Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

Contreras.

(a loanword from Spanish)

Headword: 
Contreras.
Principal English Translation: 

a Spanish surname

Attestations from sources in English: 

An important figure in New Spain in the sixteenth century, fray Juan de Contreras (an Augustinian, born in Mexico) appears in records relating to the Colegio de San Pablo.

Mentioned in a testament of the gobernador of Tlahuililpan (modern state of Hidalgo) of 1586 as the "padre guardian" of Huichapan.
Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima, eds., Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 262–263.

Mentioned in the Códice de Huichapan under the year 1587.
El Códice de Huichapan, eds. Lawrence Ecker, Yloanda Lastra de Suárez, and Doris A. Bartholomew (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, 2001), 22.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

yn padre fray Jhoan de Contreras guardian Hueychiapan = el Padre fray Juan de Contreras, guardián de Güichiapan (Tetepango, Hidalgo, 1586)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 262–263.