Gonzalo Guerrero, a Spanish soldier who by the whims of destiny became a Mayan leader in the 16th century, whose military training withheld the conquest of the Yucatan Peninsula for more than 20 yrs.
He participated in one of the 1st expeditions to conquer Tierra Firme.
He suffered a maritime mishap that, along with other Spaniards, threw him as a shipwreck into unknown lands that were believed to be inhabited by fierce cannibals.
As a mere mortal, life dragged him to many penalties and presented him with a terrible dilemma: in the middle of a war, he had to take sides despite having belonged to both.
Inevitably, either option would lead to violence and destruction of those who at some time in his life had been “his own.”
He was prepared as a medieval warrior; provided with a powerful religious vision that justified his mission which would allow him to be atrocious with the infidel enemy.
However, Gonzalo, managed to see in “the other” as being like himself.
Apparently, this led him to overcome his fears, his ideological conditioning, by choosing to stay with his adoptive community.
Its’ merit was not to stay in Yucatan and fight for the Maya, but to recognize humanity in the enemy and build a bridge of communication between equals in the midst war.
Gonzalo Guerrero was born somewhere in the province of Huelva, Spain about 1470.
As an Arcabucero of the army of Castile, he was present when Boabdil (the last Muslim king of Spain) surrendered Granada to the Catholic Monarchs. 
Guerrero was neither a knight nor a gentleman, neither a legitimate son or bastard, that is why so little is known of his origin or his military trajectory.
However, One source claims that most of the records of Gonzalo’s life were destroyed by the Spanish as he was considered a traitor.
At the age of 17, he became a Spanish mercenary and fought on the front lines as a soldier of fortune battling the Moors during the Reconquista, in a screaming charge towards imposing Muslim fortifications uniformed in a steel breastplate, armed with a sharp Spanish steel sword and a single-shot matchlock arquebus rifle.
At that time, he did not even have a horse, but earned his title as an Arcabucero by the use of his primitive weapon, predecessor of the musket, ineffective more than 40 meters, lethal to less than 20.
The Spanish increased their exploration of the Americas after the Reconquista with Conquistadors.
Spanish conquistadors were explorers of the Spanish Empire who sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, Oceania, Africa,and Asia, conquering territory and opening trade routes.
They not only fought in the battlefield, but served as interpreters, informants, servants, teachers, physicians, and scribes in the New World.
Castilian law prohibited foreigners and non-Catholics from settling in the New World, but not all conquistadors followed this rule. Many just Hispanicised their names and/or converted to Catholicism to serve the Castilian Crown to be able to search for gold and treasures in an unknown land.
Guerrero had followed the Great Captain, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdobato to Naples, where the First Italian War was being waged.
During the war Fernández came to the assistance of Ferdinand II, the King of Naples, who was defending his kingdom against the French.
In 1469, Ferdinand II of Aragon unified Castile with Aragon, creating the Kingdom of Spain in his union with Queen Isabella.
After the final defeat of the Moors by Isabella of Castille, Guerrero was out of battles to fight, so he offered his services to join Christopher Columbus on his fateful voyage to the New World.
She, along with her husband Ferdinand, encouraged Columbus to establish an overseas empire for the newly unified kingdom of Spain, and provided the funds for his first voyage.
Sailing the uncharted reaches of the Atlantic Ocean aboard the Nina, Guerrero landed on Hispanola, he ended up in Cuba.
There, he decided to stay behind and man the garrison of a Spanish fort which had been built to maintain order in the region by shooting any Natives opposed to the idea of having a Spanish Empire forged on their backs, in their own land.
There is no further information about the life of Gonzalo Guerrero in the old world: it is estimated that he did not leave a wife or children in Spain, given the youth with which he joined the army.
Also, no family member ever requested a report from him and no one claimed or litigated inheritance in his name.
Conquistadors were less like an army and more like a group of mercenaries: they would join up with one expedition, and then another, and, although the King demanded a cut of their profits, they weren’t particularly loyal to one ideal, or to each other, for that matter.
