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Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was long celebrated for his historic 1542 voyage along the California coastline, becoming the first European to explore the state. And in 1959, when a new community college was founded in Aptos, in central Santa Cruz County, officials named it in his honor following the example of numerous other namesakes, including a national monument near his landing spot in San Diego and a nearby stretch of Highway 1.
But behind his once-glossy public image is a brutal side to the explorer’s legacy: A conquistador in the armies of Hernan Cortes, historical records show Cabrillo took part in the massacre of an indigenous village as a teenager. Cabrillo’s service to the Spanish crown was rewarded with a land grant in Guatemala, where he grew wealthy through mines and farmland worked by slave labor. Even his famed expedition’s three ships were crewed, in part, by indigenous slaves.