Trujillo, Spain
Trujillo, SpainTrujillo arises suddenly out of the dust and rock. It is the birthplace of Pizarro, the conquistador that the Financial Times (this an update) calls "a sort of Renaissance Terminator," Issue September 8-9, 2012, article on Lima, Peru. There apparently are some 25000 skeletons in the San Francisco Monastery there: one in particular has been given a fancy sarcophagus, throat slashed, and skewered through an eye. Francisco Pizarro. Plunderer extraordinaire.
Pizarro, Statue in Trujillo, Spain This man obliterated an entire culture. Incas in Peru never recovered.
Does it sound like Simon de Montfort carrying out the orders of Pope Innocent III in decimating the Cathars in the 13th Century Languedoc, France? Of course. But Pizarro was not under shield of a church claiming to speak for God (ye gods) in implementing genocide and reaping the property from it; he went to get rich directly.
He also died in the attempt, as did Simon de Montfort at Toulouse.
More photos: at pahoahi.tripod.com/spain/trujillo; see also an older site, "Celts, Romans, Moors and Christians," and travel guru Frommer at www.frommers.com/destinations/trujillospain/1144010001.html.
There is a fine and well-maintained Moorish castle here as well, and fine palaces from the 16th and 17th Centuries, when the gold ran rich. This statue of Pizarro - an American work, is by Mary Harriman and Charles Runse, says Frommer. Yankee statue?
The Extremadura is a region in the west, see www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0818055, and many conquistadores came from the area - Balboa, Cortes and DeSoto, for example. A fine old Moorish palace overlooks the town. See www.trujilloespana.com/about.
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