XIX. The Indians’ Love for Cortés
Original Publication: Novedades — Editorial Section, May 17, 1948.
Author: LIC. OSCAR MÉNDEZ CERVANTES.
Topics: History and the Hispanic World.
Fragments of the Epic
By LIC. OSCAR MÉNDEZ CERVANTES
XIX
THE INDIANS’ LOVE FOR CORTÉS.
Once the hardships that invariably accompany war had passed, the captain who brought down Aztec power enjoyed, in very general terms, not only the respect commanded by his courageous spirit and fabulous exploits, but also true affection on the part of the indigenous peoples. His character had already shown great kindness during the period of conquest. His gifts of cordiality and personal human warmth—besides his strictly diplomatic qualities—had won him true friends in difficult hours. It was also well known that, during the trials of war, his conduct had confirmed the reverse of the proverb that courtesy does not detract from courage, showing that courage did not detract from his courtesy and humanity. He always sought—without neglecting the urgent demands and minimum safeguards to which, as a general, he had to attend—to lessen the hardships that every armed conflict brings to persons and property, and he always displayed magnificent, magnanimous nobility toward the vanquished.
His government of New Spain revealed how much esteem and love he held for the natives. As a result, they cast aside resentments that would have been readily understandable and reciprocated with the same feelings. Cortés, the father of an emerging homeland, necessarily had to love the two human materials with which he was beginning to build the edifice of nationhood; like the architect who had to take account of both the tezontle and the dressed stone with which Mexico’s great spiritual house was to be raised. And here it is worth observing, in passing, how closely the things Jorge Manrique said of his father, the Master Don Rodrigo, in his famous verses accord with Cortés’s character:
“What a friend to his friends!
What a lord to his servants
and kinsmen!
What an enemy to his enemies!
What a Master of the resolute
and brave!
What good sense for the discerning!
What grace for the witty!
What reason!
HOW KIND TO HIS SUBJECTS,
and to the fierce and harmful
a lion.”
On two occasions in particular, indigenous love for Cortés revealed itself in unadorned spontaneity: when he returned from the unfortunate expedition to the Hibueras, and when he returned from Spain married to Doña Juana de Zúñiga and already made Marquis of the Valley. The brevity of the space available makes us emphasize here only the popular demonstration that, on the first of these occasions, found perhaps its most enthusiastic participants among the natives. Let us yield the floor to the delightful and vivid Bernal Díaz:
“And when they learned of it (Cortés’s arrival in Veracruz), all the Indians of the surrounding country brought him gifts of gold and cloth and cacao and hens and fruit… and as he traveled along the road they had clean lodgings prepared for him, with great arbors and abundant provisions… As for describing the rejoicing of the Mexicans, they joined with all the towns around the lake and sent him on the road a great gift of gold jewels and clothing and hens and every kind of fruit of the land that was in season; and they sent word asking him to forgive them, because his arrival was sudden, for not sending more; saying that when he came to his city they would do what they were obliged to do, and would serve him as their captain who had conquered them and kept them under justice. And in that same manner other towns came. Nor did the province of Tascala forget, for all its principal men came out to receive him with dances and festivities and rejoicing…”
On the outskirts of Mexico, there came out to receive him “the treasurer, with all the gentlemen and conquerors and the municipal council…, and the Mexican caciques on their part, with as many devices and emblems and liveries as they could contrive, and the lake full of canoes with Indian warriors in them, just as and in the manner in which they used to fight us in the time of Guatemuz; and among those who came out along the causeways there were so many games and celebrations that they must remain untold, for throughout the day in the streets of Mexico all was dancing; and after nightfall, many lights at the doorways…; and the Indians of all the provinces came to see him and brought gifts of gold, and even the caciques of the rocky stronghold of Coatlán, who had rebelled, came to welcome him and brought him gifts.”
Here, reduced to miserable dust, is the account of a Cortés irredeemably hated by the indigenous peoples. Moctezuma, who rather enjoyed a superstitious reverential fear on the part of his subjects, could not even have dreamed of being loved by his people in the manner Cortés was, barely five years after the fall of Tenochtitlán: the kindest, most cordial, and most humane of the conquerors, who in all this surpassed even the classic example of Alexander the Macedonian himself.
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