Five hundred years later, amidst a multitude of controversies, anachronistic requests for apologies and unresolved questions of identity, the voice of a Culture Minister, José Guirao, emerged at the beginning of 2019 to predict that the commemoration of the Conquest of Mexico on both sides of the pond was going to be a chimera. “It’s just that the subject is complicated there,” he warned.

As the last days of the ephemeris (the episode itself lasted from 1519 to 1521) draw to a close, it must be acknowledged that Guirao’s words have reached the level of a self-fulfilling prophecy not only in Mexico, but also in Spain.

Events to commemorate, or simply remember, the five centuries since Cortés landed in the Gulf of Mexico and the campaign that ended three years later with the siege and fall of Tenochtitlán have been few and far between, reduced to a very academic sphere and, in the Mexican case, an opportunity for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to fuel hatred against a historical figure fundamental to understanding the country’s reality today.

Amid a tumult of prophecies warning Moctezuma II of the arrival of “white and bearded men from the East”[1] with the intention of conquering Tenochtitlan, Hernán Cortés arrived with half a thousand men on the Yucatán peninsula in February 1519. Five hundred years later, amidst a multitude of controversies, anachronistic requests for apologies and unresolved questions of identity, the voice of an entire Minister of Culture, José Guirao, emerged at the beginning of 2019 to predict that the commemoration of the Conquest of Mexico on both sides of the pond was going to be a chimaera. “It’s just that the subject is complicated there”[2], he warned.

As the last days of the ephemeris (the episode itself lasted from 1519 to 1521) draw to a close, it must be acknowledged that Guirao’s words have reached the level of a self-fulfilling prophecy not only in Mexico but also in Spain. Events to commemorate, or simply remember, the five centuries since Cortés landed in the Gulf of Mexico and the campaign that ended three years later with the siege and fall of Tenochtitlán have been few and far between, reduced to a very academic sphere and, in the Mexican case, an opportunity for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to fuel hatred against a historical figure fundamental to understanding the country’s reality today.

Hernán Cortés (Medellín) was many things during his 62 years: businessman, navigator, discoverer, diplomat, politician, scribe and also conqueror, although he has gone down in history for the few years he lived wielding steel in his hands. When the governor of the island of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, chose this young hidalgo with a great deal of wit and a certain cultural[3] and legal training to lead a new expedition to the continent in 1518, he was almost a novice in military matters. Velázquez himself must have harboured doubts about his chances of success and, at the last minute, wanted to replace the man from Medellín, but Cortés, wary, set sail early.

Hernán Cortés Col. Patronato Hospital de Jesús.

Hernán Cortés Col. Patronato Hospital de Jesús.

The governor of Cuba’s instructions were to scout the coast, search for traces of an earlier expedition and obtain “some voluntary ransom”[4] of gold. Nevertheless, Cortés completed his defiance of Velázquez by linking himself directly to the will of Carlos I and assuming the role of Castilian settler. Thus he encouraged the foundation on 10 June of the town council of the Villa Rica de la Veracruz, following one of the usual structures during the Reconquista.

Cortés resigned as captain-general of the Velázquez expedition and was elected to the same position, but by the communal authorities of the new town council. In his name, he wrote the first Carta de relación to the king, justifying his break with the governor of Cuba, whom he branded a thief and tyrant. It was not long before an expedition was organised from Cuba to arrest this group of rebels. Cortés decided to flee, but forwards.

In his march without looking back (nothing illustrates this determination better than the false legend that he burned his ships to prevent his men from being tempted to turn back), Cortés used unexpected military genius, ruthless warfare and a developed sense of persuasion to win over Indian allies, all of them hostile to the power of the Triple Alliance, the coalition of city-states that dominated the region with an obsidian fist. To achieve an alliance with the Totonacs and Tlaxcalans, it was essential to find two interpreters first: a Spaniard, Jerónimo de Aguilar, who had lived with the Maya for several years, and an Indian woman, Malintzin (Doña Marina after her baptism), who understood both Maya and Nahuatl.

