by Buddy Levy
Cortés’s men met Cristóbal de Tapia on December 24, 1521, when the two sides presented their cases and their documents. Cortés had cleverly included a document that construed Tapia’s arrival as a threat equal to that of Narváez (who was, incidentally, still a prisoner on the coast) and that pointed out that Cortés could not possibly abandon the capital region and its governorship, for fear of Aztec rebellion. (Tapia could not have known it at the time, but this claim was hardly genuine.) Cortés’s delegation listened carefully to Tapia and read the papers with scrutiny, but after four days of deliberation they responded with a formal document denying Cristóbal de Tapia any authority in the region and even countering with claims against Diego Velázquez, Pánfilo de Narváez, and Tapia himself.
The unwanted inspector was offered some gold ingots for his trouble (and ostensibly in exchange for a few horses, one ship, and a few black slaves) and was told that he must return at once to Santo Domingo. Tapia dug in his heels for a few days and claimed he had become too sick to travel. Gonzalo de Sandoval then reportedly told him that he would personally send him home in a dugout canoe if the inspector failed to board the ship at once.18 Tapia did as he was told. Through shrewd countermeasures Cortés had thwarted another serious political challenge to his power in New Spain.
Cortés, who had referred to Tenochtitlán as “the most beautiful thing in the world,”19 determined to rebuild the fantastic city he had destroyed, adding that he “always wished the great city to be rebuilt because of its magnificence and marvelous position.”20 There was a strategic rationale for maintaining the location of the capital, for as Cortés had seen firsthand, the island city was extremely defensible. It is also likely that Cortés, in choosing to construct his own Spanish-style city directly on top of the former Aztec marvel, intended to overlay symbolic conquest and eradicate the Aztec monuments and all memory of them. The construction of Mexico City commenced in 1522, using labor from the few surviving Aztecs and Texcocan allies. Cortés enlisted chief architect Alonso García Bravo to draw up plans for the new city and Cortés moved back onto the island to personally oversee the project. Ironically, one of Montezuma’s surviving sons, Don Pedro Montezuma, administered the reconstruction of a section of the city. Before long hundreds of thousands of residents from the Valley of Mexico were employed in the rebuilding project.21
Cortés, as if to add insult to injury and death, placed his own palace—complete with Castilian-style towers—directly on top of the former Palace of Montezuma. His Spanish architects erected Christian churches where the great Aztec temples and pyramids had formerly stood. The indigenous laborers from the valley and beyond could see the changes immediately. The orderly canals fell to disuse, replaced by new ones poorly placed or dug; the distribution of saline and fresh water, controlled by the elaborate dike system, languished, so that the waters grew brackish and gave off a foul odor; and the lakes began to evaporate and shrink. Native workers used, for the first time in their lives, wheeled tools—carts and wheelbarrows and pulleys—as well as draft animals, previously unknown to them.22
These were primarily physical changes and shifts; the spiritual alterations to the Aztec civilization would arrive soon, in the form of Dominican and mendicant friars (mostly from Hispaniola) charged with converting the natives to Christianity, a process that began in the years immediately following the conquest and that persisted for more than half a century.23 This “conversion” was thorough and possessed a political underpinning, because even if some of the well-intended friars believed they were saving souls, they were in fact (unwittingly or not) annihilating a culture and spiritual system to pave the way for Spain’s colonization in these newly conquered lands, and colonization required religious unification. In only one generation, virtually all vestiges of the Aztec religion—temples, idols, shrines, pyramids—were reduced to rubble and memory. Perhaps even more devastating to Aztec religious culture and thought, annihilated too were the keepers of the knowledge, the Aztec teachers and priests.*59 24
With the rebuilding of the city under way, in May 1522 Cortés completed the third of his letters to the emperor-king, in which he not only related the details of the siege and ultimate conquest of Tenochtitlán but also took pains to reconfirm his own legal position in the region, since he still had no official word from Spain regarding his activities for the past three years. He dispatched, along with a ship containing his letters and legal documents, another treasure ship containing the spoils won for Spain. In addition to the king’s fifth of gold, which amounted to 37,000 pesos, he included a vast array of exotic marvels from the Americas: live animals, intricate masks with golden ears and precious stones for teeth, gold goblets, and place settings.25 All was placed aboard ships that set sail on May 22, 1522. Aboard one was the king’s treasurer, Julián de Alderete.