Around 1511, Guerrero took part in a violent Spanish raid to plunder gold, food, slaves, and silver from present-day Columbia, but as his treasure-laden ship was making its way back to Cuba, a massive storm – possibly a hurricane – came flying out of nowhere and ensnared the Spaniards with torrential rain and bad karma – they were shipwrecked near the Yucatán Peninsula due to hitting a sand bar.
The crew and passengers got into a small life boat, hoping to reach Cuba or Jamaica, but strong currents brought them to the coast of the modern-day Mexican state of Quintana Roo.
Smashed by the winds and tossed around by the waves, the mast had splintered off Guerrero’s ship, and a huge chunk of wood knocked the Spanish mercenary over the railing and into the swirling black waters of the rain-drenched Caribbean.
Swimming through the stiff currents in near-zero visibility, Guerrero somehow fought his way to a lifeboat that had been dropped into the water by some of the original crew.
Hauling himself aboard, Guerrero and 15 of his fellow sailors waited out the storm, which smashed their caravel into pieces and left them adrift alone on the high seas.
The tiny little lifeboat with no sails or oars. Dead in the water, the survivors drifted at sea for over two weeks.
When the ship finally came within sight of the shore, only 8 sailors remained.
In order to survive, those 8 had sustained themselves by eating the uncooked bodies of the others who had perished.
The exhausted, dehydrated, sunburned survivors struggled to the shore, landed on the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, and immediately came face-to-face with a band of Mayan warriors.
Bernal Díaz de Castillo (Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Chapter XXIX) records Aguilar’s account, whereby Mayans sacrificed some of the ship’s crew almost immediately, while putting the rest into cages.
The Europeans managed to escape, but other Mayan lords captured and enslaved them.
The Spaniards were immediately taken prisoner, and brought back to the king of whatever city-state these Mayan warriors had come from because they weren’t exactly thrilled to see a group of bizarre light-skinned weirdos landing on their shores.
Thinking it was a sign from the gods, the Mayans immediately sacrificed 4 of the Spaniards by cutting out their hearts (literally) and eating them.
The other 4, including Guerrero, were thrown in cages to be sacrificed later.
Within a few days, Gonzalo Guerrero and his fellow mercenaries gathered enough strength to attempt an escape.
They broke out of their cages and fled into the completely-unknown jungles of the Yucatan, figuring a chance of death by jaguar was probably more preferable than the fate that awaited them.
Naturally, the group of fugitives were captured again, this time by warriors of a different Mayan city-state.
But these guys didn’t sacrifice the Spanish, they simply enslaved them and worked them so hard that two more guys died from exhaustion.
Eventually, only 2 Spaniards remained – Gonzalo Guerrero and a Franciscan friar named Jerónimo de Aguilar .
He was only 20 years old when he was shipwrecked and, despite his youth, he was always faithful to his Christian belief.
Aguilar stayed true to his Spanish roots, saying his prayers every day and asking God for deliverance, but Guerrero was actually kind of starting to dig this Mayan way of life.
Guerrero started wearing native-style clothing, learned the language, got some tattoos on his face, pierced his nose with a stick, and eventually won his freedom e – by saving his tribe’s chief from an alligator attack.
Once Guerrero got out of slavery, he bought Geronimo’s freedom, and immediately went about turning his Mayan city-state from a tiny little kingdom into an all-powerful Mayan war machine of death and destruction.
Gonzalo Guerrero, a lifetime war-monger with victories from Cordoba to Cuba and survived anything and everything the universe threw at him, started teaching European-style military tactics to the Mayans.
He taught them to build fortifications, how to organize into military units, and how to launch full-scale assaults or minor hit-and-run raids.
He drilled them in tactics and technique.
He commanded them in raids and battles against rival Mayan tribes, building up power and prestige for his king by charging full-on into battle armed with a blowgun, a spear, and an obsidian sword and massacring all who stood in his path in a torrential rampage of carnage.
Thanks to his impeccable ability to annihilate, Gonzalo Guerrero became more and more powerful in his tribe.
Eventually, his chief hooked him up to marry the Mayan princess Zazil Ha.
