Life
Diego was made a page at the Spanish court in 1492, the year his father embarked on his first voyage. Diego had a younger half-brother, Fernando, by Columbus's mistress Beatriz Enriquez de Arana.
In 1509, he was named Governor of the Indies, the post his father had held. He established his home (El Alcázar de Colón), which still stands, in Santo Domingo in what is now the Dominican Republic. He was made Viceroy of the Indies in May 1511, remaining in charge until 1518. He continued to fight encroachments on his power and for the remainder of his father's privileges and titles. He also made trips to Spain in 1515 and 1523 to plead his case, without success. After his death, a compromise was reached in 1536 in which his son Luis Colón de Toledo was named Admiral of the Indies and renounced all other rights for a perpetual annuity of 10,000 ducats, the island of Jamaica as a fief, an estate of 25 square leagues on the Isthmus of Panama, then called Veragua, and the titles of Duke of Veragua and Marquess of Jamaica.
The first major slave revolt in the Americas occurred in Santo Domingo during 1522, when enslaved Muslims of the Wolof nation led an uprising in the sugar plantation of admiral Don Diego Colon. Many of these insurgents managed to escape to the mountains where they formed independent maroon communities among the Tainos.
After his death, the rents, offices and titles in the New World went into dispute by his descendants.
Read more about this topic: Diego Columbus
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