| TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY, a History
of The Mexican people (Chapter 1) |
by Prof. German Estrada
December, 2004 |
THE FOREFATHERS (part
23rd) continues..
2
THE CONQUEST OF TENOCHTITLÁN
Cortés had not risked his life and limb merely for adventure or to convert heathens. The rich life and power and status in society drove him. His adventures would make him wealthy, the dream of every Conquistador. To obtain gold was the goal. On the approach to Tenochtitlan , one native chronicle recalls, the Aztecs sent gifts to the Spaniards, "lags of gold..collars of gold." Like "monkeys," the Spaniards played with the gold pieces, examining them with care, all the while displaying their joy, as though "gold renovated and brightened their hearts." Upon his triumphant return to Spain in 1529, Cortés, who became the marqués del Valle de Oaxaca, was the richest man in the New World . Yet the natives who built his home in Coyoacán complained that "Cortés had not paid them for their labors."
The good life to Cortés and his companions also meant women. Like Arab potentates, the Conquistadores, on their march from the Gulf to Tenochtitlán, acquired harems. For his own, Cortés took Marina, a native acquired in Cozumel; Isabel, daughter of Moctezuma and one of the wives of Cuauhtémoc, last of the Aztec emperors; Francisca, sister of Coanacoch, another chieftain; and Inéz, about whom nothing is known. Additionally, he had two Spanish concubines: Leonor Pizarro and Antonia Hermosillo; both vanished when Catalina Suárez, Cortés's wife, landed in New Spain . During her brief sojourn in New Spain , Catalina lived surrounded by servants and adorned with jewels. When Cortés died in 1547, he left a heterogeneous lot of offspring: Martín and his sisters María, Juana, Catalina, and one more, by his second wife; two sons born out of wedlock, one by Doña Marina, and three daughters fathered in identical manner, one to a Cuban woman and the others to natives of New Spain .
Cortés's companions did not lag behind him when it came to taking women for their own. For this, Bernal Díaz provides abundant evidence. The girls were baptized, he wrote, and the daughter of Xicoténcatl "was named Doña Luisa, and Cortés took her by the hand and gave her to Pedro de Alvarado." She bore him a son. A daughter of another chieftain, baptized Elvira, went to Juan Velázquez de León. On the long march to Tenochtitlán, Cortés had girls he captured branded as slaves, then put them up for sale, the "good- looking ones" for a higher price -but not until he had sample his share of delights, recalls Díaz. The native women proved loyal companions during the battle of Tenochtitlán. When the city fell, they got drunk with the Spaniards and danced on tables. The also bore the Spaniards mestizo offspring, the first Mexicans.
But Cortés, the son of a devout mother, also carried the banners of the Reconquista. A Catholic by birth, he bequeathed the faith to the New World . The heathens, he lecture his companions, "must see that we have...God on our side." Like many of his captains, Cortés was a pragmatist, though a Catholic. By and large, he personified the attitude of his men, even of Fray Olmedo, never one to risk his neck for the sake of church doctrine. Catholics they were, nevertheless, intent of saving pagans and raising aloft the engine of Spain over the conquered lands." Your cause," Cortés told his men before departing from Cuba , "is..just, since you are to fight under the banner of the Cross." Source: From the book Triumphs
and Tragedy, a History of the Mexican People by his
author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, and with his authorization.
(W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London). We'll continue with this fascinating
book.
estradanav@yahoo.com
Prof. Germán
Estrada is the author of the best selling book,
"México
Mágico: Everything You Wanted To Know
About... But Nobody Told You..." available in Puerto
Vallarta at The Net House, Mail Boxes, Etc., Books,
Books as well as directly from the author by internet.
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