Lope de Aguirre
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Lope de Aguirre (c. 1510 – 27 October 1561) 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.
Popular culture
Aguirre has been represented in film twice: by Klaus Kinski in the allegorical film Aguirre, the Wrath of God in 1972, and by Omero Antonutti in El Dorado in 1988.
Aguirre's ill-fated voyage is the topic of Stephen Minta's 1995 book Aguirre: The Re-Creation of a Sixteenth-Century Journey Across South America, in which Minta retraces the expedition.
Aguirre was also featured in the educational video game The Amazon Trail.
