When Montezuma Met Cortes

by Matthew Restall

  Although Tlacotzin was effectively already ruler of indigenous Tenochtitlan, he was appointed gobernador by the parallel Spanish administration upon Cuauhtemoc’s execution in 1525. However, he died soon after Cuauhtemoc, as he too was on the Honduras expedition. Cortés then appointed don Andrés de Tapia Motelchiuhtzin, who was also with him on the expedition; Motelchiuhtzin was “only a Mexica eagle-noble” (as Nahua chronicler Chimalpahin later put it), not Aztec royalty. He governed the city during the late 1520s, when Spanish rule was in its infancy, its effectiveness undermined by virtual civil war among the conquistadors, and between them and the first waves of royal officials and early settlers. In 1530, Motelchiuhtzin was killed in action, as one of the leaders of an expedition against Chichimecs to the north. On the same campaign was a distant cousin of Montezuma’s, don Pablo Tlacatecuhtli Xochiquentzin, who then assumed the governorship of Tenochtitlan.71

  This took the governorship closer to its direct line from the Aztec emperors, and it moved even closer still with the appointment of don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin; as a grandson of Axayacatl and nephew of Montezuma, Huanitzin was recognized by the Mexica as huey tlahtoani. In quasi-indigenous sources like the Codex Aubin, Huanitzin is depicted wearing the xiuhhuitzolli—headdress of high office that was effectively the Aztec crown—and seated on the high-backed reed throne of the emperors. Huanitzin’s image was not just a veneer of continuity or a sign of Aztec nostalgia: he was chosen, according to Aztec tradition, from a pool of royal eligibles, including two surviving sons of Montezuma; his appointment was sanctioned by Viceroy Mendoza, with whom he worked closely and who clearly relied heavily upon him.72

  After Huanitzin, the rulership of the Mexica city would remain within the lineage of the old Aztec imperial dynasty for generations, passing to grandsons of the emperors Tizoc and Ahuitzotl, to a son and to a nephew of Huanitzin’s, and by the 1620s to one of his great-grandsons—a man therefore directly descended from Acamapichtli, who had become king back in 1376. Continuity of dynastic rule thus long outlasted Cortés’s coming and going; he had left Mexico for good by Huaniztin’s death in 1541. The story of Tenochtitlan had ceased to be Cortés’s. But then, in reality, had it ever been?

  * * *

  Cortés stood on the beach, waving his sword, yelling at Martín de Castro. Write this down, he told Castro, the senior notary among the men and horses gathered on the sand. Write, he “loudly declared,” that I am “the very illustrious lord don Fernando Cortés, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, Captain General of New Spain and the South Sea for His Majesty the King”; that “I have discovered this land, that I have come with my ships and fleet to conquer and settle it!” Shouting that he was thereby “taking control and possession of this newly discovered land,” the Marquis

  “gave the port and bay the name of the Port and Bay of Santa Cruz, and he walked back and forth” across the beach “from one part to another and with his sword struck certain trees which were there, and ordered the men who were standing there to accept him as Governor of these lands for His Majesty.”73

  It is tempting to see something pathetically quixotic in this scene. For it has no place in the traditional narrative of Cortesian triumph. The ceremony of possession occurred not during the invasion of Mexico, but in May 1535, on a beach at the tip of the peninsula known today as Baja California. For all the talk of discovery and conquest, there was no civilization on the horizon, no embassy to engage, not even a few unsuspecting locals to enslave or ensnare. A small map was sketched, ending up in the archives in Seville, along with Martín de Castro’s record of the moment. The map shows only the tip of the peninsula, its short coastlines going nowhere—just like Cortés’s expedition.74

  For all his titles, his ships and horses, his shouting and striking trees with his sword, Cortés might as well have been don Quixote tilting at windmills. A week later, he had the expedition’s public crier read out loud on the same beach a royal edict, issued years earlier, in 1529, giving Cortés license to “discover, conquer, and settle any islands in the South Sea of New Spain” (that is, off Mexico’s Pacific coast), and the notary made a record of that reading. It was as if Cortés were repeating the legal rituals from the beach at Veracruz of sixteen years earlier, only this time he really was in control of his company. But there was another difference: no city-states were nearby. There was no conquest to come. He was not even in charge of the lands for whose conquest he was given credit.75