Together the newlyweds produced the first Mestizo (mixed race, especially one having Spanish and indigenous descent) children conceived in Mexico.
Guerrero and Zazil Ha had three sons together, and eventually took over the operation of a prestigious temple located on a powerful trade route between some of the Mayan land’s wealthiest city-states.
….Then, something weird happened …The Spanish showed up – specifically Hernán Cortés
In 1504, Hernan Cortes sought passage on a ship to Santo Domingo, Hispaniola (modern day Dominican Republic).
Cortés began life in the Spanish colony, which brought him much wealth.
Cortes finally got his first taste of exploration in 1511, when he joined a mission under led by Diégo Velasquez who was governor of the Island and appointed him mayor of Santiago de Cuba, until he was imprisoned.
He had promised , when he returned, to marry Catalina Suarez, the sister of his friend Juan Suarez, but backed out at the last minute.
Velasquez, now governor of Cuba, imprisoned Cortés for not upholding his promise.
Eventually, Cortés agreed to marry Catalina, but relations between Velázquez and Cortés remained tense.
In 1518, appointed Cortés to lead an expedition to conquer the interior of Mexico, to get him out of the way, but withdrew the order because he grew suspicious of Cortés’ strong will and thirst for power.
Cortés was warned of Velasquez’s anger and set out for Mexico in 1519 to begin his invasion, before Velazquez had time to act.
He was expected only to be able to retain 2 dozen men, but was so loved among the people due to his eloquence and persuasion skills, he easily recruited 600 volunteers for the expedition.
Knowing that he would be dismissed from his position given his unusual success, he escaped from Cuba to supply his 11 ships in Trinidad.
He arrived in Cozumel, an island in front of the current Mexican state of Quintana Roo, where after negotiating with the natives he learned of the existence of a pair of bearded white natives , such as the Spaniards, who inhabited the coast of Chetumal:
After hearing several of these rumors of mysterious white men living in the Mexican jungles, the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortez went out in searched to see what the hell was going on:
«I noticed a familiar communication with the natives, says the chronicler Herrera, it turned out that some of them implied that near that Island in the mainland of Yucatan, there were men similar to the Spaniards with beards, and that they were not natural from this kingdom, with which they had Hernando Cortés occasion to look for them ».
Knowing the importance that the existence of Spaniards among the natives who knew their language and customs could be profitable to their plans, the search was on.
He tracked Guerrero and Aguilar down, came to visit them in their kingdom, and offered to take these marooned sailors home – a good 8 years after they’d been shipwrecked and presumed dead.
Cortés commanded the caciques (in Latin America or the Spanish-speaking Caribbean- a native chief) to be called with a native translator named Melchor (who already knew some of the Castilian, and that of Cozumel -Cuzamil- is the same as that of Yucatan) they were asked if they had news of them.
Unanimously they responded, they had known some Spaniards in this land, and gave signs of them, saying that some chiefs had them as slaves, and that the native merchants of that Island had spoken them a few days ago, that they would be away from the land in, walking and path of two suns ».
In a letter Cortes wrote to Aguilar and Guerrero : — ” Gentlemen and brothers, here in Cozumel I have learnt that you are captives in the hands of a Cacique, and I pray you that you come here to Cozumel at once, and for this purpose I have sent a ship 95 with soldiers, in case you have need of them, and a ransom to be paid to those natives with whom you are living.
The ship will wait 8 days for you. Come in all haste, and you will be welcomed and protected. I am here at this Island with 500 soldiers and 11 ships, in which I go on, please God, to a town called Tabasco or Potonchan.”
The two vessels were soon dispatched with the two native traders from Cozumel who carried the letters, and they crossed the strait in 3 hours and the messengers with the letters and ransom were landed.
In 2 days the letters were delivered to a Spaniard named Jerónimo de Aguilar.
When he had read the letter and received the ransom of beads, he was worried because Guerrero had not yet met with them and went in search of his interest in his fate, and perhaps intercede.
