Most Powerful

• #1 Alberto Fujimori
  Peru Party State ControlPolitical World Wars and Midcentury State Power Power: 100
  Alberto Fujimori (1938–000) was a president of Peru associated with Peru. Alberto Fujimori is best known for Centralizing presidential power during economic collapse and insurgency, defeating major rebel organizations, and leaving a deeply divisive record of authoritarian rule, corruption, and human-rights abuses. This profile belongs to the site’s study of party state control and state power, where influence depends on controlling systems rather than possessing money alone. Across this era, wealth and command were less about possession alone than about controlling the systems through which other people had to move.
• #2 Diego de Almagro
  ChilePeruSpain Colonial AdministrationMilitary Early Modern Conquest & TributeTrade Routes Power: 100
  Diego de Almagro (1475 – 1538) was a Spanish conquistador and expedition leader active in Central America and the Andean conquest during the early sixteenth century. He became a principal partner in the campaigns that overthrew the Inca state, then turned into a rival within the Spanish factional struggle over land, titles, and the right to extract wealth from the new colonies.Almagro’s career shows how conquest translated into political economy. Military victory opened access to tribute, forced labor, and mining prospects, but the distribution of rewards depended on royal grants and on the ability to hold territory by force. Disputes among Spanish leaders repeatedly escalated into civil conflict, and Almagro’s final years were defined by a contest with the Pizarro faction over control of Cuzco and jurisdictional boundaries.He is remembered both for launching an arduous expedition south toward Chile and for the internal Spanish warfare that followed the initial conquest. The violence of that period fell heavily on Indigenous communities, who faced expropriation, coerced service, and the collapse of existing political and economic structures.
• #3 Francisco de Toledo, Viceroy of Peru
  PeruSpanish Empire Colonial AdministrationPoliticalResources Early Modern Conquest & TributeState Power Power: 100
  Francisco de Toledo (1515 – 1582) served as Viceroy of Peru in the Spanish Empire and became one of the most influential administrators of early colonial South America. His tenure is associated with sweeping institutional reforms that strengthened imperial control over Andean society and intensified the extraction of silver and tribute into the global economy.Toledo’s administration aimed to convert an unstable conquest zone into a governed revenue system. He reorganized jurisdictions, regulated taxation, and promoted labor structures that supplied mines and estates. The most consequential mechanisms included forced resettlement programs that concentrated Indigenous populations into planned towns and the expansion of labor drafts, often known as mita, that fed the mining complex.His legacy is inseparable from the wealth created by colonial silver, especially from Potosí, and from the coercion used to sustain that production. Toledo is also remembered for authorizing the capture and execution of the last Inca ruler in Vilcabamba, an act that symbolized the consolidation of Spanish sovereignty and deepened the historical controversy surrounding his rule.
• #4 Francisco Pizarro
  PeruSpain Colonial AdministrationMilitary Early Modern Conquest & TributeTrade Routes Power: 100
  Francisco Pizarro (1478 – 1541) was a Spanish conquistador whose expedition in the Andes captured the Inca ruler Atahualpa and dismantled the political center of the Inca Empire during a period of internal conflict and disease disruption. Acting under Spanish legal instruments that granted limited but meaningful authority, he converted military victories into a colonial regime by distributing spoils, allocating labor and land through encomienda arrangements, and founding urban nodes that anchored Spanish administration. His career shows how early modern conquest turned concentrated imperial wealth into transferable property claims, tax rights, and office-holding power inside a new Atlantic empire.
• #5 José de San Martín
  ArgentinaChilePeru MilitaryMilitary CommandPolitical Early Modern Military CommandState Power Power: 100
  José de San Martín (1778–822) was a military leader associated with Argentina and Chile. José de San Martín is best known for organizing campaigns that dismantled imperial control in southern South America. This profile belongs to the site’s study of military command and state power, where influence depends on controlling systems rather than possessing money alone. In the early modern period, rulers and financiers increasingly worked through maritime trade, imperial administration, court patronage, chartered privilege, and expanding fiscal systems.
• #6 Simón Bolívar
  BoliviaColombiaEcuadorPeruVenezuela MilitaryMilitary CommandPolitical Early Modern Military CommandState Power Power: 100
  Simón Bolívar (born 1783) is a liberator and political leader associated with Venezuela and Colombia. Simón Bolívar is best known for leading independence wars and attempting to build durable post-imperial states. This profile belongs to the site’s study of military command and state power, where influence depends on controlling systems rather than possessing money alone. In the early modern period, rulers and financiers increasingly worked through maritime trade, imperial administration, court patronage, chartered privilege, and expanding fiscal systems.
• #7 Germán Larrea
  MexicoPeruUnited States MiningResource Extraction ControlTransport 21st Century Finance and Wealth Power: 47
  Germán Larrea (born 1953) is a Mexican mining executive whose fortune and influence rest on the durable power of copper, railways, and industrial logistics. As the leading figure behind Grupo México, he helped build a conglomerate with major mining operations in Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Spain, alongside one of the most important freight rail networks in Mexico. His biography demonstrates how extractive wealth becomes more durable when it is paired with transport infrastructure and disciplined family control.