The encounter between two worlds

After winning, with a mixture of steel and high diplomacy, the loyalty of several local peoples, the Spaniards set out on 8 November 1519 on their final journey to the heart of the Triple Alliance, Tenochtitlan, which they pronounced as they could: Tenustitan, Tenestecan, Temixtitan. The monarch of this city, Moctezuma II, sent emissaries to meet the Spaniards, offering them gifts in exchange for a change of course. The quality of the gifts, instead of dissuading them from their plans, encouraged them to continue towards the Mexica capital: a huge city nestled on Lake Texcoco and structured by fifty high-rise buildings and thousands of houses, floating gardens, innumerable bridges and three broad avenues[5]. A single quarter of this city would have been sufficient in number to annihilate all the Spanish forces.

Statue of Hernán Cortés.

Statue of Hernán Cortés.

At first glance, one might think that Cortés fancied himself a modern Leonidas and planned, as Mexican historian Carlos Pereyra described the expedition’s appearance, to “voluntarily immolate himself to the dreadful Huichilobos” (one of the principal deities of the Mexica)[6]. But appearances are often deceptive. But appearances can be deceiving. The Extremaduran was not improvising: he was well aware of his advantages and took note of the weaknesses of his giant enemy. The Mexica maintained a system of domination through tributes over numerous peoples, especially in central Mexico, the Guerrero region and the Gulf Coast, as well as parts of Oaxaca, and used mass human sacrifice as a mechanism of religion and terror. Every year between 20,000 and 30,000 people[7], captured from among the dominated tribes, were immolated in these ceremonies. The hatred accumulated against this bloody empire over the years was the best fuel for the plans of the captain from Extremadura.

On 8 November 1519, Cortés and his Tlaxcalan allies entered Tenochtitlán. The impression made by this group of bearded, steel-clad men, riding slender horses and leading sturdy Alano dogs, must have been akin to a group of extraterrestrials landing on New York’s Fifth Avenue today.

“It was a thing to marvel at because they had never seen horses or men like us. We saw such admirable things, we didn’t know what to say”, recounted the chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo[8] about the passage of a hodgepodge of women, Indians, mulattos, mestizos and Spaniards from different corners of the country. The first encounter between Moctezuma II and Cortés was friendly, although events such as the Matanza de Cholula (Cholula Massacre), where the Spaniards had preemptively attacked a village of loyal Mexica tributaries, led to the prediction of an armed clash sooner rather than later. Be that as it may, the Mexican writer Octavio Paz was right in stating[9] that the moment Montezuma opened the gates of his city he had lost the game.

The tlatoani ordered the Spaniards to stay in Axayácatl’s palace, where they discovered, supposedly by accident, a chamber full of treasures and planned how to get their hands on new riches. On 14 November Cortés arrested the tlatoani on the pretext of an attack on Spaniards and their allies on the coast. A Totonaca village in Nautla had refused to pay tribute to the Triple Alliance on the grounds that they were no longer vassals of the Mexica but of Castile, so they asked the Castilian garrison stationed in the port of Veracruz for help. The skirmish between the Mexica and the Spaniards culminated in the death of seven of the latter, including Captain Juan de Escalante. Cortés not only held his host captive thereafter but also burned at a public bonfire the cacique who had, in his eyes, been responsible for the death of the Spanish soldiers. For the fire, the Spaniards used five hundred carloads of weapons found in the Mexica arsenals, which greatly reduced their offensive capacity.

Despite the boldness of the manoeuvre, Cortés treated Montezuma with great deference and, according to chroniclers[10] entertained him in local games and conversation on many mornings. Montezuma asked permission one day to go to pray at the teocalli, and Cortés authorised him to do so on the condition that he did not attempt to flee or make human sacrifices. In December 1519, at the behest of the Spaniard, the Mexica leader gathered all the great lords and caciques to abdicate their empire and pay vassalage to Carlos I.

Moctezuma dispatching with Cortés. History of the conquest of Mexico 1851.

Moctezuma dispatching with Cortés. History of the conquest of Mexico 1851.

While some tradition has portrayed the Mexica leader as a weakling who gave in too quickly to the snake charmer Hernán Cortés, Montezuma II was considered a great monarch because of his reform of the central administration and tax system. The chronicler Fray Francisco de Aguilar[11] describes him as “astute, shrewd and prudent, wise, expert, rough in speech, very determined”. He was, quite simply, someone overtaken by the events of his time. The spread of certain epidemic diseases previously unknown on the American continent, such as smallpox, measles, typhoid fever, typhus and influenza[12], caused a death toll of apocalyptic proportions and facilitated the advance of the Spaniards through an empire that was crumbling in their footsteps. It has rightly been said that at the head of the Spanish troops was not Cortés, but “General Smallpox”.

