Juan Garrido
*The birth of Juan Garrido in 1487 is celebrated on this date. He was a Black African Spanish conquistador.
Born in Africa, he went to Portugal as a slave. When baptized, he took the name Juan Garrido (Handsome John). He went to Seville, where he joined an expedition to the New World as Pedro Garrido's servant. He joined a Spanish expedition and arrived in Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) in about 1502. He participated in the invasion of present-day Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1508. He was among many Black African freedmen who had joined expeditions from Seville to the Americas.
From the beginning of Spanish colonization in the Americas, Africans voluntarily participated in expeditions and, primarily, as kidnapped slaves. Garrido married and settled in Mexico City, where he and his wife had three children. He is credited with the first harvesting of wheat planted in the New World for commercial purposes. Garrido and other Blacks were also part of expeditions to Michoacán in the 1520s. Nuño de Guzmán swept through that region in 1529-30 with the aid of Black auxiliaries. In 1538, Garrido provided testimony on his 30 years of service as a conquistador:
I, Juan Garrido, black in color, resident of this city [Mexico], appear before Your Mercy and state that I am in need of providing evidence to the perpetuity of the king, a report on how I served Your Majesty in the conquest and pacification of this New Spain, from the time when the Marqués del Valle [Cortés] entered it; and in his company I was present at all the invasions and conquests and pacifications which were carried out, always with the said Marqués, all of which I did at my own expense without being given either salary or allotment of natives or anything else. As I am married and a resident of this city, where I have always lived; and also as I went with the Marqués del Valle to discover the islands which are in that part of the southern sea [the Pacific] where there was much hunger and privation; and also as I went to discover and pacify the islands of San Juan de Buriquén de Puerto Rico; and also as I went on the pacification and conquest of the island of Cuba with the adelantado Diego Velázquez; in all these ways for thirty years have I served and continue to serve Your Majesty--for these reasons stated above do I petition Your Mercy. And also because I was the first to have the inspiration to sow maize here in New Spain and to see if it took; I did this and experimented at my own expense.
Juan Garrido died in 1547.