  A few days later, he wrote to Cristóbal de Oñate (conqueror of New Galicia—the region northwest of central Mexico—and its governor for most of the next decade) to inform him that he had found “pearls and fishing grounds,” but that he was not yet writing to the governor of New Spain (Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán) or the archbishop (fray Juan de Zumárraga) until he had discovered “the secrets” of these new lands. In fact, there were no secrets. A paltry Spanish colony set up at Baja’s tip in 1535 was abandoned within a year; a permanent one would not be established for another sixty years, and it would remain poor and tiny for centuries.76

  Hollow titles, pointless paperwork, fruitless expeditions, and virtual exile from the kingdom he supposedly won but was now ruled by others. Such were the final decades of Cortés’s life (1529–47), dubbed by his biographers the period of “Self-Conquest” or that of “The Powerless Marquis.” And it is certainly tempting to knock the wind out of the sails of Cortesian mythology by mocking moments like the one on the Baja beach. But that misses the point, which is not to turn him from hero to antihero, legend to loser, but to dismantle his exceptionalism. For Cortés waving his sword and dictating documents on that beach was not actually a figure of fun; he was a typical conquistador, doing what Spaniards of the era did all over the Americas and beyond. Like other Europeans, they claimed lands wherever they explored, proclaiming possession and claiming legal title before going on to conquer, settle, and rule. Most expeditions failed; most claims led to nothing; the mortality rate of conquistadors and would-be conquistadors was extremely high. Remove the Spanish-Aztec War from Cortés’s biography and his unexceptional and typically unsuccessful participation in that pattern comes into focus.77

  Purveyors of the traditional narrative of the Conquest and Cortés’s life have always struggled to make sense of his movements and priorities in the final quarter century of his life. How to explain the conundrum of a supposed visionary leader failing to focus on his prize, constantly distracted by other regions, squandering thousands of lives on travesties like the pointless and costly expedition to Honduras? The facile solution had been to follow Cortés himself, who never failed to point fingers at old enemies and ungrateful friends. A more complex, but better evidenced, solution lies in accepting that Cortesian control is a myth, that his capture of the Aztec Empire was as much an illusion as the surrender of Montezuma, that he inevitably and hopelessly struggled to maintain even a semblance of control over both the Spaniards in New Spain and the vast, destabilized network of indigenous states and communities. Furthermore, the conundrum disappears if we also accept that if Cortés had a vision, it was not for New Spain, but for his own glorious future, one in which he—not Velázquez—was to initiate expeditions, discover new lands under indisputable license from the king, and find a passage to Asia and the Spice Islands.

  This was the old Iberian dream, circulating long before Cortés’s generation was born, the one Columbus had clung to all his life and that had inspired scores of voyages for decades. Thus all the captains who set off to explore regions of Mesoamerica in 1521—Juan del Valle to Tehuantepec, Pedro de Alvarado to Oaxaca, Olid to Michoacán, and Pedro Alvarez Chico to Guerrero—were instructed to look for a way to sail from the Caribbean to the Pacific (or South Sea). Until such a passage were found, and in order to help find it, a shipyard was needed on the Pacific; to that end indigenous slaves and porters were put to work carrying cables, rigging, and anchors all the way from Veracruz across central Mexico to Zacatula (today’s Petacalco, on Guerrero’s Pacific coast). In his Thi
rd Letter to the king, of May 1522, Cortés reported that four ships were already under construction.78

  As it happened, during the very weeks when Montezuma had been welcoming Cortés in Tenochtitlan, Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães) and Sebastián Elcano were leading an expedition through the straits that would be given the Portuguese captain’s name. On November 28, 1519, they reached the Pacific, sailing on to the Spice Islands or Moluccas (today called Maluku, part of Indonesia) and the Philippines (where Magellan was killed). Elcano’s return to Spain in the autumn of 1522 prompted the king to order Cortés to freeze his explorations while another expedition (under Jofre García de Loaysa) was launched from Spain to try to improve on the Magellan-Elcano route. That expedition finally set off in 1525, and by the summer of 1526 was presumed lost; Cortés was ordered to search the Pacific for survivors. In fact, while Loaysa himself and most of his crew had indeed perished, survivors had made it to the Moluccas and one ship even found the new Spanish shipyard in Tehuantepec.79

