1592-1598 жылдардағы Чили Корольдік губернаторы Мартин Гарсия Оньес де Лойола

Royal governor of colonial Chile from 1592 to 1598

Don Martín García Óñez de Loyola (1549 in Azpeitia, Gipuzkoa – December 24, 1598 at Curalaba) was a Spanish Basque soldier and Royal Governor of the Captaincy General of Chile. Very likely Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, was his uncle.

As a young man in 1568, he arrived in Peru at the side of the new viceroy Francisco de Toledo, Count of Oropesa, as captain of the guard. In 1572, during the military expedition against Túpac Amaru — the last descendant of the Incas resisting foreign domination — Óñez de Loyola led a brilliant action of an advance column which fell upon the camp of the Inca and captured him. For this great feat, he gained the rank of corregidor in a number of Peruvian towns, entitling him to their goods and labor. He also married to Beatriz Clara Coya, daughter of Inca ruler Sayri Túpac and niece of Túpac Amaru. With these recommendations, the king named him governor of the Río de la Plata and Paraguay in 1592. However, just before he assumed the position, Philip II designated him Royal Governor of Chile, as he was considered the officer most apt to finish the Arauco War.

Óñez de Loyola arrived in Chile on September 23, 1592. He was determined to pacify the Arauco. To further this end he immediately set out for Concepción at the head of 110 troops which he had met at the capital. However, he realized that with such scarce resources he would not be able to achieve his objective and he requested reinforcements from Peru. However, the appearance of the British pirate Richard Hawkins alarmed the authorities in Peru and their reinforcements were recalled for the defense of Peru itself. Hawkins also attacked Chile during his campaigns, assaulting Valparaiso, for example where he captured a ship. Because of the limited capacity of his ship, he only took things he needed and let the captured sailors go free. The governor did not receive the requested soldiers, but members of the Jesuit and Augustinian orders did arrive. The first would have great importance for later events in the colonization of Chile, until they were eventually expelled. The governor decided that he could not wait any longer and in 1594 he began a campaign to the south with the small contingent that he had assembled. He founded a fort at Santa Cruz de Óñez in May 1594, near the confluence of the Bio Bio and Laja Rivers in Catiray, where gold mines were located on the Rele River. The fort was elevated to the rank of city in 1595 giving it the name of Santa Cruz de Coya. Three years later a group of 140 reinforcements arrived, but they were not enough. The lack of reinforcements was not the fault of the viceroy — who offered generous inducements to join the army — but rather the name of Chile, which had become so stained by the interminable conflict that no one wanted to risk their lives going to such a hell.