Governor Pizarro, the appointed governor of the Governorate of New Castile, commands the Spanish invasion forces in the region of Peru. A ruthless, avaricious, and despotic commander, he places little value on human life unless it serves his purposes. His primary objective is the location of the Lost Cities of Gold.

To achieve this, he orders the kidnapping of Zia, daughter of an Incan high priest, from Peru. After she is taken to Spain and presented to the Queen, he brings her to the New World, believing she can read the Golden Quipu, which he considers the key to finding the cities. Operating from a fort he establishes at Tumbes, he holds prisoners there, including the Incan elder Apo and the priest Pasha. Upon Zia’s arrival, he imprisons her separately and uses threats against her friends to coerce her into translating the quipu.

His relentless pursuit drives his subordinates, Señor Gomez and Captain Gaspard, to pursue the main characters in repeated attempts to recapture Zia. Despite these efforts, he is ultimately unsuccessful, failing to permanently secure the quipu’s secrets and never gaining access to the Cities of Gold. He is persistently thwarted by misfortune as the children escape his grasp on multiple occasions, including at Tumbes and later on the Nazca Plateau. There, his men locate the Golden Condor; he takes the main characters hostage and demands a demonstration of the machine. He is outwitted by Mendoza and temporarily blinded by the Condor’s intense gleam at sunrise, allowing his prisoners to escape once again.