Rhetorical Conquests: Cortes, Gomara, and Renaissance Imperialism (Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures, Vol. 35)

Carman

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

volume 35

“This book is well written with a clear, persuasive, and interesting argument. It is a timely contribution that provides definitions for key terms in the study of rhetoric and conquest in Colonial Latin America, by focusing on the case of the textual representations of Hernán Cortés and his conquest of México.” —Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, University of Pennsylvania

Cortés, RHETORICAL CONQUESTS

This study examines how Hernán Cortés, first as the author of his Cartas de relación (1519–1526), and then as the protagonist of Francisco López de Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México (1552), defends Spain’s conquest of Mexico. It analyzes how these accounts represent his speech acts, including some of his key speeches; how they allow him to define the conquest in different ways to different audiences; and how they represent him as controlling the speech acts of others, most notably those of Moctezuma. Carman argues that these texts, in their attempt to justify the wars of conquest, do not maintain that the Spanish Empire simply possesses a “truth” over which falsehoods cannot prevail. Instead they show an understanding of the “truth” similar to that of Aristotle, who acknowledges that falsehoods can and often do prevail. The “truth,” according to these accounts, requires an artful advocate, like Cortés, who can give it the form it needs for each new audience and set of circumstances. By allowing the reader to see through Cortés’s rhetorical manipulation of others, especially of others who are so alien to the reader, these histories reinforce the moral and intellectual hierarchies that are necessary for a society to believe that it has the right or even the obligation to impose its will on others.

ABOUT THE SERIES Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures publishes studies on topics of literary, theoretical, or philological importance that make a significant contribution to scholarship in French, Italian, Luso-Brazilian, Spanish, and Spanish American literatures. ISBN–13: 978-1-55753-403-3 ISBN–10: 1-55753-403-9

Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana

RHETORICAL CONQUESTS

D

Gómara, and Renaissance Imperialism

Glen Carman

RHETORICAL CONQUESTS

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures Editorial Board Patricia Hart, Series Editor Jeanette Beer Paul B. Dixon Benjamin Lawton

Howard Mancing Floyd Merrell Allen G. Wood

Associate Editors French

Spanish and Spanish American

Paul Benhamou Willard Bohn Gerard J. Brault Mary Ann Caws Gérard Defaux Milorad R. Margitic; Glyn P. Norton Allan H. Pasco Gerald Prince David Lee Rubin Roseann Runte Ursula Tidd

Maryellen Bieder Catherine Connor Ivy A. Corfis Frederick A. de Armas Edward Friedman Charles Ganelin David T. Gies Roberto González Echevarría David K. Herzberger Emily Hicks Djelal Kadir Amy Kaminsky Lucille Kerr Alberto Moreiras Randolph D. Pope Francisco Ruiz Ramón Elzæbieta Sk¬odowska Mario Valdés Howard Young

Italian Fiora A. Bassanese Peter Carravetta Franco Masciandaro Anthony Julian Tamburri

Luso-Brazilian Fred M. Clark Marta Peixoto Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg

volume 35

RHETORICAL CONQUESTS Cortés, Gómara, and Renaissance Imperialism

Glen Carman

Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana

Copyright © 2006 by Purdue University. All rights reserved. The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Design by Anita Noble Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carman, Glen, 1963– Rhetorical conquests: Cortés, Gómara, and Renaissance imperialism / Glen Carman. p. cm. — (Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; v. 35) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-55753-403-3 ISBN-10: 1-55753-403-9 1. Cortés, Hernán, 1485–1547. Cartas de relación. 2. Mexico— History—Conquest, 1519–1540. 3. Mexico—Historiography. 4. López de Gómara, Francisco, 1511–1564. Historia general de las Indias. 5. Cortés, Hernán, 1485–1547—Literary art. 6. Language and history—Mexico. I. Title. II. Series. F1230.C835C37 2006 972'.02—dc22 2005032897

Contents vii Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 19 Chapter One Approaching the Conquest 20 1. A Brief Account of Events 28 2. Accounting for the Account 35 3. Rhetoric and Renaissance Historiography 45 Chapter Two The Means and Ends of Empire in Hernán Cortés’s Cartas de relación 46 1. Cortés and Machiavelli 51 2. Cortés’s Written Authority: Fabricating Truth 61 3. Conquering and Convincing 72 Chapter Three Convincing Likeness: Gómara’s Cortés 73 1. Competing Accounts (1521–1552) 83 2. History as Biography: Theory and Practice in Gómara 97 3. Gómara’s Protean Hero 113 Chapter Four Quoting Cortés in Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México 113 1. Voice and Irony 118 2. Trusting the Translators 121 3. Gómara’s Cortés Defines Himself 127 4. Quelling a Mutiny in Tlaxcala 133 5. From Idols to Icons 146 Chapter Five Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii 146 1. Renaissance Ventriloquism 156 2. Rendering Moctezuma Harmless in Cortés’s Segunda relación 160 3. Gómara and the Humanist Revisions of Surrender 168 Conclusion

