Agustín de Zárate (Valladolid, - Seville, Zárate's date of death is not known. Different historians and biographers propose different dates ranging from 1560 (La Real Academia de la Historia) to 1577 (La enciclopedia biográfica en línea ) to 1589 (Hampe, 1991)) was a Spanish colonial, (state financial auditor), civil servant, chronicler and historian. His work (History of discovery and conquest of Peru) recounts the first years after the arrival of the Spaniards in the Inca Empire including the civil war between the viceroy and the encomenderos and up to the death of Gonzalo Pizarro in 1548.Nava Contreras, Mariano (2009) La historiografía y la etnografía griegas en dos cronistas peruanos: Agustín de Zárate y Juan de Betanzos - It is considered one of the most notable chronicles of the Spanish colonization of the Americas that have been preserved up to the present.Real Biblioteca, P. N. (2011), Agustín de Zárate en 1555. La publicación de su Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú - AVISOS. Noticias De La Real Biblioteca, 17(64), 1–2. [https://avisos.realbiblioteca.es/index.php/Avisos/article/view/448 [(access-date 25 November 2011) First published in Antwerp in 1555, re-published in Venice in 1563 and then revised and published again in Seville in 1577, it was translated into English, French, Italian and German and can be considered a "best seller of the 16th Century".Fossa, Lydia (2003). Glosas Croniquenses. El mundo andino en lenguas nativas y castellano - University of Arizona - Phoenix
Biography Family and early life Zárate was born around 1514 in Valladolid, when the city was the capital of the kingdom of Castile, to a family that had strong ties to the royal family. He was the only son of Lope Diaz de Zárate and Isabel de Polanco. His father was a court official who served as (secretary, chamber clerk) in the Council of the Supreme Inquisition and since 1512 he was also secretary of the Council of Castile, the highest administrative and judicial body of the Spanish monarchy at that time. Lope Diaz resigned in favor of his son Agustín who was named, at the age of about eight, as secretary of the Council, with the right to exercise the position after he had reached the age of eighteen. This allowed the young Zárate to become in 1532 secretary of the Council of Castile, with a quite meager salary of 9,000 maravedis per year. Most presumably immediately afterwards he married Catalina de Bayona, from Medina del Campo, the eldest of the daughters of the court butcher's supplier, owner of a considerable fortune, which provided Zárate a dowry of three thousand ducats.Hampe Martínez, Teodoro (1991), Agustín de Zárate, contador y cronista indiano (Estudio biográfico). In: Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, tome 27–2, 1991, Époque moderne, pp. 129–154;
In March 1538, Zárate's father died at the age of 62 in Valladolid. When the partition of his assets was carried out, Agustín received the sum of 564,525 maravedis, distributed in household furniture, silver objects and mainly, income titles in the jurisdiction of Valladolid and the nearby country. Through the same will Polo de Ondegardo, Zárate's nephew, received a special grant of 90 ducats to complete his studies at the University of Salamanca.Hampe Martínez, Teodoro (2016), El licenciado Polo Ondegardo (1520–1575). Biografía de un jurista castellano en los Andes coloniales - in XVIII Congreso Internacional de Historia del Derecho Indiano - Córdoba 2012 - Instituto Internacional de Historia del Derecho Indiano / editors: Aspell, Marcela; Agüero Alejandro; Llamosas, Esteban Federico - 1st edition 2016 - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Volume II
The other half of his inheritance went to his sister, Jerónima de Zárate, mother of Polo de Ondegardo. Moreover in his will, Agustín's father had stipulated: "I send by special legacy to the secretary Agustin de Zárate, my son, all my books, of whatever faculty they may be, and all my weapons, of whatever quality they may be". The legacy of books allowed for the transmission of cultural baggage within the family of Castilian bureaucrats with an inclination towards letters according to the orientations of Humanism. Although the education of Zárate did not formally go beyond an elementary level, it is evident, through his writings, that he cultivated the reading of humanistic works in accordance with the prevailing intellectual current at the beginning of the 16th century.
Mission in South America The enormous amount of gold and silver collected in Hispanic America since its discovery and the loose control over the economic interests of the Crown motivated the dispatch of officials with broad powers, in charge of putting order in the fiscal management of the colonies. The enactment of the New Laws in 1542, by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (King Charles I of Spain) intended to prevent the exploitation and mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by the , through a limitation of their power and dominion over groups of natives, but also limiting their economic freedom. It was then resolved to dispatch some financial state auditors to the viceroyalties of America.
Zárate was an officer with good experience in court affairs and was chosen by the ruling prince (later king) Philip II of Spain for auditing the administration of the Royal Treasury in South America in the provinces of Peru and Tierra Firme. Thus in August 1543 Zárate resigned his post as secretary of the Council of Castile and was charged as for these territories with a salary of 800,000 maravedis per year plus a refund of costs of 100,000 marvedis, four black slaves and a given amount of goods free of taxes.
