Pedro Mendinueta y Múzquiz (June 7, 1736 in Elizondo, Navarre – 1825) was a Spanish lieutenant general and colonial official.
During his term of office, he provided water to the western part of Santa Fe, taking it from the Río del Arzobispo.
In July 1801 he received, with great interest and esteem, the naturalists Baron Alexander von Humboldt, German, and Aimé Bonpland, French, who were traveling with the permission of the Spanish Crown to study the flora, fauna and geography of its American possessions.
A map of the viceroyalty was a preoccupation of Mendinueta, who believed that many of the works he wanted to undertake were not possible without a more accurate knowledge of the geography of the colony.
Isla taught anatomical theory and dissected corpses in the Hospital San Juan, incorporating this practice into the teaching of medicine.
Mendinueta wrote an extensive Memoria Sobre el Nuevo Reino de Granada (1803).
The work, divided into four parts (ecclesiastical affairs, administration, finances and the military), is an important account of the colony at the beginning of the nineteenth century, just before the war of independence.
Mendinueta also worked to bring unconquered Indigenous tribes under Spanish authority and reorganized the government of the Llanos.
Recent wars with Britain and France had wrecked the economy and stimulated smuggling, and the public treasury was not able to support some of his ideas.
He supported the foundation of the Sociedad Patriótica de Amigos del País (Patriotic Society of Friends of the Country).
In 1807 he was named chief inspector of military services, member of the Supreme Council of War and advisor of state.