Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva

Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva
Born	Luis de Carvajal c. 1537 Mogadouro, Kingdom of Portugal
Died	13 February 1591 Mexico City, Viceroyalty of New Spain
Other names	Luis de Carabajal
Known for	First governor of Nuevo Reino de León; prosecuted by the Mexican Inquisition
Office	1st Governor of Nuevo Reino de León
Term	1580–1588
Successor	Diego de Montemayor
Signature

Luis de Carvajal (sometimes Luis de Carabajal y de la Cueva) (c. 1537 – 13 February 1591) was governor of the Spanish province of Nuevo León in present-day Mexico, slave dealer, and the first Spanish subject known to have entered Texas from Mexico across the lower Rio Grande.^[1]

He was a Portuguese-born, Spanish Crown officer, who in 1579 was awarded a large swath of territory in New Spain, known as Nuevo Reino de León. He was born in Mogadouro, Portugal, around 1537, but was raised in the Kingdom of León at the home of the Count of Benavente, a contemporary and friend of Philip II of Spain, who named Carvajal Governor of Nuevo Reino de León and granted him many privileges^[2] on the basis of previous services to the Spanish Crown.^[3]

The territory granted to Carvajal included some portions in the south that had been settled by other Spaniards who refused to accept the terms of the grant^[4] and sued Carvajal before the highest court in New Spain. The suits were decided in favor of Carvajal, but Álvaro Manrique de Zúñiga, 1st Marquess of Villamanrique, viceroy of New Spain, ordered the arrest of Carvajal in 1588. Carvajal was accused of enslaving large numbers of Indians, a major grievance of the indigenous population fueling the Chichimeca War. Carvajal was also accused of several other offenses by the Inquisition in Mexico City, but only the charge of concealing that his relatives secretly practiced Judaism was upheld. Sentenced to exile, he was sent back to the court's jail, where he died a year later.^[5]