Irala was destined to undergo many vicissitudes in the course of his Governorship.  Very soon after he had been elected to this post it was his fate to be superseded for a while.  Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, having obtained the appointment in Spain itself, came out by Royal Licence to govern the new province of which Asuncion was the capital.  Cabeza de Vaca was essentially a humanitarian Governor, who proved himself extremely loth to employ coercion and the sword, which means, in fact, he only resorted to with extreme reluctance as a very last resource.  His courage and determination were evidenced by his overland journey; for, instead of sailing up the great river system from the mouth of the River Plate, he brought his expedition overland from Santa Catalina in Brazil, advancing safely through the numerous tribes and difficult country which intervened between the coast and Asuncion.

The temperament of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, however, was of too refined and trusting an order to deal with the turbulent and somewhat treacherous elements which abounded at Asuncion.  After a while a revolt occurred, brought about probably by the Governor’s objection to the wholesale plundering and enslavement of the Indians by the Spaniards.  The populace turned strongly against the Governor.  Cabeza de Vaca was flung into prison, and sent a prisoner to Spain, after which drastic procedure Irala was once again elected Governor by the colonists.  Doubtless Cabeza de Vaca possesses the chief claim to sympathy of all those who had to do with Paraguay at this early period of its existence; yet at the same time it is impossible to refrain from admiration of the sheer determination and willpower with which Irala pursued his career.

For years Irala’s position remained utterly precarious.  He was the chosen of the colonists, but not of the Court of Spain, which alone possessed any legal right to appoint a person to so high an office as his.  No exalted personages were more jealous of their privileges than these.  Several times Irala was on the point of losing his Governorship, but on each occasion the measures he adopted, aided by good fortune, tided him over the crisis, and left him continuing in the seat of authority.  In the end, after undergoing innumerable anxieties, Irala at last succeeded in obtaining the Royal Licence for the Governorship of Paraguay.

All the while his energy continued undiminished, and it was due to him that the colonization of the country made such rapid strides.  The means by which this end was effected were, from the modern point of view, entirely dubious, for it was Irala who instituted in Paraguay encomiendas, or slave settlements, into which the natives of the country were congregated in order that their labour might be employed in agriculture and similar occupations.  This, however, was the ordinary procedure of the period, and, as historians have already pointed out, Irala’s faults, although serious enough, were really nothing beyond those of his age.  In any case, his name stands as that of one of the most powerful of the conquistadores.  During the later years of his office a comparatively undisturbed era obtained, and he held the reins of the Paraguayan Government with a firm hand till his death, which occurred at the age of seventy-one.