68 Central America, conquest of The first Spanish successes in these regions were those of Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a minor nobleman, indebted farmer, and gifted military leader Invading the Darién region, Balboa subdued numerous polities and accumulated considerable treasure before hacking his way across the Central American isthmus in Panama at the head of 190 Spaniards and numerous Indian porters and guides On September 29, 1513, Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean, which he dubbed the “South Sea.” By the late 1520s, Panama City, the settlement at the Pacific terminus of the land corridor through Panama, had become an important shipbuilding center and the launching-off point for subsequent expeditions of exploration and conquest, including the conquest of Peru mosaic of groups Pre-Columbian Central America was populated by a mosaic of ethnic and linguistic groups divided politically into scores of kingdoms, city-states, and smaller polities This political fragmentation was paralleled in subsequent divisions and conflicts among the Spanish, a key feature of the Central American and Peruvian conquests These conflicts first erupted in 1519, when the conquistador Pedrarias Dávila executed Balboa after accusing him of treason Establishing the settlement of Panama City the same year, Pedrarias was supplanted by royal orders by Gil González Dávila, who launched exploratory expeditions north into Costa Rica and Nicaragua, slaughtering and enslaving the native inhabitants A key moment in these initial incursions came in 1522 along the shore of Lake Nicaragua, when Dávila convinced the Nicaráo cacique Nicaragua to submit to Spanish suzerainty and embrace Christianity Soon afterward, the Chorotega cacique Diriangén assaulted and defeated Dávila’s forces, compelling his hasty retreat back to Panama To this day, the opposite paths chosen by the caciques Nicaragua and Diriangén in response to Spanish demands—peaceful submission versus armed resistance— serve as symbolic counterpoints in discussions regarding Central America’s relations to more powerful adversaries A bitter conflict soon arose between Pedrarias and Dávila, the latter refusing to relinquish his claims on the Nicaraguan territories In 1524, Pedrarias’s subordinate Francisco Hernández de Córdoba returned to Nicaragua with a stronger force, determined to subjugate the region’s indigenous polities Meeting initial success, he founded two towns, Granada and León The next two years saw a series of civil wars erupt in Nicaragua between the competing conquistadores and their respective allies, as Dávila attacked Hernández and the latter rebelled against Pedrarias, who in turn defeated and executed Hernández Meanwhile, with the conquest of Mexico consolidated, Hernán Cortés and his lieutenants turned their attention south In 1523, Cortés dispatched Pedro de Alvarado south to the Guatemalan highlands Deftly exploiting the political rupture between the Cakchiquel and Quiché kingdoms, much as Cortés had exploited indigenous divisions in Mexico, Alvarado allied with the Cakchiquel and defeated the Quiché in a series of battles and massacres A legendary moment came in the Battle of Quetzaltenango of April 1524, when the combined Spanish-Cakchiquel force slaughtered the much larger Quiché army and Alvarado personally killed the Quiché chieftain Tecún Umán Alvarado’s Guatemalan campaign was marked by a series of atrocities and outrages that later became memorialized in highland Indian oral and written culture Soon after the Battle of Quetzaltenango, Alvarado captured and burned alive a large number of Quiché lords and nobles Then, after using his Cakchiquel allies to defeat their enemies the Tz’utujils, Alvarado betrayed the Cakchiquels by executing their leaders and committing other atrocities Surviving Cakchiquels fled into the mountains, where for four years they engaged in a guerrilla campaign against Alvarado’s forces Relentlessly pursuing his erstwhile allies, Alvarado’s forces captured many rebel leaders and hanged them in the central plaza of the Cakchiquel capital of Iximché as an object lesson to other potential rebels Alvarado then destroyed the capital city These and related events were later recorded in a native manuscript, the Annals of the Cakchiquels In the coming years, Alvarado, his lieutenants, and their successors continued their conquest of the highlands, committing many outrages and establishing the kingdom of Guatemala under the jurisdiction of New Spain Soon after, Alvarado went on to become a leading figure in the conquest of Peru The last autonomous polity in Guatemala to be subdued by the Spanish was the kingdom of Tayasal in the jungles of the Petén in 1697 It is estimated that warfare, forced labor, and disease during the first 50 years of the conquest killed more than onethird of Guatemala’s million inhabitants Alvarado’s forceful leadership in Guatemala effectively quelled incipient disputes among his men This was not the case in the rest of Central America, where conflicts among Spaniards frequently erupted into open civil wars In 1524, after dispatching a seaborne expedition under Cristóbal de Olid to the Gulf of Honduras, Cortés discovered that Olid had rebelled against his authority and allied with Cortés’s nemesis, Governor Diego Velázquez of Cuba After sending Francisco de las Casas to relieve