These treasure ships never made it to Spain. Somewhere beyond the Azores, near Cape St. Vincent, French pirates (having heard stories of the wonders coming from the Americas as a result of the exhibition in August 1520 in Brussels) led by corsair Jean Florin attacked, seized the ships and the treasure and caravels, and sailed them directly to France, where the booty (including over five hundred pounds of gold dust and seven hundred pounds of pearls) was delivered to King Francis I. Alderete died mysteriously en route, either from poisoning or from eating tainted food. Cortés’s letters and correspondences (including a detailed inventory of the treasure) made it safely to Spain on a different ship, but unfortunately paper was all Charles V would receive of the second treasure, the prizes of Tenochtitlán lost to his arch-rival in France.26
At precisely the same time—May or June 1522—Malinche, still at Cortés’s side and continuing her role of interpreter during the transition of power, bore him the son she had been carrying since the latter part of the conquest. Cortés named the child Martín, after his own father.27 The palatial house in Coyoacán into which Martín was born included many women. There was Malinche, his mother, of course, but Cortés kept a number of other mistresses, both indigenous women and recently arrived Spanish women from the Indies. Ships now came regularly on the news of Cortés’s victory. But it still would have come as a surprise to Cortés when, in August 1522, an exhausted messenger arrived, sent by Sandoval from the coast, saying that a ship had anchored, newly arrived from Cuba, bearing important passengers. Foremost among them was Catalina Suárez Marcaida de Cortés, Cortés’s legal spouse.
Catalina (along with her brother Juan, who had previously fought alongside Cortés, and her sister) was transported across the mountains and given a regal entrance to her accommodations at the palace in Coyoacán. Cortés’s reunion with Catalina, whom he had not seen for three years, turned out to be tragically star-crossed. Certainly the initial transition would have been awkward, including Catalina’s first meeting with Malinche and the baby Martín Cortés that Malinche was nursing. Still, Catalina apparently reclaimed her marital position, and she and Cortés lived for a very brief time as husband and wife.28
Shortly after Catalina’s arrival, Cortés held a large banquet, with drinking and dining and dancing. Apparently sometime during the party Cortés and Catalina engaged in a loud verbal spat, and Catalina stormed angrily off to bed. Cortés entertained his guests until quite late, then he too retired to his quarters. Sometime deep in the night he called on two of his chief confidants, Diego de Soto and Isidro Moreno, and reported to them the grim news. Catalina was dead. Doctors came immediately and reported that there were bruises about her neck, but they determined in the end that she had perished as the result of an asthmatic attack and a weak heart condition, perhaps triggered by the altitude and stress.
