Always a step ahead of the stick and a step behind the carrot.
The first Spaniards who came to New Spain were men. These men came for one of three reasons; to get rich or die trying, to get rich by the king, or to promote God.
“I came here for gold, not to till the earth like a serf,” Hernán Cortés snarled.
“We came to get rich and serve God,” Bernal Diaz bluntly wrote.
Spain’s first outpost was the island of Cuba. Columbus died thinking he had found the islands of Japan. Maps at the time drew the eastern face of the American continent munged into a ball of mud with Asia. That another ocean - the Pacific - had yet to be crossed before the spice, fur and silk trades of Japan, China and India could be reached was just being conceived. Bit by bit, expedition by expedition, the Spanish realized the bowl-shaped Gulf of Mexico with the Yucatan peninsula as its bottom lip. These expeditions when they came to shore were met with immediate hostility. Like birds trying to land on an angry beehive, the Spaniards could not find purchase, but irresistibly intrigued, trying time and again for the honey. For the few occasions the conquistadors were met by natives with curiosity and willing glass bead trade, the Spanish found small bits of worked metal on hand. Nothing of significance, but when asked where they got this small stuff and more was - always they replied, west, Mexico. They were vexed.
Into this gordian knot stepped a motley collection of soldiers of fortune, knights at the end of an age when 8 centuries of holy war that pushed the Moors back across the strait to Africa out of the Iberian Peninsula with the fall of Granada. Mexico was familiar terrain - similar to what they found in the low and highlands of Mexico. The Aztec system of tributary with the emperor Moctezuma and his chief nobles resembled the feudal medieval politics of monarchal Europe and its feudal vassals. Nonetheless, for all the familiarity, the Spanish were at an impasse. Without a winning plan the mainland was a hive of hostility they could gain neither friendly foothold nor fort.
Cracking this nut required a two headed genius. One genius was Hernán Cortés. The second genius was the Indian woman named Dona Marina.
Cortés was one of those natural born generals who by fate and ambition rather than military career were given the opportunity to flex their talents. Never at rest. Perpetually in motion. Taking decisive action without deliberation that struck at core insights into the psychology of humans. A study of the options Cortés faced and decisions he made exemplifies Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings who wrote that all his duels were won with luck. Luck blew the sails of boats containing men and horses in from the ocean to reinforce Cortés when he was low on both after hard campaigning. Luck fit Cortés into the Aztec prophecy that kept Montezuma on his backfoot, hesitant at every turn, unable to hide his preference for deference in his belief. Cortés seemed to know exactly what notes to strike to unhinge his enemies will to fight. When his captains lost their nerve on the eve of invading Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, seeing the massive host they faced - and suggested they go back, Cortés laughed. You can try to go back, but it’s impossible. Cortés explained the dynamics of the psychology they were facing - Our hold on their minds is tenuous. To turn back on some flimsy pretext would undo that hold. They are in awe of us, taken aback by our lack of deference to their Montezuma King and brazen defiance of his word. They believe we will lead them. If we disillusion our allies and perceive us as weak, they will turn hostile. They will rise from every rock to swallow us alive before we make the coast. Our only course is forward. It was this that was Cortés genius - his insight into the political dynamics the Spanish faced. The Aztec were not a monolith. The seeming indomitable Aztec empire was fractured and fissured beyond repair. The practices of human sacrifice had rotted its power to the core. All of Montezuma’s vassals were rabid enemies, ready to throw off the yoke of being tapped for sacrifice and taxation with no reward. The hostility the Spanish faced was displaced rage - there was a mass of potential energy waiting to turn kinetic under the right leadership. Cortés felt this to his core.
The second genius was a woman christened by the Spaniards as Dona Marina. She who gave Cortes his epithet of Malinche - after her - and birthed his son. Sold at a young age, made a mistress to the district, suffered a harsh life under a brutal system of state violence and repression in the Aztec sacrifices and lot of women in this culture. The Aztecs gave her as a gift to Cortés with a lot of women. A slave. Dona Maria then rose from this position to learn Spanish on the fly, seduce Cortes, serve as interpreter and chief strategist to Cortes, saving his life from conspiracy at least once, and serving to bring down the entire edifice of Aztec power structure from emperor down to the lowest priest of brutality crashing down. A woman on par with Joan of Arc or Phoolan Devi. Marina played the part of insurgent rebel magnificently then retreated into the fold of history.
Drawn From
Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain. Penguin UK, 26 June 2003.
Pedro, and Victor Wolfgang. The Incas of Pedro de Cieza de Leon. University of Oklahoma Press, 1959.
Scholes, France Vinton. The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel. University of Oklahoma Press, 1948.
Prescott, William H, and Keith Henderson. History of the Conquest of Mexico. Vol. 1, Hearn Holt and Company, 1 Dec. 1922.
Hammond Innes. The Conquistadors. London, Penguin, 2002.
Samuel Eliot Morison. Admiral of the Ocean Sea : A Life of Christopher Columbus. Morrison Press, 2008.
