Francisco Pizarro Martínez

Francisco Pizarro was born in Mexico City on 24 January 1787 to Timoteo Antonio Pizarro López and Antonia San Martín Pérez, a Spanish couple from Alcántara, Extremadura, and Cádiz, respectively.[4] At 27, he married Marie Thérèse Visoso, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and daughter of a Galician immigrant, on 27 April 1814.[2]

In 1833, as Mexican consul of New Orleans, Pizarro refused entry to blacks and other "people of color" to the then-Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas, claiming that they were slaves in disguise and inherently lazy and immoral.[5] After the Texas Revolution, he negotiated a prisoner exchange with Stephen F. Austin in the winter of 1836.[6]

In May 1837, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Mexico to the United States by President Anastasio Bustamante.[7] As envoy, he negotiated the Convention for the adjustment of claims of citizens of the United States of America upon the Government of the Mexican Republic with John Forsyth in 1838.[8]

Shortly thereafter, Pizarro died while on duty on 9 February 1840, at the age of 53, in Washington, D.C.. The President of the United States, his cabinet, and members of the diplomatic corps were present at his Catholic funeral.[9] He was originally interred behind the Chapel of St. Francis Xavier on College Ground (a burial ground of the Holy Trinity Church) in the historical neighborhood of Georgetown.[10] In 1953, when Georgetown University cleared the cemetery for the construction of new buildings,[10] his remains were transferred to Mount Olivet Cemetery.[3]