Editing Pedro de Alvarado (section)

==Governor of Honduras==
{{see also|Spanish conquest of Honduras}}
In 1532, Alvarado received a [[Royal Cedula]] naming him Governor of the Province of Honduras. At that time, Honduras consisted of a single settlement of Spaniards in [[Trujillo, Honduras|Trujillo]], but he declined to act on it.  In 1533 or 1534 he began to send his own work gangs of enslaved Africans and Native Americans into the parts of Honduras adjacent to Guatemala to work the placer gold deposits.

In 1536, ostensibly in response to a letter asking for aid from Andrés de Cereceda, then acting Governor of the Province of Honduras, Alvarado and his army of Indian allies arrived in Honduras, just as the Spanish colonists were preparing to abandon the country and go look for gold in Peru.  In June, 1536, Alvarado engaged the indigenous resistance led by Cicumba in the lower [[Ulúa River|Ulua river valley]], and won.  He divided up the Indian labor in ''repartimiento'' grants to his soldiers and some of the colonists, and returned to Guatemala.

During a visit to Spain, in 1537, Alvarado had the governorship of Honduras reconfirmed in addition to that of Guatemala for the next seven years. His governorship of Honduras was not uncontested.  Francisco de Montejo had a rival claim, and was installed by the Spanish king as Governor of Honduras in 1540. Ten years after being widowed, Alvarado married one of his first wife's sisters, [[Beatriz de la Cueva]], who outlived him.

After the death of Alvarado, de la Cueva maneuvered her own election and succeeded him as governor of Guatemala, becoming the only woman to govern a major political division of the Americas in Spanish colonial times. She drowned a few days after taking office in the destruction of the capital city [[Ciudad Vieja]] by a sudden [[lahar|mudflow]] from the [[Volcán de Agua]] in 1541.