Juan del Junco
Spanish conquistador
Juan de(l) Junco (1503 in Ribadesella, Asturias, Castile – ? in Santo Domingo) was a Spanish conquistador who participated in the Spanish conquest of the Muisca people. Del Junco started his career as a conquistador in the 1526 expedition led by Sebastian Cabot exploring the Río de la Plata in present-day Argentina. In 1535, he arrived in Santa Marta on the Colombian Caribbean coast from where the expedition in search of El Dorado set off in April 1536.
Del Junco played a role in the foundations of Bogotá (August 6, 1538), and Tunja (August 6, 1539). He was a senior captain under Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada. Del Junco was named second in line of succession, after Gonzalo's brother Hernán, in the event of the death of the first governor of the New Kingdom of Granada. Del Junco was awarded the encomienda (mayoralty) of Cucaita, close to Tunja, for his efforts as a soldier. In 1541, Del Junco left South America for Santo Domingo, where he married and remained until his death.
Juan del Junco was named by several early chroniclers of the Spanish conquest of Colombia: Epítome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada (first published in 1889); Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias (De Castellanos, 1589); El Carnero (Freyle, 1638); and Historia general de las conquistas del Nuevo Reino de Granada (De Piedrahita, 1676).
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This entry incorporates text from “Juan del Junco” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.