He found that Gonzalo Guerrero had not only received, like him, Cortes’ letter, but had rejected it with his famous speech:
“Brother Aguilar; I am married and have three children, and they look on me as a cacique (cheif) here, and captain in time of war.
My face is tattooed and my ears are pierced.
What would the Spaniards say about me 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.”
In Spain, Gonzalo Guerrero had known only war and destruction.
Among the Maya, he had a wife, a nice home, a place of power, and a new life.
Friar Jeronimo tried several times to convince him to come, but Guerrero had made his decision. He stayed behind.
Aguilar tried to return to his countrymen’s ship in the 8 days allotted , but a storm in the meantime forced Cortés to return to the island of Cozumel, off Yucatan.
Aguilar heartbroken frantically boarded a canoe and paddled out to reach them.
From Díaz del Castillo, Vol. 1, Chapter 29
When the Spaniard who was a prisoner among the natives, knew for certain that we had returned to Cozumel with the ships, he was very joyful and gave thanks to God, and he came in great haste with the 2 natives who had carried the letters and ransom, and embarked in a canoe, and as he was able to pay well with the green beads we had sent him, he soon hired a canoe and 6 natives rowers.
They rowed so fast that, with no accidents at sea, in a very short time they crossed the small gulf between the two shores, a distance of about four leagues from one shore to the other.
And having arrived on the coast of Cozumel, while they were disembarking, some soldiers who had gone out hunting (because there were wild pigs on the island) told Cortés that a large canoe, which had come from the direction of Cape Cotoche, had arrived near the town.
Cortés sent Andrés de Tápia and two other soldiers to go and see, for it was a novelty for natives to come fearlessly in large canoes so close to where we were. So they set out, and as soon as the natives who came in the canoe, which Aguilar had hired, caught sight of the Spaniards, they were frightened and wanted to get back into the canoe and flee.
Aguilar told them in their own language not to fear, that these men were his brothers. When Andrés de Tápia saw that they were only natives (because Aguilar looked neither more nor less than an native), he at once sent word to Cortés by a Spaniard that they were Cozumel natives who had come in the canoe.
After they had landed, Aguilar in poorly articulated Spanish that was pronounced even worse, cried Dios y Santa Maria de Sevilla. Immediately Tápia embraced him.
The other soldier who had accompanied Tápia ran to tell Cortés that the one who had arrived in the canoe was a Spaniard, and he demanded a reward.
We all rejoiced.
Tápia soon brought the Spaniard to Cortés, but before he arrived where Cortés was, several Spaniards asked:
“Where is the Spaniard?”
even though he was walking by his side, because they could not distinguish him from an Indian as he was naturally brown and he had his hair shorn like an Indian slave, and carried a paddle on his shoulder, he wore one old sandal and the other was tied to his belt, he had on a ragged old coat, and a worse loin cloth with which he covered his nakedness, and he had tied up, in a bundle in his coat, an old and worn Book of Hours (a prayer book ).
When Cortés saw him in this state, he was deceived like the others, and asked Tápia
“Where is the Spaniard?”
On hearing this, the Spaniard squatted down on his haunches as the natives do and said, “It’s me.”
Cortés at once ordered him to be given a shirt and doublet and drawers and a cape and sandals, for he had no other clothes, and asked him about himself and what his name was and when he came to this country.
The man replied, speaking the language with difficulty, that he was called Jerónimo de Aguilar, a native of Ecija, and that he had taken holy orders, that 8 years had passed since he and 15 other men and 2 women left Darien for the Island of Santo Domingo, where he had some disputes and a lawsuit with a certain Enciso y Valdívia.
Aguilar was carrying 10,000 gold reales (money of mideval Spain) and the legal documents to use against the others, and that the ship in which they sailed, the Alacranes, when a storm hit and they could not sail the seas.
So, he and his companions and the two women got into the ship’s boat, thinking to reach the Island of Cuba or Jamaica, but the currents were very strong and carried them to this land.
The Calachiones of that district had divided them among themselves, and that many of his companions had been sacrificed to the Idols, and that others had died of disease, and the women had died of overwork only a short time before, for they had been made to grind corn.
