In 1517, the Aztecs received reports that strange men had landed in Yucatan. These “strange men” formed an expedition, led by Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, which had sailed from the Spanish colony of Cuba. This expedition, composed of three ships and 110 men, set in motion the conquest of Mexico. While on shore, twenty-five Spanish were killed in a clash with the Maya. Hernandez de Cordoba himself was wounded and died of his wounds after returning to Cuba. Quite possibly the clash was touched off by Spanish attempts to capture Maya to take back to Cuba for sale as slaves. Ship-borne Spanish slave raids were common throughout the Caribbean at the time.2
When the Spanish arrived in Yucatan, the Mayan population was divided into sixteen city-states— each striving to expand its boundaries at the expense of its neighbors. Their society functioned at a lower cultural level than their ancestors had reached five centuries before.3
In 1518, news came of a second expedition that had sailed from Cuba to Yucatan. This 240-man expedition, commanded by Juan de Grijalva, followed the Mexican coast north to Cape Rojo, between the present cities of Tuxpan and Tampico. The expedition’s four ships then returned to Cuba and whetted Spanish appetites with reports of gold and large Indian populations.4
In 1519, the Aztecs learned of the arrival of Hernan Cortes’s fateful expedition in what an Indian observer described as “towers or small mountains floating on the waves of the sea.”5
Cortes, who would forever change Mexican history, was born in the western Spanish region of Extremadura in about 1484.6 Along with thousands of others, he came to the New World in search of gold and glory, joining a westward migration set in motion by Christopher Columbus. Such a search became especially attractive after 1492. After that year, due to the capture of the last Moorish position on the Iberian Peninsula, fighting the infidel no longer offered a path to status and wealth in Spain.7
At the age of fourteen, Cortes left home to study law at the University of Salamanca. He spent two years there without distinguishing himself and then left the University. Even though he abandoned law, the Latin and legal phraseology he learned in Salamanca lent an air of authority to his later writings.
In 1504, Cortes booked passage on a ship to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. There he received land and benefited from the indigenous population living on it. During the seven years he lived on Hispaniola, Spanish authorities called upon him to suppress an Indian revolt. This gained him the
Reputation of being a formidable warrior, which in turn earned him an invitation to serve as secretary to Diego de Velazquez in the conquest of Cuba.
In 1511, the Spanish conquered, or, more accurately, occupied Cuba. The Indians there offered little resistance. Cortes was placed in charge of many indigenous people, whom he forced to mine gold. Overwork and cultural shock killed many of these indigenous people. However, the gold they produced made Cortes wealthy. His serving from 1516 to 1518 as one of the magistrates of Santiago de Cuba reflected his newly elevated status.
In late 1518, Velazquez, who had been appointed governor of Cuba, selected Cortes to lead a third expedition to Mexico. He felt that Cortes possessed the strong leadership that such an expedition would require. He also knew that Cortes had enough wealth to underwrite much of the cost of the expedition.
By the early sixteenth century, the Crown had privatized territorial expansion, since the cost of maintaining a standing army and conquering the enormous territory of the Americas exceeded its very limited financial means. In exchange for its granting a private individual a royal license, or contract, to conquer and settle a given area, the Crown was legally entitled to a fifth of the booty obtained. The remaining four-fifths were divided between financiers of the conquest and the conquistadores, who also received the right to control the indigenous population they encountered. Such an arrangement served the Crown since, in addition to the booty, it would receive taxes from subsequent economic activity in the conquered area.8
Velazquez issued Cortes with very detailed instructions, which were a model of jurisprudence. If they had been obeyed, Cortes would not have been the conqueror of Mexico. The instructions stated that the principal purpose of the expedition was to serve God, and thus blasphemy and sleeping with native women would not be allowed. If landing parties were needed to secure wood and water, on no account was anyone ever to sleep on shore. The instructions foresaw reconnaissance, gathering information on missing Spaniards, limited trade, and a return to Cuba. Velazquez felt information obtained from the voyage would facilitate his establishing a settlement on the mainland once formal authorization arrived from Spain.9
To raise capital for the expedition, Cortes mortgaged his estate, borrowed from wealthy merchants, bought what he could on credit, and begged from friends. He also showed his willingness to ignore the law when it served his interest. To obtain needed supplies, he simply appropriated a shipload of provisions.10
Shortly before his scheduled departure, Velazquez decided that Cortes would probably betray him and revoked his command. Cortes remained undaunted. He convinced officials to assist him in assembling the expedition, even though they had orders to stop him. Cortes even recruited for his expedition one of the messengers who had delivered the order revoking his command. No one in Cuba could mount a force to stop him.
