Mentioned as Lempira in documents written during the Spanish conquest, he is regarded by the people as a warrior hero whom the conquistadors feared, since they could not kill him.

The Spaniards sent a messenger to tell him they wanted “peace”, but when Lempira showed up for negotiations, they captured him, dismembered his body, and buried him in undisclosed locations so no one could pay him respects.

Based at Cerquin hill, he organized resistance against the Spanish troops in 1537, managing to gather an army of almost 30,000 soldiers, from 200 villages.

Finally, the Spaniards lured him out to talk, and a concealed Spanish soldier with an arquebus shot and killed him.

In the 1980s, the Honduran historian Mario Felipe Martínez Castillo discovered a very different account of Lempira in a document entitled Méritos y Servicios: Rodrigo Ruiz, Nueva España, written in 1558 in Mexico City.

[3] That document, Patronato 69 R.5, tells the story of Rodrigo Ruiz and his service in the conquest of Honduras under Francisco Montejo.

The document is in the form of a series of questions, answered by witnesses to the conquest which Rodrigo Ruiz gave to the Spanish king.