Cortés was accused—by Catalina’s maids among others—of strangling his wife to death in a fit of rage. Cortés claimed (and his defenders backed him) that she had died of natural causes, and the bruises on her neck were the marks of his attempts to revive her after her attack. No formal criminal charges were brought against Cortés, though a litany of civil cases were, and his
descendants were still paying damages to Catalina’s descendants a century later. For Cortés, the tragic and unsavory episode eventually faded into whispers of rumor and speculation.29
Late the following year, in September 1523, Cortés finally received documents from the crown, signed by the king himself, officially naming Hernán Cortés captain-general of Mexico, distributor and chief justice of New Spain. Cortés had already been operating in those capacities since his arrival, but he was overjoyed by the royal sanction and could hardly contain his emotion when he wrote back to his ruler: “I kiss the Royal feet of Your Caesarean Majesty a hundred thousand times.”30 The verification provided Cortés, perhaps, the highlight of his life. For though he was later officially given the title of Marqués de Valle de Oaxaca and immense landholdings, bureaucracy and legal problems plagued him for the remainder of his life, and he was ultimately forbidden to rule the Mexico that he and his conquistador brethren and native allies had won. He spent much of his last years battling lawsuits and various residencias, his time divided between estates and palaces in Mexico and Spain.31
Hernán Cortés became immensely wealthy, though he never lost his adventurous spirit. He would go on to discover the peninsula of Baja California in 1536 and to survey the Gulf of California (later named the Sea of Cortés) that separates it from Mexico. Subsequent attempts at conquest in Honduras and Guatemala were failures, as was his last disastrous expedition in Algiers in 1541. Still, he was given a hero’s welcome in Spain and was considered and referred to as the Gran Conquistador, the conqueror against whom all others would ultimately be measured. He was bestowed with many honors, even offered knighthood, which he declined although he had earned it. Cortés’s expedition to and conquest of Mexico garnered the largest addition of land and treasure to the Spanish empire ever secured by a single individual. Knowing this, Cortés is said (according to Voltaire) to have once brashly remarked to the king, who did not recognize him, “I am the one who gave you more kingdoms than you had towns before.”32
Despite the partial veracity of the boast, Cortés’s final years were passed in relative obscurity. Planning to return once more to Mexico, he fell ill, quickly wrote his last will and testament, made his confession to a priest, and died on December 2, 1547, at the age of sixty-two.
Hernán Cortés left behind a considerable legacy, from off-spring to legends to lore, an entire mythology. He remains—like his arch-enemy Montezuma—enigmatic and misunderstood, sometimes revered, sometimes reviled, always controversial. People suggest that had Cortés not conquered Mexico, someone else surely would have. Given the devastating effects of smallpox on the indigenous population, that is probably true. But the argument misses the point. Hernán Cortés did conquer Mexico. Others tried and failed; most barely made it out of their ships; many did not escape alive.
An incredible confluence of circumstances occurred during the period of Cortés’s expedition, 1519–21. Looked at through the hindsight of history, this confluence can scarcely be believed. Cortés could certainly not have succeeded in his mission without the brave assistance of hundreds of thousands of allied warriors, bearers, cooks, and workers. Had smallpox not laid to waste a large percentage of the Aztecs’ fighting force, perhaps they could have held on.
But in the end it was Cortés, the consummate gambler, who staked great wagers and won. It was Cortés who scuttled his fleet to leave his men only one course of action—to proceed onward over the mountains and through the smoking volcanoes toward the ruling emperor Montezuma. It was Cortés who used guile and bravado and misinformation and politics to secure the indigenous armies necessary to march on the Aztec capital. It was Cortés who imprisoned Montezuma and who realized that his magical island city could be taken only by water. It was Cortés who imagined the building of the brigantines. It was Cortés who learned how to delegate power and authority over hand-selected captains and who wielded that power with the cutting sharpness of Toledo steel. It was Cortés who became, against the greatest odds, a supreme commander of allied forces, pitting Indians against Indians in civil war. For nearly three years he had operated independently, a free agent in a foreign land, with absolutely no justification or sanction from his government, either in the West Indies or across the Atlantic in Spain. In effect, he was a rogue, a rebel, a pirate. Arguments about his relative morality will persist: he was manipulative, duplicitous, and egomaniacal. He was barbarous in his own way, using his religious faith and convictions to justify brutalities including torture, branding, execution, unprovoked massacre, and slavery. But his military, tactical, and political genius remains unquestionable.
Hernán Cortés also left behind vast material wealth and numerous children, among whom was Martín Cortés, first son of the conquest.
