Lope de Aguirre

Who was Lope de Aguirre?

Lope de Aguirre was a Basque Spanish conquistador in South America. Nicknamed El Loco, 'the Madman', Aguirre is best known for his final expedition, down the Amazon river, in search of the mythical El Dorado. At the beginning he was a minor official of the expedition, but he mutinied and gained control of it, and then rebelled against and defied the Spanish monarch Philip II. By the end of the expedition, Aguirre was defeated and killed. From then on, he was considered a symbol of cruelty and treachery in colonial Spanish America, and has become an antihero in literature, cinema and other arts.