues further south of Sancti Spiritu. He chose a place close to Cayastá. In Spain, the foundation of Santa Fe was interpreted as the repopulation of Buenos Aires, which had been founded by Pedro de Mendoza on February 2, 1536.

When he returned to Peru, he insisted with his idea of founding three villages: two in Tucumán and another in the Rio de la Plata to secure a trade route. The idea of repopulating Buenos Aires took hold. Adelantado Juan Torres de Vera y Aragon appointed him on April 9, 1578 as lieutenant governor and ordered him to build a city in the port of Buenos Aires.

In January 1580, from Asunción, Garay announced the expedition to the Rio de la Plata. He managed to enlist 66 people, with weapons, horses and livestock. There was a woman, the Paraguayan Ana Diaz, who insisted on participating. Of these, only 10 were Spanish and the rest were born in these lands. The group included the Portuguese Antonio Tomás, who had participated in Pedro de Mendoza's expedition. It was difficult to incorporate a cleric, as established by the Ordinances on Populations. Finally, friars Juan de Rivadeneira and Antonio Picón joined.

Part of the expeditioners embarked at the end of February and Garay did so in mid-March. The flotilla consisted of the San Cristóbal caravel, two brigantines, completed with Guarani rafts and canoes. Another group went overland, dropping cattle.

On May 28, they arrived in Paraná de las Palmas. On the day of the Holy Trinity, which fell on Sunday, it arrived at the mouth of the stream. From there Garay took the name of the new town: the city of the Holy Trinity, the port of Santa María in Buenos Aires.

The formal ceremony of the foundation was on Saturday, June 11, 1580. He divided the city into 250 blocks; 40 for the inhabitants, six for the fort, the main square, three for convents and a hospital. The rest were destined for farms. He determined the ejido of the port: from the fort facing the river, three blocks to the north and four blocks to the south.

He himself allocated a plot where the Banco Nación stands today. Ana Diaz got a quarter block on the corner of Florida and Corrientes. On October 20, the Cabildo elected San Martín de Tours patron saint of the city. The city's coat of arms was designated by the founder himself: a black eagle with a royal crown on a white background, and in its right claw the cross of Calatrava.

Garay and his people were obsessed with finding the city of the Caesars, that legends and gossip placed it in South America and that fantastic stories described it full of gold and silver. They toured the interior of what is the province of Buenos Aires and even reached what is Mar del Plata. In January 1582 they returned empty-handed to Buenos Aires.

On March 9, 1583, he wrote his last letter to the king from Buenos Aires and embarked with fifty men to Santa Fe. On the trip he got lost. On a sunset of March 20 or 21, 1583, he decided to disembark and camp ashore. Historians don't agree on the place. It can be in front of the city of Baradero, the city of San Pedro, near the Montiel lagoon or near the mouth of the Carcarañá river with the Paraná.

Some 40 indigenous people, Querandíes for some, minuans for others, watched them. Some soldiers who came from Chile and who had joined him in Buenos Aires, advised him to set up sentries. “These Indians are very subject to them and they fear me: we are as safe as in Madrid.”

When they had all gone to sleep, the indigenous people fell on them. They killed Garay and a dozen men and wounded thirty men. They captured ten, one friar and one woman. Some injured people were able to escape and break the news in Santa Fe.

Thus ended the conquering and colonizing adventure of this Basque entrepreneur, to whom we owe the foundations of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires, and who had decided to open doors to the land.

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