His mission included also reviewing the work done by the Peruvian governor Cristóbal Vaca de Castro, taking care that the Crown taxes (generally equal to one fifth of any income) and other rights were paid in full. Moreover on the way to Peru, Zárate had to perform a fiscal audit on the accounts of the province of Tierra Firma on the Caribbean coast.
Zárate left Spain from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 3 November 1543 on a galleon part of the huge fleet of 52 ships captained by the first viceroy of Peru, Blasco Núñez Vela, with a group of friends and relatives, including his two nephews Polo de Ondegardo and Diego de Zárate,some of the Ondegardo siblings used their mother's surname: Zárate the judges of the new (Royal Tribunal) to be set up in Lima, the newly appointed governor of Nicaragua Rodrigo de Contreras and the public notaries Antón and Cristóbal Nieto; the former became Zárate's faithful secretary. On that ship traveled also Diego Martín, cleric, butler to Hernando Pizarro, who was charged of the interests of his lord in Peru and who carried out propaganda action spreading a negative image of the viceroy in favor of the Peruvian who were contrary to the enforcement of the New Laws.Real Academia de la Historia - Agustín de Zárate
Zárate arrived at the port of Nombre de Dios, on the Atlantic coast of Panama, on 9 January 1544. There he immediately started his task of investigating the administration of the Royal Treasury officers in Tierra Firme.
He reached Lima on 26 June 1544 just a few days before the official opening of the (tribunal) and a couple of months after the start of the ' uprising.
In revising the accounts of the royal treasury in Lima, Zárate noted that they were “taken without keeping in them the style and form and good order” so that he decided to undertake anew the examination of all the records since Francisco Pizarro's conquest expedition some 15 years before. According to a note by Anton Nieto - Zárate's secretary - the officials of the king and the people who attended them were complaining about this audit by Zárate and could no longer bear him.
Peru civil war The main task of viceroy Núñez Vela was to enforce the New Laws, but the protested and organized an uprising in Cusco choosing Gonzalo Pizarro, a rich in Charcas (currently Bolivia), as their leader. Gonzalo was the brother of Francisco, the leader of the Peru's conquistadors. The viceroy became very unpopular after attempting to suppress the rebellion by brute force. In the pursuit of order, the judges of the decided to defend the ' position and set up a special court, which pronounced the removal of the viceroy by exiling him to Spain with the general consent of the local Spanish community. The judges also suspended the enforcement of the New Laws and ordered Gonzalo Pizarro to undo his army.
During the Viceroy's trial, Zárate, who had no direct intervention in the uprising, was called as a witness and stated he heard many people, both Spanish and indigenous, complain about the manner in which the representative of the crown governed. In order to safeguard his own image before the Spanish justice, Zárate signed a letter of protest in September 1544, stating that anything he did or would do in relation to the imprisonment and exile of the viceroy was caused by "just fear and dread”, motivated by the repression against those who were faithful to the king.
To notify the order to undo his army to Gonzalo Pizarro, who was based in Cusco, the sent Zárate as one of the delegates «for being a servant of His Majesty and a man of good understanding». In his book Zárate tells that during his journey he was intercepted by a group Pizarro's soldiers who stopped him (leaving the other delegate continue) and took him in front of Gonzalo where Zárate did not dare to notify him of the order to disarm his troops in fear of being killed. Instead Zárate was charged with representing the demands of the rebels in front of the in Lima. He went back to the capital and informed the that the rebel demanded Gonzalo Pizarro to be named as governor otherwise his troops would attack and loot the city.
The Judges were doubtful about accepting this request, but on 20 October 1544, in front of the main local authorities, Zárate supported the appointment of Gonzalo as governor with the backing of all the Peruvian cities governors. Zárate handed over to Gonzalo the document that granted him the power of governor. In a confession made years later while imprisoned in Spain, Zárate justified this action by explaining that his relatives and friends had been taken as hostages.
Zárate tried to continue his accounting work, but even after naming his nephew Polo de Ondegardo as lawyer of the Royal Treasury and his secretary Antón Nieto as main assistant, he had difficulties in accomplishing his work due to the resistance of the royal officials interested in preventing him from completing the examination of the badly managed royal finances. Moreover, Gonzalo Pizarro used plenty of funds from the Royal Treasury to support his cause, insisting with Zárate that he be paid the expenses for pacifying the land. The fact that Pizarro offered Zárate servants from his in Chincha province may imply that Zárate possibly diverted royal funds to Pizarro needs. Unable to effectively carry out his task, Zárate chose to return to Spain. Before leaving he took to the convent of Santo Domingo the original papers of his accounting, leaving the keys to this chest in the possession of the members of the so called "intermediate side", i.e. the persons keeping a moderate position in between the Pizarro's rebels and the king's loyalists.
Return to Spain Zárate left the port of Callao on 9 July 1545, about one year after his arrival, leaving in the viceroyalty his nephews Polo de Ondegardo and Diego de Zárate as well as his main assistant Anton Nieto, provisionally invested with the office of accountant of the Royal Treasury of Lima. He was carrying with him a small amount of money (just 3000 pesos) he had collected for the Royal Treasury in Spain.