When the Spaniards were already planning their departure from the city, news arrived that Governor Diego Velázquez, unaware that the king had given his personal approval to the enterprise, confiscated Cortés’ goods on the island of Cuba and organised an army consisting of 19 ships, 1,400 men, 80 horses[13] and twenty pieces of artillery with the mission of capturing Cortés. Cortés was forced to leave the city, along with 80 men, to confront the group sent by Velázquez.

Cortés prevailed in a surprise attack against his compatriots, led by Pánfilo de Narváez, who also outnumbered him, and returned with some reinforcements to Tenochtitlán, where he found a city in revolt against the Spaniards. In the face of rumours of conspiracy, Cortés’ lieutenants, led by Pedro de Alvarado, had ordered the death of some notables they thought suspicious during one of the religious festivities. Anticipating a supposed ambush against the Spaniards, Alvarado ordered to close all the exits of the Templo Mayor and to fall upon the crowd in one of the darkest episodes of the conquest of Mexico: “They slashed the one who was beating the drum, cut off both his arms and then decapitated him, far away went his severed head to fall, others began to kill with spears and swords; blood flowed like water when it rains, and the whole courtyard was strewn with heads, arms, guts and bodies of dead men”, narrates Fray Bernardino de Sahagún[14].

The sad night: the greatest defeat of the conquest

With the people on the verge of rising up against the Spaniards, Cortés and his troops joined the garrison entrenched in Axayácatl’s palace. Díaz del Castillo recounts that Moctezuma climbed one of the palace walls[15] to speak to his people and reassure them at the request of the Spaniards; however, the crowd began to throw stones, one of which seriously wounded the Mexica during his speech. The tlatoani died three days later from the wound, leaving the Spaniards without their only safeguard.

Besieged in the city, without food, water or gunpowder, the Spaniards planned their nightly departure, for “we saw our deaths in our eyes”, in the words of Díaz del Castillo[16]. On the so-called Noche Triste (Sad Night), at midnight on July 1, 1520, Cortés and his men marched silently, mindful of their horses’ neighing, down the narrow road to Tacuba. The Mexica had destroyed all the bridges, so that escape was only possible “by water or by flying”, as Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo[17] ironised. The treasure that the Spaniards had accumulated in their adventure went in the middle of the formation, guarded by Cortés himself, who would later recognise that carrying so much gold was one of the causes of the high mortality rate in the escape. A portable bridge built over Lake Texcoco was supposed to bridge the cuts in the road, but because of the rain and the weight of the people, it soon became wedged, causing a traffic jam of horses, human bodies and wagons.

The dark, rainy night was tinged with blood as canoes laden with thousands of fierce warriors swarmed, like ants crawling out of the hole, against the convoy at the call of the drums. Only a small part of the gold was able to leave the city. The jumble of units forming the march added to the chaos and left the infantry too far behind. Those who retraced their steps back to the palace perished, and those who stayed in the middle perished. 600 Spaniards and about 900 Tlaxcalans perished[18] or were captured. Most of the horses fell by the wayside, all the cannons were lost, and the arquebuses were ruined with wet powder. Cortés himself fell into the water and was surrounded by enemy warriors, although the arrival of Antonio de Quiñones and Cristóbal de Olea prevented the captain from being taken to the slaughter. Once they reached the other shore, they also had to cut and stab their way through.

Montezuma visits Cortés at his lodgings. History of the conquest of Mexico 1851.

Montezuma visits Cortés at his lodgings. History of the conquest of Mexico 1851.

Faced with the greatest Spanish defeat in the entire conquest of America, the chronicler Díaz del Castillo states that Cortés “had tears in his eyes when he saw how his troops were coming”[19]. Francisco López de Gómara, for his part, wrote in his “History of the Conquest of Mexico” that sadness was all-consuming: “Cortés stopped at this, and even sat down, not to rest, but to mourn over the dead and the living who remained, and to think and say what fortune was giving him with the loss of so many friends, so much treasure, so much command, so great a city and kingdom; and not only did he weep for the present misfortune, but he feared the coming one, for they were all wounded, for not knowing where to go, and for not having a sure guard and friendship in Tlaxcala; and who would not weep seeing the death and destruction of those who had entered with such triumph, pomp and joy?”[20]

For days the Spanish army wandered with the sole hope of reaching the territory of Tlaxcala as soon as possible. Fortune was favourable to the Spaniards, as the Mexica entertained themselves by celebrating the victory and leading the prisoners to the altars. Hundreds of Spaniards and Tlaxcalans captured in the Noche Triste were sacrificed during the tributes for the ascension of the new tlatoani, Cuitláhuac.

