Andrés Díaz Venero de Leiva

Andrés Díaz Venero de Leiva (died 1578) was the first president of the New Kingdom of Granada, appointed in 1564.

The government of President Andres Diaz Venero de Leiva was a milestone in the political and institutional life of the New Kingdom, not only because it introduced a new form of government, but because it excelled in administrative measures to affirm the presence of Crown and the prevalence of their interests with the group of commissioners. Venero de Leiva was born in El Castillo, a place near the port of Laredo, on the Cantabrian Sea.

In 1548 he served as professor of higher and convictor Vespers and Santacruz Canons in the College of Valladolid. From there he was called to fill the position of prosecutor and judge Accounting Council of Castile in 1554, would leave Spain in March 1563 and landholders as president of the New Kingdom in Santa Fe in early 1564.

His first actions were aimed at reorganizing the Royal Court and try to improve the functioning of justice. He began by seeking harmony between the judges, hitherto engaged in quarrels and animosities of old data. He asked them to account for all convictions and legal expenses incurred in the last seven years for the mess and misinformation that showed he ordered officers from future registration of such data. And attracted the greatest sympathy to the Court imposing a higher work rate for the transaction of business dammed, some of the passions among the judges and others at the insistence of the litigants in attending the challenges. The effect of this measure was synthesized, in April 1565 by Mayor John Penagos in the following terms: "He encouragement to those who did not dare ask for fear (justice) and stopped with favors to those who wanted the alien" . By mandate of the Crown, Venero did the impeachment trial judge Perez de Melchor Arteaga and the entire staff under the Hearing, that is, reporters, camera clerks, receivers, attorneys and porters, on which weighed several charges; the judge found him guilty of excesses to function as a visitor in Cartagena. In the course of his administration, the president had to face high-profile court cases such as the soldier Francisco Bolivar, sentenced to death for various cruelties to the Indians and the murder of Jorge Voto for the children of the captain and conquistador Pedro Bravo de Rivera, Pedro and Hernan, who had the instigation of Ines Manrique, better known as Ines de Hinojosa. Venero described the crime as "the most heinous crime was committed in the Indies;" Tunja traveled with the case and issued its ruling that the chronicler Juan Rodriguez Freyle: "When Don Pedro confiscated the goods, the parcel as an informer, that was his, put it in the Crown, as it is today. slew the Don Pedro, his brother Hernan Bravo hanged at the corner of George Street Vote; and Dona Ines was hanged from a tree that was next to his door, which lives to this day, although dry ... "

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