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Table of Contents 173 Appendix Texts and Translations of Two Key Speeches 173 1. Moctezuma Welcomes the Spaniards Cortés, Peter Martyr, Pérez de Oliva, López de Gómara, Ginés de Sepúlveda, Cervantes de Salazar 191 2. Cortés on Idolatry Cortés, Peter Martyr, Pérez de Oliva, López de Gómara, Ginés de Sepúlveda, Cervantes de Salazar 211 Notes 227 Works Cited 243 Index

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Acknowledgments Foremost I would like to thank Mary Gaylord, who has helped me immensely during various stages of this project. As a reader, writer, and teacher, she continues to be an inspiring model. At Cornell University, Frederick Ahl, John Kronik, Jose Piedra, William Kennedy, and Ciriaco Morón Arroyo all provided invaluable guidance early on. I am grateful to DePaul University for providing me with a leave in the spring of 1997, during which I was able to expand on this project with research at the Newberry Library. I am also grateful for the kind help of the staff at the Newberry. My DePaul colleagues have provided assistance and support, and I give special thanks to Paul Jaskot and Valentina Tikoff, who read portions of this project and gave me excellent advice. I would also like to thank the editorial staff of PSRL, in particular Floyd Merrell and Susan Clawson, who, along with the anonymous readers, have helped me improve this book. An earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared as “The Means and Ends of Empire in Hernán Cortés’s Cartas de relación” in Modern Language Studies 27.3–4 (1998): 113–37, and an earlier version of the last section of Chapter 4 was published as “The Voices of the Conqueror in López de Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México” in the Journal of Hispanic Philology 16.2 (1992): 223–36. I thank both journals for permission to publish revised versions of those studies here. Finally, I thank my wife, Ann Bradlow, for her love and support. I dedicate this book to her.

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Introduction

Así es que yo acometo una grande y hermosa hazaña, que será después muy famosa; porque el corazón me da que tenemos de ganar grandes y ricas tierras, muchas gentes nunca vistas, y mayores reinos que los de nuestros reyes. (And so it is that I am embarking upon a great and beautiful enterprise, which will be famous in times to come, because I know in my heart that we shall take vast and wealthy lands, peoples such as have never before been seen, and kingdoms greater than those of our monarchs.)1 Hernán Cortés’s first speech to his troops (López de Gómara, Historia de la conquista de México) ¿Quién duda sino que en los venideros tiempos, cuando salga a la luz la verdadera historia de mis famosos hechos, que el sabio que los escribiere no ponga, cuando llegue a contar esta mi primera salida tan de mañana, desta manera?: “Apenas había . . .” (Who can doubt that in times to come, when the true story of my famous deeds comes to light, the sage who writes of them will say, when he comes to tell of my first expedition so early in the morning?: “Hardly had . . .”) Don Quijote on his first sally (Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote)

Both Hernán Cortés, as represented in Gómara’s history, and Don Quijote, as presented in Cervantes’s story, bask in their fame before they are famous. While Cortés already calls the 1

Introduction endeavor he is about to undertake an “hazaña,” an “exploit,” Don Quijote imagines and even provides the future narration of the moment he is living. It would seem that the fictional character has gone one step further than the historical one, for he has succeeded in writing his own history, at least for the brief time in which his own description of his first sally “makes up” that same event in the text we read by comprising that event and narrating it at the same time. But the mise en abîme is perhaps equally striking in the case of Gómara’s Cortés, who ultimately controls the writing of his own history far more successfully than Don Quijote does. Or rather, the histories we have of the conquest portray him as controlling that writing successfully. In fact, many readers have thought that he dictated or wrote a good portion of his history for his secretary, Francisco López de Gómara. These readers, such as the Inca Garcilaso and Bartolomé de Las Casas, would see Cortés here (through Gómara) quoting his own predictions of his own fame, a fame that he then (again through Gómara) enhances with these same predictions.2 Like Odysseus, Cortés is a figure whose capacity to control through language can never be fully separated from his own linguistic construction of himself. For he carries out two conquests. The first is the physical imposition of Spanish power in Mesoamerica, a conquest that is accessible to us only as a historical construct. The second is the control or apparent control of that historical construct. One need not accept Cortés’s version of events to recognize his influence on the subsequent historiography of the conquest. And if the extent of that influence remains a mystery, that is, if one cannot distinguish “control” from “apparent control,” it is because the double conquest entails this confusion. Cortés prevails both as a historian and as a protagonist of written history in part by conflating the two spheres. Even today it appears that one cannot completely escape this fusion, for any account of the conquest that denied the conquistador’s substantial success at controlling the writing of his own history would probably be unconvincing. This study examines how Hernán Cortés, first as the author of his Cartas de relación (1519–26) and then as the protagonist of López de Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México (1552), defines and defends Spain’s conquest of Mexico; how