On Saturday 7 July 1520, the flight was no longer an option. A large contingent of Mexica warriors and their allies from Tlalnepantla, Cuautitlán, Tenayuca, Otumba and Cuautlalpan caught up with the Spaniards on the plains of Temalcatitlan. The number of Mexica assembled at the battle of Otumba is still a matter of controversy today, and it is possible that more than 20,000 warriors were gathered against some 400 Spaniards and 3,000 allies[21]. It was the Mexica’s last chance to turn the tide of the war and expel the foreigners from their area of dominance. Against all odds, Cortés was also victorious in this all-or-nothing gamble.

If the main reasons for the success of Cortés’ enterprise are to be pinpointed, the ability to exploit the divisions between the peoples of the region and to exploit Montezuma’s hesitant character are to be added to the great impression that European weapons and tactics made on the Mexica in what was a premeditated policy of terror. The inhabitants of the Mexican region had no knowledge of iron and, moreover, their weapons were adapted to a form of warfare that proved counterproductive in the fight against the Europeans. As in their tribal warfare, the Mexica sought to immobilise or wound[22], without killing, the Spaniards with weapons made of bones or treated wood, and then to transport them to their cities, where they performed human sacrifices in honour of the gods or enslaved them.

The Western way of waging war – killing rather than capturing – and their technological advances – iron (in its highest form, steel), gunpowder and the use of horses – made up for the clear numerical disadvantage of the Spaniards and their allies. Also, key at Otumba was the performance of the light cavalry led by Cortés, who, using tactics unknown to the Mexica, caused the death of the enemy general, which was considered the end of the combat in Mesoamerica.

According to the account of the chronicler Díaz del Castillo[23], after invoking Santiago the Spanish horsemen broke through their opponents and Cortés struck down Matlatzincatzin, the indigenous military leader, and Captain Salamanca killed him with his lance, seizing the feathered headdress and the Mexica war standard. The Mexica army broke ranks in the absence of a commander and began to retreat.

The beginning of the end

The saying “the conquest was made by the Indians and independence by the Spaniards”[24] took on special meaning a year later with the final siege of the capital, where there were almost as many Indians fighting alongside the Spaniards as on the other side of the siege. The seventy-three-day siege of Tenochtitlan, considered impregnable, was marked by the ravages of smallpox, by the amphibious characteristics of this American Venice and by the fact that the traditional Mexica allies, including Texcoco, did not come to the city’s aid. Faced with 300,000 defenders, the Spaniards had field artillery, two hundred arquebusiers, 650 soldiers of different nations, more than a hundred cavalrymen and a massive contingent of indigenous warriors[25].

Main square in Mexico.

Main square in Mexico.

Once again imitating the heroes of antiquity, Cortés moved a fleet of thirteen brigantines (they were actually fustas[26]) and 3,000 canoes[27] across the mountains, which he built with the help of his allies in just six months. The Extremaduran’s aim was to drown the city by land and water, in the style of European combat. Nor was this a type of fighting with which they were familiar in Mesoamerica. Hunger, thirst and epidemics exhausted the population for almost three months, while artillery and naval battles increased the panic inside the labyrinthine city. The city was completely occupied on 13 August 1521, when the tlatoani Cuauhtémoc, who had succeeded Cuitláhuac after also dying of smallpox, was captured in a canoe while trying to escape. The city was thoroughly sacked by Spaniards and Indians, although the short-term booty was minimal.

The assault on Tenochtitlán was not the end of the military conquest of present-day Mexico. The subjugation of the other great lordships took 150 years (the conquest of the last independent Mayan city, Tayasal, took place in 1697) with the indispensable help of the indigenous peoples who were subjects of the Catholic Monarchy. However, the capture of the city marked a turning point. News of the demise of the largest indigenous army spread like wildfire throughout Mesoamerica. Many local tlatoque and caciques came to pay homage to this group of bearded men who had made possible what seemed impossible only a few months earlier. Most of them became tributaries, without firing a single shot.