The boy’s mother, Malinche—or Doña Marina as the Spaniards referred to her—had stayed with Cortés from the moment she was gifted to him by a Tabascan chief in 1519 on the eastern shores of Mexico, through the fall of Tenochtitlán and into the aftermath. As interpreter, guide, and mistress, she had earned a status unprecedented among women of her time and place—some native people even looked upon her as a goddess. She remained close to Cortés after his wife’s untimely death and accompanied him as personal interpreter and liaison on his ill-fated expedition to Honduras in 1524, a journey riddled with privation, disease, mutiny, and the death of all but one hundred of his men. During this arduous two-year campaign, at Cortés’s urging, Malinche married Juan Jaramillo, a trusted soldier who had served honorably as one of the brigantine captains during the siege of Tenochtitlán. The wedding is said to have been conducted beneath the massive shadow of the looming Orizaba volcano. During this expedition Malinche was also temporarily reunited with her mother, the woman who had sold the young girl to slavery in the first place.33
Still she remained, until Cortés returned to Spain for the last time, his trusted interpreter and the mother of his first acknowledged child—the son later legitimized by papal decree and formally knighted. Malinche and Cortés, it can be said, gave birth to the first mestizo,34 the first mixed-blood Mexican-European child. For many Mexicans, with a healthy mixture of controversial emotion, Hernán Cortés and Malinche are considered to this day the mother and father of modern Mexico, symbols of the new order and the new people who rose from the ashes of the fallen Aztec civilization.
APPENDIX A
Significant Participants in the Conquest
Aguilar, Jerónimo de (1489–1531?) Lost by shipwreck in 1511 during the Córdoba expedition, Aguilar lived as a slave among the Mayan people of the Yucatán until he was discovered and rescued by Hernán Cortés in 1519. He subsequently served as Cortés’s interpreter, collaborating with Malinche once she became part of the expedition.
Ahuitzotl (“Water Mammal,” “Otter”) Eighth Aztec king, ruled 1486–1502.
Alvarado, Pedro de (1485–1541) Participated in the second (Grijalva, 1518) and third (Cortés, 1519) expeditions to Mexico. Impetuous and temperamental, as a captain Alvarado played a major role in the conquest, leading the controversial massacre at the Toxcatl festival. Known for his flaming reddish-blond beard and hair, the Tlaxcalans nicknamed him Tonatiuh, meaning “Sun.”
Axayacatl (“Water Face”) Sixth Aztec king, ruled 1468–81. Father of Montezuma Xocoyotl, or Montezuma the Younger (Montezuma II).
Barba, Pedro Trusted friend of Cortés who arrived in Mexico on a Narváez resupply ship. He became a captain and head of the crossbowmen during the conquest. He died from wounds suffered during the brigantine battle at the siege of Tenochtitlán.
Cacama King of Texcoco, nephew of Montezuma II (Montezuma Xocoyotl). Imprisoned by Cortés in 1520, he was slain by Spanish captains during the Aztec siege of the Palace of Axayacatl.
Charles V (1500–58) King of Spain, ruled 1516–56, and Holy Roman emperor, ruled 1519–56. It was to Charles V that Cortés wrote his five famous Letters from Mexico, explaining and justifying his actions during the expedition.
Coanacoch Brother of
Ixtlilxochitl. He became king of Texcoco upon the death of Cacama and led the insurgency against Cortés and the Spaniards.
Córdoba, Francisco Hernández de (died 1517) Captained first expedition to Mexico (under aegis of Diego Velázquez, governor of Cuba) and “discovered” the Yucatán. He suffered fatal wounds during engagements at Champoton and died on his return to Cuba in 1517, still believing that Mexico was an island.
Cortés, Hernán (1485–1547) Ultimately considered the Gran Conquistador, Cortés was an Extremadurian from Medellín, born into a family of lesser nobility. He came to Hispaniola in 1504 and, with Diego Velázquez, conquered Cuba in 1511. He led the third expedition from the West Indies to Mexico in 1519, marching his troops (and Indian allies) from the east coast to the Valley of Mexico. His expedition resulted in the conquest of Mexico.