Diego Osorio y Villegas

Diego de Osorio y Villegas (1540 in Villasandino[1] – 1601 in Santo Domingo[2]) was a sixteenth-century governor of Venezuela Province (1589–1597), the Venezuela Province being a part of the Spanish Empire. He was governor at the time of the Preston Somers expedition, during which an English force found Caracas by way of a secret route through the mountains.

As Governor of Santo Domingo, he built a warehouse in La Guaira for distributing munitions along a chain of defenses. He granted amnesty to local elites accused of smuggling if they helped him combat smuggling in the region, placing patrols in ports to prevent the trade of contraband. This deal fell apart after Osorio Villegas died in office in 1601.[3] He employed Simón de Bolívar y de la Rentería as a secretary.[4] He gave his son, Simón de Bolívar y Castro, the hacienda later called El Ingenio, which stayed in the Bolívar family until the time of Simón Bolívar.[5]

Previously, he spent 15 years fighting in the Dutch Revolt.[1][6] He was the brother of Antonio Osorio y Villegas, who succeeded him as Governor of Santo Domingo.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 (in Spanish) Isaac Rilova, 25 January 2010, Ayalas y Osorios, de Sasamón a Venezuela Archived 2010-06-23 at the Wayback Machine, sasamon.burgos.es
  2. ↑ (in Spanish) Gobernadores Isla de Santa Domingo Archived 2014-02-10 at the Wayback Machine
  3. 1 2 Vázquez, Juan José Ponce (29 October 2020). Islanders and Empire: Smuggling and Political Defiance in Hispaniola, 1580–1690. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-80136-2. Retrieved 25 July 2026.
  4. ↑ Carlo, Agustín Millares (1970). "Review of El Libro parroquial más antiguo de Caracas". Revista de Historia de América (69): 155–158. ISSN 0034-8325. Retrieved 25 July 2026.
  5. ↑ Ramírez, Jaime Altuna; Alberdi, Leyre Arrieta; Bullen, Margaret; Suárez, Maribel Egizabal (2025). Saberes y haceres antropológicos: el legado de Teresa del Valle (in Spanish). Los Libros de la Catarata. ISBN 978-84-1067-445-5. Retrieved 25 July 2026.
  6. ↑ "Biografia de Diego Osorio Villegas". www.biografiasyvidas.com. Retrieved 25 July 2026.
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.