Domingo Martínez de Irala

Domingo Martínez de Irala (1509 – 3 October 1556) was a Spanish-Basque conquistador.

He headed for America in 1535 enrolled in the expedition of Pedro de Mendoza and participated in the founding of Buenos Aires. He explored the Paraná and Paraguay Rivers along with Juan de Ayolas and was commanding the rear-guard when Ayolas' advance party was wiped out by the Payagua Indians.

Unique in Spanish America, the colony had been granted by Charles V the right to elect its own commander under such circumstances; and in August 1538, de Irala was elected by the conquistadors as Captain General of the Río de la Plata.

In 1539, Irala began to move the inhabitants of Buenos Aires to Asunción, and the city was abandoned by 1541.

He outlasted Charles V's appointee, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, whom he had recalled to Spain for trial as a traitor. Although Juan de Sanabria and his son Diego were appointed governor in 1547 and 1549, they never fulfilled their commissions, and de Irala was confirmed by the king as governor in 1552.

In 1555, he distributed land to approximately 320 colonists in Paraguay to govern as encomiendas that affected between 20,000 and 17,000 indigenous people. The institution of the first encomiendas provoked uprisings and rebellions. From 1541 onwards, the abandonment of Buenos Aires and the concentration of colonization in Asunción overwhelmed this system and gave way to the rancheadas: mass and violent deportations of Guaraní women who were transformed into objects of buying and selling, used as common currency in commercial transactions and exported to the Portuguese port of São Vicente. Primary sources document Irala's personal involvement in this trade: a 1545 letter by Pero Hernández records that Irala sold a free Cario woman to Tristán de Vallartas "for a scarlet cloak and a velvet jacket" and sold an Agace man and woman "for a scarlet cloak and a quilt to a friar of the Order of Mercy." In his 1556 testament, Irala acknowledged nine children he had with seven different Guaraní women, whom he referred to as his criadas (servants). Modern historians argue that the mestizaje of Paraguay was "fundamentally a forced sexual relationship," with indigenous women exploited both sexually and economically. See also: Indigenous women in the conquest of Paraguay.