Cortés then began a less noisy but more spectacular task than military operations: to articulate politically and institutionally a new kingdom, which would eventually belong to one of the greatest powers in the world, to found cities, build bridges, roads and mines, and to accommodate the mestizo reality that was to characterise New Spain. The viceroyalty, whose legacy Mexico embodies today with more complexes than pride, covered an area fourteen times the size of modern Spain and twenty-three times the size of the Mexica Empire.

Notes

  1. Madariaga, Salvador. Hernán Cortés (Editorial Sudamericana, 1964).
  2. Hernán Cortés, absent from Spanish politics “because it is complicated in Mexico”. Edición digital diario ABC 14 de enero de 2019. https://www.abc.es/cultura/abci-hernan-cortes-ausente-politica-espanola-porque-mexico-complicado-201901242158_noticia. html
  3. In his recent work Una biografía para el siglo XXI (Crítica, 2021) Esteban Mira Caballos definitively rules out that Cortés had gone to university, but he does highlight his solid knowledge of letters and law.
  4. Hans-Jürgen Prien. Hernán Cortés’ justification of his conquest of Mexico and the Spanish conquest of America. Revista complutense de historia de América, Nº 22, 1996. Pages 11-32.
  5. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún gives an extensive description of the city in appendix II of book II of his “Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España”, where he relates the presence of 78 buildings in the main square alone.
  6. Pereyra, Carlos. Hernán Cortés y la epopeya de Anáhuac (Ed. América, 1906)
  7. Hassig, Ross (1988). Aztec warfare: imperial expansion and political control. Civilization of the American Indian series. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
  8. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Edition by Guillermo Serés, available in digital version on the RAE website. Page 273.
  9. Paz, Octavio. El laberinto de la soledad (Cátedra, 1997). Page 233.
  10. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. Page 317. “And sometimes Montezuma even played totoloque with Cortés, which is a game they call ansí, with some very smooth small bodoquillos made of gold “
  11. Fray Francisco de Aguilar. Relación breve de la conquista de la Nueva España. Text consulted https://www.memoriapoliticademexico.org/Textos/1Independencia/1571RBC.html
  12. Diamond, Jared. A Brief History of Humanity in the Last Thirteen Thousand Years (Debate, 1997). The most up-to-date study of the effect of the diseases brought by the conquistadors to America.
  13. Tapia, Andrés. Relación de algunas cosas de las que acaecieron al muy ilustre señor don Hernando Cortés marqués del Valle, en la Nueva España. Page 586-587. He notes that Narváez’s armada consisted of 18 ships but that five ran aground before arriving.
  14. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. Book XII of his ‘Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España’.
  15. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. Page 427.
  16. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. Page 432.
  17. Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo. Historia general y natural de las Indias (Atlas, 1992). IV. Page 64.
  18. There is no consensus among chroniclers on the number of deaths during the Noche Triste. The figures are taken from the book Poder y Gloria: los héroes de la España imperial (Austral, 2010), by Henry Kamen.
  19. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. Page 437.
  20. López de Gómara, Francisco. Historia de la conquista de México (Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1979). Page 209.
  21. Martín Gómez, Pablo. Hombres y armas en la conquista de México (Almena Ediciones, 2001). In contrast to the exaggerated figure of 200,000 Mexica warriors given by chroniclers, modern historians have lowered the figure to 20,000 as the most feasible number of combatants that this state could mobilise. Page 18.
  22. Parker, Geofrey. History of War (Akal, 2010). In this book coordinated by Geofrey Parker, historian Patricia Seed analyses the reasons for the military superiority of the conquistadors over the indigenous peoples. Page 141.
  23. Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. Page 441.
  24. It is difficult to trace the academic origin, if any, of this popular saying, but Carlos Pereyra already held this same phrase in the early twentieth century.
  25. Fernando de Alva, Ixtilxoxoxhitl. Ally of Cortés (El Paso, 1969). Page 23. “And in all, there would be more than three hundred thousand men”.
  26. Mira Caballos, Esteban. Page 217.
  27. Mira Caballos, Esteban. Page 218.

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