Pedro Sancho

Pedro Sanchez de la Hoz (1514 in Calahorra, La Rioja - 1547 in Santiago de Chile) was a Spanish merchant, conquistador and adelantado, who served as secretary in Pizarro. In 1534, he received surrender rights south of the Strait of Magellan. He was appointed by Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as the adelantado Terra Australis in 1539. Sanchez de la Hoz served as secretary at Pizarro in Peru during the conquest of Cuzco and wrote a report on the conquest of Peru. Although the original manuscript was lost, the work was saved in Italian and subsequently translated into other languages, which served as a valuable account of both the Spanish conquest and the Incan ethnography. After some financial success, he returned to Spain, and Emperor Charles V granted him leave to return to the New World, where he came into conflict with rival conquistador Pedro de Valdivia due to various grants to the lands south of Peru. In 1547, Francisco de Villagra, one of the people of Valdivia, executed Sanchez de la Hoza for leading the uprising. According to Argentina and Chile, the surrender granted to Sanchez de la Jos proves that the Spanish Empire had claims and animus occupation on the lands that would later be called Antarctica. Given that Chile and Argentina have historically successfully established a border based on the principle of international law uti possidetis iuris, the Sánchez de la Hoz grant is part of their argument for territorial claims in the Antarctic.