To achieve his ends militarily, Hernando Cortés took advantage of tribal rivalries as he proceeded inland toward the fabled city of Tenochtitlán (Mexico City, today), the seat of the Mexican empire and the godlike Montezuma.
At times he used mischief; at times cruelty to achieve his ends. And, of course, he had the aid of superior armaments and technology, to say nothing of his army’s infamous immunity to smallpox. As his victories mounted, his soldiers rarely attempted to subjugate the people they conquered. From the very start they bred with the “Indians” as they settled within their communities for safety and provisions. Here were the seminal first steps to creating the mixed race, common language and religion that defines Mexico today.
This amalgamation of cultures began with Cortés. After winning a battle against a local tribe in Tabasco, his spoils of war included a beautiful Aztec slave girl who had previously been captured by Mayan-speaking people and had learned the Maya language, As an Aztec (some contemporaries insist she was a noblewoman), her own language was Nahua, the tongue of Montezuma’s empire. Cortés employed this unexpected treasure to make communications with territorial chieftains he could not communicate with, except through clumsy sign language that was more often than not misinterpreted. For example, while clumsily trying to request the whereabouts of the local gold mines, Cortés’s subordinates could do little but make awkward gestures of digging into the ground. The natives responded by showing the invaders how to plant corn.
The slave girl single-handedly changed all that, learning Spanish in what must have been less than a year, which added to her fluency and familiarity with at least four distinct Mexican languages. Soon she rose from slave girl to interpreter to paramour to diplomat to formal mistress and finally to (or back to) noblewoman. She is known to history as the brilliant and remarkably modern woman, Doña Marina – mockingly known by her own people as La Malinche, a name that insinuates traitor.
Cortés cleverly marched on the Mexican capital and gained a diplomatic foothold in the city by impressing Montezuma with his vast coalition of Spanish and Mexican contingents, their own superior weapons and their lies of co-existence, requiring nothing but tribute in the form of gold (for their peculiarly Spanish heart disease). But of greatest importance, argue many historians, was Cortés’ (aided by the persuasive communicative skills of Doña Marina) posturing as Quetzalcoatl, the white-faced god whose return to Mexico had long been awaited. If any conquistador ever had the perfect secret weapon, this one topped them all, including the famous Trojan Horse.
It is interesting to note that because the world always seems to be in some form of turmoil or horrid disaster, just about every major religion includes some god or godly messenger returning to our physical world, ostensibly to restore goodness and joy. All that tells people, like this author, is that gods never got it right the first time. It’s like the leak that needs to be fixed every few months, because the plumber wasn’t really a plumber at all. (Apologies for the diversion.)
After some weeks in Tenochtitlán, with Montezuma in chains and having to feed not just a band of Spaniards but thousands of Mexican allies, rivals to Montezuma, the strain began to weigh on the city, and fears of revolt seemed just around the corner. When news reached Cortés that a much larger party of Spaniards had been sent by the Cuban governor to arrest Cortés for insubordination and, worse, mutiny, he left Tenochtitlán and marched to the coast, where he defeated the Cuban arrest party and seduced the defeated soldiers with stories of the city of gold, Tenochtitlán.
They agreed to join him, given the still festering medical emergency of Spanish heart disease.
This is the second of a four-part series that will run weekly through January.