Cortés, Hernán

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Cortés, Hernán
1484–1547

Hernán Cortés shared many of the characteristics of the sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador. Born in Medellín in the province of Extremadura in Spain, Cortés was a minor noble driven principally by the quest for wealth and glory. Ambitious for political power, he played a key role in the conquest of the Aztec Empire and the incorporation of its peoples into Spain's New World dominions.

Cortés's swift defeat of the Aztecs (1519–1521), like Francisco Pizarro's (ca. 1475–1541) victory over the Incas (1532–1533), was facilitated by the cooperation of hundreds of thousands of native allies. The sheer number of Indians fighting alongside a few hundred Spanish conquistadores gave the events of 1519 to 1521 the character of a great Indian uprising against Aztec domination. Though undoubtedly aided by propitious timing, Cortés's diplomatic skills were crucial in the forging of lasting alliances with the independent kingdom of Tlaxcala, which had been encircled and was vulnerable to Aztec conquest, and with the numerous subject peoples who, resentful of Aztec imperial rule, joined the fighting forces that overcame the ferocious Aztec war machine.

Cortés's audacity and determination, even when the odds were clearly stacked against him, also played a significant part in the Spaniards' success. An early decision to undertake the conquest in defiance of the governor of Cuba's strict instructions to limit his activities to exploration and trade, placed Cortés in real danger of a charge of treason should he fail to deliver to the king the largest and richest territories thus far encountered in the Americas. Only this driving need to succeed can explain the recklessness and inventiveness of his decisions: the scuppering of his ships to prevent the followers of Cuban governor Diego Velázquez (ca. 1465–1524) from abandoning the enterprise; the return to the Aztecs' island capital, Tenochtitlán, even after an ignominious Spanish retreat during the Noche Triste (Night of Sorrow) and the loss of hundreds of his men; and the building, with Tlaxcalan assistance, of a fleet of brigantines equipped with artillery to take control of Lake Texcoco, which cut off Tenochtitlán's food supplies and weakened severely the capacity of its people, already suffering the effects of a traumatic smallpox epidemic, to further resist.

Notwithstanding the skill and tenacity with which he led the conquest of Mexico, Hernán Cortés stands apart from his fellow conquistadors in one crucial sense. Having witnessed the tragic consequences of the kind of colonization that had taken place in the Caribbean, its peoples virtually destroyed within a single generation following the Columbian voyages, he sought to ensure that no such catastrophe was repeated in New Spain. Nevertheless, as governor from 1522, he faced the unenviable task of advancing several irreconcilable aims: to secure control over the Aztecs' former dominions, redirect native tribute and labor to support a growing Spanish population, and provide his followers with the livelihoods to which they aspired and which they considered their rightful reward for participation in conquest, while at the same time protecting indigenous peoples from exploitation and abuse. Thus the encomienda, a modified version of the repartimiento first introduced in Hispaniola, was extended to the Mexican mainland, and Cortés was one of its principal beneficiaries.

Despite personal reservations, Cortés believed that the encomienda, with its duties towards Indians carefully defined, was necessary to encourage permanent settlement, the development of a stable society, and profitable exploitation of the colony's resources. His authority in New Spain was to be short-lived, however. To limit the powers of conquerors and encomenderos, officials loyal to the authority of the crown soon made their way to the new colony: It was they who were to be responsible for its government until Mexico became independent exactly three hundred years later.