POPE JULIUS II.
Porto Rico.
Faction of Passamonte.
1511. October 5. Audiencia.
This action of the King, as well as his effort to put Porto Rico under an independent governor, incited new expostulations from Diego, and served to make his rule in the island quite as uncomfortable as its management had been to his father. There also grew up the same discouragement from faction. The King's treasurer, Miguel Passamonte, became the head of the rebellious party, not without suspicion that he was prompted to much denunciations in his confidential communications with the King. Reports of Diego's misdeeds and ambitions, threatening the royal power even, were assiduously conveyed to the King. The sovereign devised a sort of corrective, as he thought, of this, by instituting later, October 5, 1511, a court of appeals, or Audiencia, to which the aggrieved colonists could go in their defense against oppression or extortion. Its natural effect was to undermine the governor's authority and to weaken his influence. He found himself thwarted in all efforts to relieve the Indians of their burdens, as nothing of that sort could be done without disturbing the revenues of leading colonists. There was no great inducement to undo measures by which no one profited in receipts more than himself, and the cruel devastation of the native population ran on as it had done. He certainly did not show himself averse to continuing the system of repartimientos for the benefit of himself and his friends.
Diego, who had been for a while in Spain, returned in 1512 to Española, and later new orders were sent out by the King, and these included commands to reduce the labor of the Indians one third, to import negro slaves from Guinea as a measure of further relief to the natives, and to brand Carib slaves, so as to protect other Indians from harsh treatment intended for the Caribs alone.
Bartholomew Columbus died.
Diego was again in Spain in 1513, and the attempts of Ojeda and Nicuessa having failed, later orders in 1514 so far reinstated Diego in his viceregal power as to permit him to send his uncle Bartholomew to take possession of the Veragua coast. But the life of the Adelantado was drawing to a close, and his death soon occurring nothing was done.