Inés Suárez

Inés Suárez was a Spanish settler and conquistadora who became one of the best-known women associated with the early Spanish conquest of Chile. Born in Extremadura around 1507, she travelled to Spanish America in search of her first husband and eventually reached Peru. After his death she joined Pedro de Valdivia’s expedition south from Cuzco in 1540, enduring the difficult crossing into Chile and participating in the establishment of Santiago in 1541.

Suárez played a prominent and controversial role in the defence of Santiago when Indigenous forces attacked the settlement in September 1541. Colonial accounts credit her with tending the wounded and urging resistance, while also associating her with the killing of captive Indigenous leaders during the crisis. Her relationship with Valdivia later ended under official pressure, and she married Rodrigo de Quiroga. She became a wealthy landholder and religious benefactor before her death in 1580.

In Isabel Allende’s Inés of My Soul, Inés Suárez leaves sixteenth-century Spain for the Americas in search of her missing husband and discovers a life beyond the limits of her provincial upbringing.