Alburquerque appears to have been popular, useful and intelligent, though, from his portrait which is preserved in the gallery of the viceroys in Mexico, we would have imagined him to be a gross sensualist, resembling more the usual pictorial representations of Sancho Panza than one who was calculated to wield the destinies of an empire. Nevertheless the expression of public sorrow was unfeigned and loud among all classes when he departed for Spain in the year 1660.
Don Juan de Leyva y de la Cerda, Marques de Leyva y de la Cerda, Count de Baños XXIII. Viceroy of New Spain. 1660–1664.
The successor of the Duke of Alburquerque entered Mexico on the 16th of September, 1660. Don Juan de Leyva y de la Cerda approached the colony with the best wishes and resolutions to advance its prosperity and glory. His earliest efforts were directed to the pacification of the Tarahumares, whose insurrection was still entirely unquelled, and whose successes were alarmingly disastrous in New Mexico, whither they advanced in the course of their savage warfare. With the same liberal spirit that characterized his predecessor, he continued to be the zealous friend of those remote, frontier colonists, and, in a short time, formed twenty-four villages. It was, doubtless, his plan to subdue and pacify the north by an armed occupation.