Luis de Carabajal y Cueva

Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva
Born	Luis de Carvajal Circa 1537 Mogadouro, Portugal
Died	1591 Mexico City
Other names	Luis de Carabajal
Known for	First governor of Nuevo Reino de León; prosecuted by the Mexican Inquisition

Luis de Carvajal (sometimes Luis de Carabajal y de la Cueva) (c. 1537–1591) was governor of the Spanish province of Nuevo León in present-day Mexico, an alleged slave trader, and the first Spanish subject known to have entered Texas from Mexico across the lower Rio Grande.

He was a Portuguese-born, Spanish-Crown officer, who was awarded a large swath of territory in New Spain, known as Nuevo Reino de León, in 1579. He was born in Mogadouro, Portugal, around 1537, but was raised in the Kingdom of León, Spain at the home of the Count of Benavente, a contemporary and friend of Philip II, who named Carvajal Governor of Nuevo Reino de León and granted him many privileges on the basis of previous services to the Spanish Crown.

The territory granted to Carvajal included some portions in the south that had been settled by other Spaniards who refused to accept the terms of the grant and sued Carvajal before the highest court in New Spain. The suits were decided in favor of Carvajal, but Álvaro Manrique de Zúñiga, marqués de Villamanrique, viceroy of New Spain, ordered the arrest of Carvajal in 1588, charging that Carvajal was enslaving Indians. His enemies knew he was a descendant of "conversos" and bribed one of his captains to mention his name to the Inquisition in Mexico City. There, Carvajal was accused of several charges, but only the charge of concealing that his relatives secretly practiced Judaism was upheld. Sentenced to exile, he was first sent back to the court's jail, where he died a year later.

Carvajal was born circa 1537 in Mogadouro, Portugal, to Gaspar de Carvajal and Catalina de León, descendants of Jewish conversos (converts to Catholicism).

When he was eight years old, his family took him to Benavente, in the Spanish Kingdom of León. There, he was placed, probably as a page, in the house of the Count of Benavente, where he learned the manners and language of a Spanish nobleman. He lived there until his maternal uncle, Duarte de León, a wealthy Portuguese contractor sent him to the Portuguese islands of Cape Verde. There Carvajal learned a variety of skills, including navigation, accounting, and probably some military skills. In 1560, D. Sebastian, king of Portugal, named him treasurer for the assets of the deceased.

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