Calder - A Hero for the Americas

Statue of Gonzalo Guerrero by Raul Ayala Arellano, 1974 by Feliks, 2008 (original in colour). Used under a Creative Commons licence.

a

Hero

for the

Americas

The Legend of Gonzalo Guerrero

Robert Calder

2017 Robert Calder

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or placement in information storage and retrieval systems of any sort shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright.

Printed and bound in Canada at Friesens. The text of this book is printed on % post-consumer recycled paper with earth-friendly vegetable-based inks.

Cover design: Duncan Campbell, University of Regina Press
Text design: John van der Woude, jvdw Designs

Copy editor: Dallas Harrison

Proofreader: Kristine Douaud

Indexer: Sergey Lobachev, Brookfield Indexing Services

Cover art: Detail of sculpture by Carlos Terrs. Allegory of mestizaje, 1981 , terroca and reinforced concrete, 35 x 19 m, City of Chetumal Quintana Roo. Used with permission.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Calder, Robert Lorin, 1941 -, author
A hero for the Americas : the legend of Gonzalo Guerrero / Robert Calder.

Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. isbn - - 88977 - - (softcover). isbn - - 88977 - - ( pdf ). isbn - - 88977 - - ( html )

. Guerrero, Gonzalo, -approximately 1528 . . SpaniardsMexicoBiography.
. Shipwreck victimsMexicoBiography. . MayasMexicoHistory.
. MexicoHistoryConquest, - 1540 . . Yucatn PeninsulaHistory. i . Title.

f 1435 . c '. 02092 c 2017 - 5023 - c 2017 - 905024 -

University of Regina Press, University of Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, s4s 0a2
tel: (306) 585-4758 fax: (306) 585-4699
web: www.uofrpress.ca

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. / Nous reconnaissons lappui financier du gouvernement du Canada. This publication was made possible with support from Creative Saskatchewans Creative Industries Production Grant Program.

For Holly

maps

Map . Spain

Map . The Caribbean

Map . The Yucatn Peninsula

introduction

A Haunting, Tantalizing Tale

chapter one
No White Man Ever Enters It: The Yucatn Peninsula

chapter two
To Serve God and... to Get Rich: The Lure of the New World

chapter three
It Seemed the End of the World: Balboa, Pizarro, and the Perils of Darin

chapter four
It Will Never Do to Leave Him Here: Shipwreck, Enslavement, and Hernn Corts

chapter five
What Would the Spanish Say Should They See Me in This Guise?:
Gonzalo Among the Maya

chapter six

Language Is the Perfect Instrument of Empire: Aguilar and the Conquest of the Aztecs

chapter seven
Gonzalo, My Brother and Special Friend: Guerrero the Warrior and the Battle for Yucatn

chapter eight
The Power of Narrative Is Absolute:
Guerrero in the Contemporary Mexican Consciousness

afterword

We Are a Mtis Civilization

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

Map . Spain

Map . The Caribbean

Map . The Yucatn Peninsula

introduction

A Haunting, Tantalizing Tale

I n January 1512 , a mere twenty years after Christopher Columbus first saw the New World, a party of Spanish men and women were shipwrecked while sailing from what is now Panama to Hispaniola (the island comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic). About twenty survivors were blown onto the Yucatn Peninsula, the first Europeans to set foot on that soil, and they were soon captured by its inhabitants, the Maya. The castaways leaders, according to the common practice in Mesoamerica, were sacrificed to the Mayan gods, and all but two of the remaining party died from the effects of their days at sea and their subsequent enslavement.

The fate of this shipwrecked company remained a mystery to Spanish colonial officials until 1519 , when the conquistador Hernn Corts landed on Cozumel Island, off the Yucatn coast, at the beginning of his great trek into the heart of Mexico. Out of the jungle emerged a Spaniard, Jernimo de Aguilar, who spoke of his seven years of captivity in a Mayan tribe and of his great joy at being reunited with his countrymen. He also spoke of another Spaniard, whom he called Gonzalo, who likewise had learned of the presence of Spanish ships at Cozumel but had declined to join Aguilar in seeking them. Gonzalo, he said, had risen from slave to military captain in a Mayan tribe, had married the daughter of the chief, and had fathered three children. Moreover, he had adopted the native customs and beliefs so thoroughly that he could never again live among his own people.

Aguilar remained with Cortss company and, serving as one of the most famous translators in Mesoamerican history, became an essential part of the remarkable conquest of Montezumas Aztec Empire. As a reward for his services, he was given sizable tracts of land and numerous native tenants near Mexico City, and his name appears frequently in the historical accounts of sixteenth-century Spanish chroniclers. Aguilar left no memoirs or letters, though he submitted several petitions to the Spanish court near the end of his life, so his attitudes and motivations will never be fully understood.

Although something of his life in Yucatn and mainland Mexico is known, Gonzalo remains a mysterious figure. Like Aguilar, he gave no written account of his life, but unlike Aguilar he left no trace of himself in any civic or legal proceedings. He exists as a historical figure because of the testimony of Aguilar, the only Spaniard known to have seen him after the shipwreck; the subsequent accounts of chroniclers, notably Bernal Daz del Castillo, Gonzalo Fernndez de Oviedo, Francisco Lpez de Gmara, Fray Diego de Landa, and Francisco Cervantes de Salazar; and an intriguing letter to the Spanish government from a colonial official in Honduras in 1536 , a report of the body of a Spaniard found on a battlefield among the native dead.