The natives intended to use him for a sacrifice, but he escaped and fled to the Cacique with whom he has since been living (I don’t remember the name that he gave) and that none were left of all his party except himself and a certain Gonzalo Guerrero, whom he had gone to summon, but he would not come.
When Cortés heard all this, he gave thanks to God, and said that he would have him well looked after and rewarded.
He questioned Aguilar about the country and the towns, but Aguilar replied that having been a slave, he knew only about hewing wood and drawing water and digging in the fields, that he had only once traveled as far as four leagues from home when he was sent with a load, but, as it was heavier than he could carry, he fell ill, but that he understood that there were very many towns.
When questioned about Gonzalo Guerrero, he said that he was married and had three sons, and that his face was tattooed and his ears and lower lip were pierced, that he was a seaman and a native of Palos, and that the Mayans considered him to be very valiant.
A little more than a year ago a captain and three vessels arrived, (it seems probable that this was when we came with Francisco Hernández de Córdova) it was at the suggestion of Guerrero that the natives attacked them, and that he was there himself in the company of the Cacique of the large town, whom I have spoken about when describing the expedition of Francisco Hernández de Córdova. When Cortés heard this he exclaimed “Truthfully, I want him in my hands because it is not a good place to leave him.”
When the Caciques of Cozumel found out that Aguilar could speak their language, they gave him their best to eat, and Aguilar advised them always to respect and revere the holy image of Our Lady and the Cross, for they would find that it would benefit them greatly.
On the advice of Aguilar the Caciques asked Cortés to give them a letter of recommendation, so that if any other Spaniards came to that port they would treat the natives well and do them no harm, and this letter was given to them. After bidding the people good-bye with many caresses and promises we set sail for the Rio de Grijalva.
This is the true story of Aguilar, and not the other which the historian Gómara has written; however, I am not surprised that what he says is news to me.
Cortés embraced Aguilar and invited him to join the expedition, thus gaining the services of an invaluable interpreter.
Cortés, who could be a diplomat as well as a warrior, avoided friction with Aguilar’s Mayan captors by ransoming him for a few glass beads.
But it was different story when he arrived in another Mayan-speaking region, the coast of Tabasco on the river Tabasco in capital city of Potonchán which means smelly place, there were 25,000 homes there.
Having their main city on a wide river near the ocean allowed them to have an extensive sea trade network.
Two years earlier, an explorer named Juan de Grijalva had enjoyed an amicable meeting with a Tabascan chief who gave him a number of gold plates.
Cortés was less fortunate. When Aguilar translated his proclamation that he wanted only safe passage through theír lands, the Tabascans responded with a shower of arrows.
A series of desperate battles ensued and after one skirmish Aguilar asked a Tabascan captive why the locals were so hostile after they had been so friendly to Grijalva.
The reply was that other tribes in the region had charged the chief who had been hospitable to Grijalva with treachery and cowardice.
Insulted, the natives who had welcomed Grijalva promised that from then on they would fiercely resist the whites.
Though they lived up to their word,but technology eventually triumphed over numbers.
The Spanish, with their armor and steel weapons, easily won and soon local leaders asked for peace. Overcome by Spanish firepower — both from arquebuses and the deadly crossbow — the Tabascans surrendered,
The lord of Potonchan gave the Spanish 20 women, one of whom was Malinche.
She born with the name Malinali sometime around 1500, in the town of Painala, where her father was chieftain.
When her father died, her mother remarried the chief of another town and they had a son together.
Not wishing to jeopardize her new son’s inheritance, Malinche’s mother sold her into slavery in secret, telling the people of the town that she had died.
Slavers from Xicallanco, bought her and sold her to the lord of Potonchan when the Spanish arrived in 1519, who later gave her and others to Cortes who then handed the women and girls out to his captains.
Malinche was initially given to Alonso Hernandez Portocarrero and was baptized by the Spanish, they gave her the name Doña Marina.
Cortes noticed Malinche had a gift for languages realized how valuable she was, so he took her back for himself.
