After his unheard claims as governor of New Castile

New Castile

New Castile is a historic region of Spain. It roughly corresponds to the southern part of the Castile, taken during the Reconquista of the peninsula by Christian kings from Muslim rulers. Some notable achievements in this reconquest were the capture of Toledo in 1085, ending the Taifa's Kingdom of...

 (Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

) following the death of his brother

Francisco Pizarro

Francisco Pizarro González, Marquess was a Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire, and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of the Republic of Peru.-Early life:...

, Gonzalo Pizarro

Gonzalo Pizarro

Gonzalo Pizarro y Alonso was a Spanish conquistador and younger paternal half-brother of Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Inca Empire...

 pressed claims to be recognized as the ruler of the land he and his brothers had conquered. After the arrival of appointed royal viceroy

Viceroy

A viceroy is a royal official who runs a country, colony, or province in the name of and as representative of the monarch. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and the French word roi, meaning king. A viceroy's province or larger territory is called a viceroyalty...

 Blasco Núñez Vela

Blasco Núñez Vela

Blasco Núñez Vela y Villalba was the first Spanish viceroy of Peru, from May 15, 1544 to January 18, 1546. He was charged by King Charles I with the enforcement of the controversial New Laws, which dealt with the failure of the encomienda system to protect the indigenous people of America from the...

 in 1544, Gonzalo succeeded to have him repelled and sent to Panama

Panama

Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...

 in chains. He was released, however, and returned to Peru by sea while Gonzalo was mustering an army. The two met on January 18 at Añaquito in the outskirts of Quito

Quito

San Francisco de Quito, most often called Quito , is the capital city of Ecuador in northwestern South America. It is located in north-central Ecuador in the Guayllabamba river basin, on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes mountains...

, present-day capital of Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

, where the superiority of the Nueva Castilla army ensured victory for Gonzalo. Blasco Núñez Vela reportedly fought bravely but fell as a victim in battle and was later decapitated on the field of defeat, a fate Gonzalo himself would share two years later at Jaquijahuana

Battle of Jaquijahuana

After the successful Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the assassination of Francisco Pizarro in 1541, and the execution of his main antagonist, Diego de Almagro and his son, El Mozo , most of the competent commanders of the recently founded New Castile Governorate had been lost in the ensuing...

.