PAEZ, JoséAntonio, one of the leaders of the struggle for South-American independence, and the first president (1830-38) of the republic of Venezuela, was born of Indian parents in the neighbourhood of Acarigua in the province of Barinas, and died in exile at New York, May 6, 1873. His military career, which began about 1810, was distinguished by the defeat of the Spanish forces at Mata de la Miel (1815), at Montecal and throughout the province of Apure (1816), and at Puerto Cabello (1823). At first he acted in concert with Bolivar {q.υ.}, but in 1829 he procured the secession of Venezuela from the republic of Colombia. For his later life see Venezuela. His autobiography was published at New York in 1867— 69, and his son Ramon Paez (otherwise known as an author) wrote Public Life of J. A. Paez (1864)....
PAEZ, Pedro (1564-1622), Jesuit missionary to Abyssinia, was born at Olmedo in Old Castile in 1564. Having entered the Society of Jesus, he was set apart for foreign mission service, and sent to Goa in 1588. Within a year he was despatched from that place along with a fellow missionary to Abyssinia, but having fallen into the hands of pirates at Ormuz he was detained in that neighbourhood for seven years as a galley slave. Having been redeemed by his order in 1596, he next spent some years in mission work at Diu and Camboya and other places on the west coast of India, and it was not until 1603 that he reached his original destination, landing at the port of Massowah. At the headquarters of his order in Fremona, he soon acquired the two chief dialects of the country, translated a catechism, and set about the education of some Abyssinian children. He also established a reputation as a preacher, and, having been summoned to court, succeeded in vanquishing the native priests and in converting Za-Denghel, the king, who wrote to the pope and the king of Spain for more missionaries, an act of zeal which involved him in civil war, and ultimately cost him his life (October 1604). Under the succeeding sovereign the influence of Paez became still greater, not only the king but the nobility having abjured Paganism and accepted Christianity. Paez, who is said to have been the first European to visit the Abyssinian Nile, died of fever in 1622. See Abyssinia, vol. i. p. 65.
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