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Introduction these accounts represent Cortés’s speech acts, especially his speeches; and how they represent his control over the speech acts of others, most notably those of Moctezuma. I also analyze the shifting nature of Cortés’s speaking persona within each account, because these two Renaissance histories of the conquest (along with Peter Martyr of Angleria’s De orbe novo) allow Hernán Cortés to define the conquest in different ways to different audiences, sometimes even within the same speech. The duplicity revealed by this rhetorical split accentuates the openly artful form of Cortés’s defense of conquest, a form that mirrors the self-consciously artful representation of events in the humanistic historiography of the Renaissance.3 In the sixteenth-century conquest narratives of Martyr, Gómara, Pérez de Oliva, Ginés de Sepúlveda, and Cervantes de Salazar, Cortés may purport to serve the same ideal of a fixed Christian truth that elsewhere Sepúlveda uses in his attempt to justify waging war on the American Indians, but for the textual agent of conquest, who in these histories operates outside of the safer confines of Sepúlveda’s philosophic dialogue, the “truth” does not simply prevail on its own; instead it requires an artful advocate who can accommodate new information, new circumstances, and new audiences in order to maintain the illusion of the conquest as a story of persuasion, however violent. Any explicitly rhetorical defense of “truth” places the notion of truth into question. Consequently, I explore the figures that Cortés and Gómara use to represent truth, such as the physical world, to which one gains access through exploration and observation; the metaphysical world, which gives meaning to the conquest as Christian crusade; and the temporal world of event or lived experience, which is comprehended through narrative. Likewise, I examine how the rhetorical triad of logos (reason), pathos (emotion), and ethos (the speaker’s authority) conditions the truth as an idea that depends on words, which in turn depend on speaker and implied audience.4 And yet my purpose is not to show how imperialist ideology undermines itself, but rather to discover how it gains its strength, how a duplicitous protean hero in the tradition of Odysseus can capture the reading public’s imagination, and how his rhetorical defense of “truth” provides a compelling defense of empire. Without drawing facile analogies, I hope to show how the

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Introduction unveiling of a Renaissance rhetoric of empire helps reveal strategies that other societies use to make sense of and gain acceptance for their own forms of imperialism. Unveiling implies critical distance, but not from modern imperialism, on which I can only speak from the belly of the beast. Consequently, I recognize that my critique of Eurocentrism is necessarily interior and perhaps in many ways Eurocentric itself. In an attempt to escape precisely these confines of an imperialist mode of thought, Walter Mignolo has elaborated the concept of “border thinking,” which he defines as “thinking from dichotomous concepts rather than ordering the world in dichotomies” (Local Histories/Global Designs 85; emphasis in original). “Border thinking,” he goes on to say, “is, logically, a dichotomous locus of enunciation and, historically, is located at the borders (interiors or exteriors) of the modern/ colonial world system” (85). My own “locus of enunciation,” by contrast, resides squarely within the modern/colonial world system, even though I hope to question some of the ways in which that system orders the world in dichotomies. What I try to take from Mignolo’s analysis is his “cultural critique of historical configurations” (13), especially where he considers “coloniality of power” (a term he borrows from Anibal Quijano) as “an energy and a machinery to transform differences into values” (13). In the texts that I analyze here, which are foundational for the modern/colonial world system, Cortés defines and justifies the conquest in part by classifying cultural differences within a hierarchy of values. And although Mignolo describes the coloniality of power as “anchored on denotative power and the will to truth” in contrast to “subaltern epistemologies with emphasis on performance and transformation” (26), Cortés’s will to truth, which undoubtedly operates on the side of the hegemonic epistemology, is also openly performative because it is openly rhetorical. In fact, I shall argue that he is most effective at ascribing values to difference—or at “subalternizing” Mesoamericans, to use Mignolo’s term—when his will to truth defines the representation of truth as necessarily performative, that is, rhetorical in the sense that it does not hide its situated nature. Many scholars currently working on the colonial period in Latin America share Mignolo’s concern for the complex ways