On February 18, 1519, Cortes left Cuba with twelve ships, 530 Europeans, several hundred Cuban Indians, and a few black freemen and African slaves, as well as sixteen horses and fourteen cannons. The expedition included several women, who served as housekeepers and maids, as well as two sisters of conquistador Diego de Ordaz. The conquistadores had mixed goals. Expedition member Bernal Diaz del Castillo wrote that the Spanish came “to bring light to those in darkness, and also to get rich, which is what all of us men commonly seek.”11
Upon arriving in Yucatan, Cortes found two Spaniards whose boat had been shipwrecked there in 1511 as it attempted to sail from Darien to Santo Domingo. Cortes picked up one of the survivors, Jeronimo de Aguilar, who had learned the Mayan language. The other Spaniard, Gonzalo Guerrero, who had married a Maya woman and fathered children, said he preferred the life of an Indian and remained behind.12
While Cortes was sailing up the Mexican coast, a Maya chief presented him with a woman as a gift. This woman, Malinche, formed a translation team with Aguilar. She translated from Nahuatl, the Aztec language, to Yucatecan Mayan. Aguilar then translated the Mayan into Spanish. Malinche
CURRENT VIEWS OF MALINCHE
Malinche was born to high status within the Aztec empire. However, while still a youth, she became a slave of the Maya. According to one version, after her father died, her mother remarried and bore her new husband a son. To avoid Malinche's claiming high status based on her deceased father, her mother and stepfather decided to remove her from the family, transferring her to the Maya on the Gulf Coast. There she learned the Mayan language, a second language in addition to her native Nahuatl. Upon Cortes's arrival, she was simply given to him as one might give an honored guest a parrot or a dog. Her knowledge of Nahuatl and Aztec life in general proved to be so valuable that Bernal Diaz del Castillo commented, "As Dona Marina [another form of her name] proved herself such an excellent woman and good interpreter throughout the wars in New Spain, Tlaxcala and Mexico. . . Cortes always took her with him. . ."a
Her role in facilitating the Conquest has earned her the opprobrium of the Mexican people since. Her name has even given rise to the Spanish adjective malinchista, which the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language defines as one who prefers the foreign to one's own. Nobel Prize-winning Mexican author Octavio Paz expressed the general Mexican opinion of her:
Dona Marina becomes a figure representing the Indian women who were fascinated, violated or seduced by the Spaniards. And as a small boy will not forgive his mother if she abandons him in search for his father, the Mexican people have not forgiven La Malinche for her betrayal. b
The image of her as traitor to Mesoamericans and whore (she bore Cortes a son) was apparently etched in stone.
However, in the latter part of the twentieth century, feminists reconsidered of Malinche's place in history. The question was raised as to just what she owed the Aztecs who had cast her aside or the Maya who had given her away. Certainly she did not owe "Mexico" anything, since the concept did not yet exist. Similarly, it was only the Spanish who divided humanity into races. To the indigenous, one was Aztec or Mayan or Zapotec. In the indigenous word view of the time any obligation to race per se did not exist any more than Europeans or Africans owed loyalty to others from their respective continents.
As a result a revisionist view of her emerged as a resilient woman who overcame adversity early in life and employed her talents as translator and diplomat to rise to high position in the milieu into which she was thrust. This radical reinterpretation of Malinche, while not completely reversing old notions of her, at least provides an alternate view of her. c
A Diaz del Castillo (1996: 67). b Paz (1985: 86).
C Townsend (2006), Karttunen (1994), Valenzuela (1988), and author's interview with Valenzuela, April 2009.
Soon learned enough Spanish to dispense with Aguilar. Later she became Cortes’s lover. See the box for current views on Malinche.13
Cortes’s fleet arrived near the present site of Veracruz on April 21, 1519. Soon after arriving, some members of the expedition decided they should forego further exploration and sail back to Cuba. Cortes persuaded them to remain in Mexico, using his strong personality and payments of gold, which, as one conquistador noted, served as “such a pacifier!” No one knows when Cortes decided to act independently of Velazquez. His going into debt to finance an expedition four times as large as Grijalva’s suggests that he had planned to reject Velazquez’s authority even before leaving Cuba.14
Upon hearing of Cortes’s arrival, Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, sent emissaries with a rich assortment of gifts, including food, silver - and gold-covered wooden disks the size of carriage wheels, gold nuggets, and ornate headdresses of green parrot feathers. The emissaries, in addition to providing gifts, attempted to glean as much information as possible about the newcomers.15
World History