She was fluent in Maya and Nahuatl.
Aguilar and Malinche were able to converse in Mayan while he taught her and she quickly picked up Spanish.
Malinche , even more importantly, helped Cortes‘ understand local cultures and politics.
After she was transferred to Cortes she was given the name Malintzine which means “owner of the noble Malinali” and originally referred to Cortes.
Somehow, this name not only became associated with Doña Marina but also shortened to Malinche.
Malinali became pregnant by Cortes‘ and they had a son named Martin sometimes referred to as “El Mestizo”.
Metizo, was a term traditionally used in Spain, Latin America, and the Philippines.
Originally , the term signified a person of combined European and Native American descent, regardless of where the person was born.
As part of the spoil that Cortés acquired were a few gold ornaments of little value.
Cortés inquired where the gold came from and the Tabascans pointed to the west, to a vast empire they referred to as “Culhua” in Maya and “Mexico” in Nahua, the girl’s native language.
The rest is history. Cortés communicated with Aguilar in Spanish, Aguilar with the young woman in Maya, and the girl with inhabitants of Moctezuma’s empire in Nahua.
However relatively little is known about Aguliar’s later life.
Prescott places him on the retreat from Tenochtitlán, during the noche triste when the Spaniards were driven out of the Aztec capital, and at Chalco, when Cortés was making his victorious comeback.
A notable story of La Noche Triste
In the heat of battle, a wearied Aztec fighter looked up to see a vision of the Virgin Mary. But this was no heavenly creature: it was a ruthless female conquistador.
Maria de Estrada was one of the few women who traveled as a conquistador to the New World. Nicknamed the Great Lady, she fought alongside her husband in every battle including the epic La Noche Triste (“The Night of Sadness”) when the conquistadors’ retreated from the Aztec capital in 1520.
Castilian law banned Spanish women from travelling to America unless they were married and accompanied by a husband.
She was likely the first white woman in the Americas.
However, there is an interesting item in the reliable Diccionario Porrua, indicating formed an attachment with an native woman named Elvira Toznenetzin.
They allegedly had two daughters.
Jerónimo de Aguilar had built a home in 1524 located on the outer edge of what was the sacred precinct of the Templo Mayor prior to the Conquest and in 1526 he was awarded a grant of property in the Valley of Mexico.
Because of Aguilar’s ecclesiastical status, he was ruled to have no legitimate heirs though one of his daughters named Luisa, married a conquistador, an officer in Cortés’s force named Cristóbal de Oria.
On his death, probably in 1531 , the land reverted to the Crown, but his house in Mexico City later became the home of the first printing press to operate in the New World.
The House was taken over by the Spanish publisher Juan Cromberger, who left the Italian printer, Juan Pablos, in charge and installed the printing press.
They soon began printing church and government related documents.
In the 18th century it belonged to the Royal Military Order of Nuestra Señora de la Merced Redención de Cautivos de la Ciudad de México.
In 1847, U.S. troops occupied the house, destroying the archives that were within.
As for Guerrero, he lived among the Maya for over another decade , earning himself and his family a place of honor among the tribe.
He helped his people win wars against their rivals and expand their influence throughout the region.
Then, around the 1530s, more Spanish Conquistadors showed up looking to ravage and pillage the lands.
.. Again, Guerrero came to the aid of his people, leading them in combat against his former countrymen.
A letter written by cantador(singer) Andres de Cerezeda was found in the archives of the West Indies.
It reported Spanish mercenary turned hardcore Mayan war chief, Gonzalo Guerrero, was shot to death on Aug 13, 1536 in Puerto Caballos , Honduras during a battle between the Spanish and Mayan Armies.
To this day he remains a hero of Mexico – the first man to blend traditional Spanish culture with the culture of the indigenous populations.
References
- Diaz, B., 1963, The Conquest of New Spain, London: Penguin Books, ISBN 0140441239
- Diego de Landa (1937). Yucatan Before and After the Conquest. sacred-texts.com.
- Hugh Thomas (1993). Conquest. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
- Badass of the Week