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Manuscript - 06/20/1703 ....The following 11 page manuscript contains the accomplishments of Captain Fernand Bravo de Lagunas and those of his ancestors in order that he should be worthy of a promotion. The manuscript begins (on first page) by discussing the accomplishments of his most important ancestor Pedro Arias Davila...."To be a captain descendant of Pedro Arias Davila who being a field master at the site and take of oran passed to the indies and founded the cities of Panama and Portobelo and passed to the discovery of Peru and also of the horse Captain Pedro of Anasco And Guzman Conquistador Of Peru who died at the hands of the indians and the Field Master Rodrigo Campuzano his maternal great-grandfather who was aguacil major of the audience of Lima having served in Chile and found in the war of the Chiriguan Indians in the company of the Viceroy Frco De Toledo and in the opposite of the English and when the Privateer Francisco Draque entered those seas on whose occasions he spended many chastities having governed Arica at a time and occasion that were those coasts persecuted by pirates" etc........" Pedro Arias de Ávila (1440 – March 6, 1531) (often Pedrarias Dávila) was a Spanish soldier and colonial administrator. He was born into one of the most influential crypto Jewish Families in Segovia. He led the first great Spanish expedition to the mainland of the New World. There he served as governor of Panama (1514–1526) and Nicaragua (1527–1531), and founded Panama City (1519). During these testing times, thousands of conversos moved out of Spain to Portugal, Flanders (today Belgium), the Netherlands, North Africa, and some French, British and Italian ports. Others were able to bypass a number of discriminatory requirements such as those of “Limpieza de Sangre,” (“Purity of Blood”) and embarked into the ships going to the Spanish and Portuguese new colonies in the Americas. The most common way to bypass detection was to get on the boats as sailors, or to go to the New World as servants of an Old Christian, because lower posts such as these did not require proof of Purity of Blood. A few very influential conversos were able to bypass this requirement through their connections with the nobility. Such was the case of Pedro Arias Dávila, governor of Castilla del Oro and Nicaragua (today Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and part of Colombia) who belonged to the Arias Dávila, one of the most influential converso families.

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