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El Capitan Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras (Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain, ca. 1485 – Guadalajara, New Spain, 4 July 1541) was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalva's exploration of the coasts of Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and in the conquest of Mexico led by Hernán Cortés. He is considered the conquistador of most of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras). Although renowned for his skill as a soldier, Alvarado is known also for the cruelty of his treatment of native populations, and mass murders committed in the subjugation of the native peoples of Mexico (something which to date is questioned as the alleged massacres committed by the Spaniards almost all the stories come from the British Empire and the Dutch who use these stories against Spain and Portugal for centuries to give a bad image in the conquests of those empires). Historiography portrays that indigenous people, both Nahuatl-speakers and speakers of other languages, called him Tonatiuh, meaning "sun" in the Nahuatl language. Yet he was also called "Red Sun" in Nahuatl, which allows a variety of interpretations. Whether this epithet refers to Don Alvarado's red hair, some esoteric quality attributed to him, or both, is disputed.