  Seeing an opportunity to save the day, Cortés organized an expensive trans-Pacific expedition under the command of one of his cousins, Alvaro de Saavedra Cerón. Hoping to be responsible for placing Asia’s islands “under the imperial scepter,” Cortés wrote that he was “convinced that in our time we shall see His Majesty become king of the world.” He wrote a letter for his cousin to deliver to the Chinese emperor, informing him that God had given “preference” to the Spanish king above all other Christian princes, and “in His bounty has wished that he should be emperor of the world.” (He also sent “ten letters in Latin, the [addressees’] names blank,” “as it is the most general language in the universe,” and “there may be Jews who can read it.”) Saavedra’s fleet set sail in July 1527; the years passed, with no word. Meanwhile, in 1528, crown officials led by Guzmán had wrested from Cortés what little control he had of the Spanish administration in Mexico; Cortés’s shipyards were seized, and he was recalled to Spain.80

  What had happened, meanwhile, to the Saavedra expedition? In the end, it did make it to the Moluccas. But there the ships were lost and most of the men died; a few survivors eventually reached Spain, seven years after leaving Mexico.

  Having returned to Spain, laden with the spoils of war, Cortés pursued the Spanish king. Eventually, on July 6, 1529, in Barcelona, Carlos V signed four cédulas granting privileges to Cortés. In the first two, he is still recognized as governor and captain-general of New Spain, and at the same time elevated to marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca. Along with the marquisate came the granting and confirmation of his tenure of considerable lands and encomiendas in central Mexico and Oaxaca. He was now, by royal decree and in reality, an extremely wealthy and powerful nobleman.

  The moment lasted only minutes. For that morning the king went on to sign two more decrees. At first glance, they appear simply to further burnish the privileges of the new marquis. One made him captain-general of the coasts and provinces of the South Sea (meaning the Pacific Ocean). The other granted him further lands in Mexico for hunting. But in both, the title of governor of New Spain was absent. It had been revoked. His right to rule was gone, and would never be recovered. His marquisate was a consolation prize. The title of captain-general, without the governorship, amounted to an order to sail off and find new lands for the king, or perish doing so, but to leave Mexico to others.81

  Cortés’s extensive properties and access to labor in Mexico and Oaxaca made him a wealthy man. But the 1529 document granting him the right to be captain-general of the South Sea—in effect, to rule the Pacific—would lead him nowhere but to an empty beach in Baja. His kingdom of imaginary islands grew further and further beyond reach. Harried by the Guzmán administration (he sued the governor for impounding ships of his), his Pacific possibilities were limited by Crown-backed claims in northern Mexico and beyond by Guzmán himself and by an old enemy, Pánfilo de Narváez. Furthermore, unaware that the king had sold all rights to the Moluccas to the Portuguese crown, Cortés built and outfitted two new ships. Led by another Cortés cousin, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the expedition left Acapulco in 1532. One ship sailed north and made landfall in what is now Nayarit, where all members of the crew were slaughtered. The other ship disappeared without a trace.

  Increasingly obsessive, Cortés sent out another pair of ships, under Hernando de Grijalva. Some islands south of Baja were found, but Guzmán’s men seized one of the ships. Cortés’s own expedition to Baja then followed, despite the fact that the Crown had now authorized Alvarado to take the lead in Pacific explorations. Thus when, in 1536, word reached Mexico that the Pizarro expedition in Peru had appealed for reinforcements, Cortés prepared a pair of vessels, placing Grijalva in command and ordering him to sail to the Moluccas, instead of Peru. Grijalva almost made it, reaching the Gilbert Islands, where his crew murdered him and abandoned ship. Still Cortés kept building ships and preparing Pacific expeditions. A fleet of three sailed north in 1539, returning with nothing but descriptions of the California coast. When Cortés left for Spain shortly after this, a fleet of five was being prepared in Acapulco; Cortés never returned to Mexico and the expedition was abandoned.82

