Gonzalo Guerrero
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Gonzalo Guerrero was a sailor from Palos, in Spain who shipwrecked along the Yucatan Peninsula and was taken as a slave by the local Maya. Earning his freedom, Guerrero became a respected warrior under a Mayan Lord and raised three of the first mestizo children. Little is known of his early life.
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[edit] Shipwrecked
In 1511, sailing with 15 others in a caravel from Panama and heading for Santo Domingo, he was shipwrecked. However, the crew managed to board the ship's boat and drifted for 2 weeks along the Yucatan Peninsula until strong currents brought them to the shore of what is now Quintana Roo, in Mexico. On reaching land, Guerrero and his crew were captured by the local Maya.
[edit] Slavery
It is said some of the ship's crew were sacrificed almost immediately [citation needed], while the rest were put into cages and later served as slaves to the Mayans. By 1519, the year Hernan Cortes began his Conquest of Mexico, only three from the original shipwreck were still alive: Gonzalo Guerrero, who by this time had become famous in the Mayan world as a war leader for Nachan Kaan, Lord of Chektumal, and Geronimo de Aguilar, a Spaniard who had taken holy orders in his country of origin, as well as Aguilar, who had survived as a slave for another Maya lord. Guerrero had by then married a rich Mayan woman and was the father of Mexico's first mestizo children.
[edit] Reluctant to return
On arriving in Cozumel from Cuba, Cortes sent a letter by Maya messenger across to the mainland, inviting the two Spaniards, of whom he'd heard rumors, to join him. Aguilar became a translator, along with Doña Marina, 'La Malinche', during the Conquest. According to the account of Bernal Diaz, when the newly freed friar attempted to convince Guerrero to join him, Gonzalo Guerrero responded:
Spanish: "Hermano Aguilar, yo soy casado y tengo tres hijos. Tienenme por cacique y capitán, cuando hay guerras, la cara tengo labrada, y horadadas las orejas que dirán de mi esos españoles, si me ven ir de este modo? Idos vos con Dios, que ya veis que estos mis hijitos son bonitos, y dadme por vida vuestra de esas cuentas verdes que traeis, para darles, y diré, que mis hermanos me las envían de mi tierra."
English Translation: "Brother Aguilar; I am married and have three children, and they look on me as a cacique (lord) here, and captain in time of war. My face is tattooed and my ears are pierced. What would the spaniards say if they saw me like this? Go and God's blessing be with you, for you have seen how handsome these children of mine are. Please give me some of those beads you have brought to give to them and I will tell them that my brothers have sent them from my own country."
And Gonzalo's wife Zazil Há angrily addressed Aguilar in her own language:
"Why has this slave come here to call my husband away? Go off with you, and let us have no more talk."
Then Aguilar spoke to Guerrero again, reminding him that he was of Christian faith and should not throw away his everlasting soul for the sake of an Indian woman. But Gonzalo was not to be convinced.
[edit] Controversy over Guerrero's existence
The existence of Guerrero has been debated by historians. Most accounts of Guerrero's existence are second hand reports of what Aguilar claims he saw and did. Guerrero never appears in Mayan records from the era, although Aguilar's name does appear as a trader.
[edit] Contemporary accounts
Years later it was reported that a bearded, tattooed foreigner, dressed as a Maya warrior was found dead on a battlefield after a fight with Spanish forces, who by this time were invading the Yucatán Peninsula. The man was thought to be Gonzalo Guerrero, still fighting for his people. This story also provided a reason for the Spanish defeat at the hands of the Maya. Previously, the Spanish had believed that they were invincible, and the defeat at hands of the small, pagan Maya was seen as very embarrassing. Blaming Guerrero for this failure served as a convenient method for the Conquistadores to avoid culpability. The anthropologist and historian Francis Bloom, however, believes that Guerrero was a real man who led the Maya resistance to Spanish invasion of the Yucatan in the 1530s.
[edit] Recent accounts
The historian Rose-Anna M. Mueller, in an essay titled From Cult to Comics: The Representation of Gonzalo Guerrero as Cultural Hero in Mexian Popular Culture, surveys the numerous depictions of Guerrero from a satanic figure for the 16th century Spanish invaders to founder of modern Mexico. Yet, like many symbols, the reality behind this myth remains very questionable. Mueller postulates that Guerrero might have been an invention of Aguilar's imagination to prove his own loyalty to Cortes, Christ, and the Spanish Crown.
Mueller concludes, 'while primary and secondary sources sketched Guerrero's history during the colonial period, today he has become a political and literary icon and has been transformed into a national myth....If he was reviled by the chroniclers, Guerrero has enjoyed a vindication of sorts, since he has become an exemplar who fills the need to connect the colonizers from Europe and the indigenous of the Americas in a domestic context'
Perhaps the most famous literary work celebrating Guerrero as the father of the mestizos in Mexico remains Gonzalo Guerrero: Novela historica by Eugenio Aguirre published in 1980 in Mexico. The novel became a national bestseller and went on to win the Paris International Academy's Silver Medal in 1981. Another popular book published in Mexico in 1990, Guerrero and Heart's Blood by Alan Clark tells of the inward life and history of Guerrero and Aguilar.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Clark, Alan (1990). Guerrero & Heart's Blood.
- Morris, Walter F. (1990). Living Maya. ISBN 0-8109-2745-4.
- Santiago, Juan-Navarro, Theodore Robert Young (January 2001). A Twice-Told Tale: Reinventing the Encounter in Iberian/Iberian American Literature and Film. University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0-87413-733-0.
- Sweet, Robert Burdette (January 2001). Mouth of the Jaguar, 1, Xlibris Corporation. ISBN 0-7388-4198-6.
