Francisco de Montejo
Francisco de Montejo spent nearly twenty years conquering Yucatán, which took longer than any other campaign in the Americas. Born in Salamanca around 1479 into a family of minor gentry, he sailed to the Caribbean in 1514, joined the Grijalva expedition that coasted Yucatán in 1518, and served under Cortés in the conquest of Mexico. Cortés sent him to Spain in 1519 to argue the legality of the expedition directly to the crown, bypassing the governor of Cuba, and he spent years at court doing it. He obtained his own licence in 1526 to conquer and settle Yucatán, and landed the following year. It went badly for two decades. The Maya were not organised into a single state with a capital that could be seized, which is what had made Mexico and Peru fall quickly; they were divided into some sixteen independent provinces, each of which had to be fought separately, and which could combine against the Spanish and disperse when pressed. The terrain had no gold, no navigable rivers and limited water, and Spanish forces repeatedly withdrew after outbreaks of disease and desertion. He abandoned the attempt entirely in 1535 and served as governor of Honduras and Chiapas. His son and nephew, both also named Francisco, resumed it and founded Mérida in 1542 on the site of a Maya city, and Campeche and Valladolid. Resistance continued in the interior; the last independent Maya kingdom, Nojpetén, held out until 1697. He was investigated for maladministration, stripped of his offices, and died in Spain in 1553.
- Lived: 1479 CE – 1553 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: military_leader, conquistador