  One historian recently found in all this “the beginnings of a European modernity in which an insatiable quest for profit and a projection into space and the future were combined.”83 That may be true, in terms of the larger context of sixteenth-century European exploration and expansion. But Cortés’s role in that larger development was dismal. His derivative and self-centered sense of purpose led to little that was original or creative. He achieved nothing of note in his fifteen years in the Caribbean, but at least the relative modesty of those years did relatively little damage; by contrast, during a similar number of years, his Pacific endeavors likewise achieved very little—yet he exploited indigenous labor, drained resources from communities still suffering or recovering from warfare and epidemic disease, and sent hundreds of men to die at sea. There was no profit, no return, no result other than waste, misery, and failure. The success of the Aztec war—the “Conquest of Mexico”—did not transform Cortés from a mediocrity into a brilliant man of vision. But it gave the illusion of him being such a man, and having always been one.

  That illusion was certainly believed by Cortés himself; he birthed and nurtured it in his Letters to the King, and in the 1540s it blossomed through conversations with his son, don Martín, and with his biographer, Gómara. It was also evident in a few incidents of these final years in Spain. The failures of his Mexican and Pacific expeditions of the late 1520s and ’30s were topped by the failure of a Mediterranean campaign in 1541. It was not, of course, led by Cortés, nor was its outcome his fault. But his own hubris matched that of Emperor Carlos V and his troops. The campaign began with a Spanish assault on the Ottoman stronghold of Algiers and ran into trouble almost immediately, with the invasion fleet damaged and scattered by violent weather, and the land attack driven back and saved from complete disaster only by making a two-day march back to the coast. Cortés allegedly tried to compare the retreat to his position in Mexico after the Spanish expulsion from Tenochtitlan, urging Carlos to turn back and seize Tunis just as he had rallied and seized the Aztec capital. Fortunately for Cortés, his plea fell on deaf ears, or else the old conquistador might have met an ironic—and arguably appropriate—death at the hands of non-Christian defenders of a besieged overseas city.84

  Throughout his half-millennium afterlife, whether Cortés has been seen as Moses or Caesar, as Hero or Antihero, two core Cortesian characteristics have persisted: exceptional and masterful. Spanish composer of epic poetry Vaca de Guzmán colorfully put it thus:

  If you want to see the valiant spirit,

  that has given so much glory to your nation,

  prepared for risks and prudent,

  resolute in endeavors and bold,

  a General of the Spanish people,

  whose valor the world has respected,

  in the great Cortés you will see it all, . . . 85r />
  Remove the twin assumptions of his exceptionalism and his mastery of events, however, and two mutually dependent and explanatory things collapse: the heroic legend of Cortés, and the traditional “Conquest of Mexico” narrative. To paraphrase Paz, to dispel a myth, one must attack the ideology that spawned it. If Cortés is no longer exceptional, nor the man in control, an opening is created—a whole world of openings—into which other people and other explanations can be discovered.

  And then there is the war itself. Divorcing Cortés’s biography from the “Conquest of Mexico,” and then banishing that phrase, with its connotation of a campaign that was a remarkable yet inevitable triumph, allows us to see the Spanish-Aztec War for what it was: a horrific conflict that raged for more than two years, marked by civilian massacres and atrocities of all kinds, with mortality rates around two-thirds among Spanish invaders and Mesoamerican communities alike (as we shall discuss in detail in the next chapter). Indeed, seen through the lens of war’s unpredictable chaos, the image of Cortés as exceptional and masterful becomes absurd, divorced from reality, a portrait of a fictional commander of an imagined campaign. But viewed within the context of the war as it really was, Cortés’s exceptionalism recedes to one small but revealing fact: he survived. A tiny percentage of the Spaniards who sailed to Mexico in 1519 experienced the entire Spanish-Aztec War, survived additional expeditions and campaigns, and died a natural death in Spain (Duverger, making the point rhetorically, asserts that “he was the only one of all the conquistadors to die in his bed.”) A recent study of recipients of the Carnegie Medal for heroism found “almost no examples of heroes whose first impulse was for self-preservation.” In the end, perhaps Cortés’s greatest accomplishment was self-preservation.86