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Introduction in which Europe’s subjugation of indigenous cultures in the early modern period relates to present forms of imperialism.5 And in an effort to understand that colonial legacy, more and more scholars have explored the cultural production of colonial subjects, paying particular attention to how it clarifies— and occasionally critiques and undermines—the oppressive colonial relationship. As I acknowledge the importance of this critical work, I wish to underscore that it is not the work that I undertake here, because: (1) Cortés is a different kind of colonial subject; (2) the most relevant cultural context for understanding him remains European; and, (3) one therefore has to be careful about labeling his discourse, and especially Gómara’s discourse, as colonial.6 Nevertheless, as Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel has shown, the American experience puts its mark even on the earliest chronicles, and in the case of Cortés, his extended negotiation between two centers of power (the Court in Spain and its representatives in the Caribbean) puts him in an analogous position to that of Creoles and other colonials (124– 26). Furthermore, the study of Cortés and Gómara allows us to confront the topic of the voices of the colonized in other ways, not least of all because it can address how Europeans, especially Cortés, have on the one hand silenced many of those voices and on the other hand (and perhaps just as disturbingly) dramatized their own control over them. Among those critics who have examined the process by which Europeans erase, ignore, or transform the American Indians’ perspective, Mignolo has undertaken one of the most ambitious and influential analyses of institutional imperialism with his earlier study, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (1995). Although Mignolo usually moves in a different direction from the one pursued here, his study bears directly on this project with the connection he draws between early modern imperialism and the inability of the Europeans of the early modern period to give equal legitimacy to other forms of record keeping besides alphabetic writing. In a related argument, I maintain that Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, a sixteenth-century apologist for conquest, equates the Aztecs’ apparent lack of a writing system with a supposed inability to transcend their immediate world of idolatry and human sacrifice. What may surprise many modern

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Introduction readers is that Sepúlveda makes some of the same claims with regard to the Aztecs’ lack of an ability to think symbolically that Tzvetan Todorov will make over four hundred years later, when he links the European technology of writing to a “more advanced” technology of symbolism (160).7 Whereas Sepúlveda uses the absence of letters as “proof” of the Aztecs’ inferiority, Todorov, far more sympathetic to the Aztecs, uses it in an attempt to explain their demise. Both cases, however, reveal a troubling tendency to deny the other its signs, a tendency that Mignolo and others have tried to reverse; and the unexpected confluence between the arguments of Todorov and Sepúlveda provides one example of how early modern forms of imperialism are hard for us to escape, in spite of our best intentions. The way in which one seeks to unveil Renaissance rhetoric is as revealing as the rhetoric revealed. Here I share José Rabasa’s assumption “that what we say about European expansionism, conquest, and colonization of the world in the early modern period implies a position on issues pertaining to neocolonialism and Eurocentrism today” (Inventing America 3); and in this regard I consider especially helpful the parallel he draws between modern forms of colonial power and Cortés’s use of “dialogue as conquest” in the Segunda relación (122– 23). This insight, along with Rabasa’s more recent critique of the notion of “peaceful conquest” (Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier 67–83, 281–84), will be relevant for this study as I examine the role of Moctezuma’s voice in the narratives of Cortés and the humanist historians.

Cortés’s writings have been the subject of intense critical scrutiny since the time of their publication, and in Chapter 2 I address the criticism that is pertinent to this study. Gómara’s work, by contrast, has yet to receive the attention it deserves, especially considering the initial success and lasting influence of his Historia general de las Indias and Historia de la conquista de México.8 After the sixteenth century, Gómara’s status among professional historians faded as they turned their attention, in the case of Mexico, to Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s

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Introduction Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, to other first-hand testimonies, and eventually to the accounts gathered by Sahagún, Durán, and others. It has only been in the past century that Gómara’s work has seen a minor rehabilitation, starting, as Robert Lewis shows, with Ernest Mérimée, Henri Vignaud, and Eduard Fueter (303–05). This renewed appreciation of Gómara, however, usually reinforces the perception that he does not fully separate himself from Cortés. For example, Roger Bigelow Merriman, whose 1912 critical edition and translation of the Anales de Carlos Quinto (Annals of the Emperor Charles V) helped establish Gómara’s credentials as a historian, believes that his relationship with Cortés makes his account of the conquest suspect and that the Historia de la conquista de México is an unabashed apology for the conqueror (xvi). In a long and impassioned essay that forms the greatest part of his study, Cronistas e historiadores de la conquista de México: El ciclo de Hernán Cortés (1942), Ramón Iglesia defends Gómara against these charges and attributes his fall from favor and Bernal Díaz’s popularity to a democratizing tendency among historians, who are eager to deny Cortés’s greatness on the one hand and recognize the importance of the foot soldier on the other: Y así, el punto de vista de Bernal viene a coincidir con el de una época que se ha esforzado por nivelarlo todo, que ha visto con recelo a los hombres geniales, sobre todo en el campo de la acción política y guerrera. Entiéndase bien que yo no soy antidemócrata—que si lo fuera no estaría aquí [en México]—.9 Lo que hago es señalar ciertas tendencias del pensamiento democrático que en el terreno de la investigación histórica han llevado a actitudes plenamente demagógicas. (142) (And so, Bernal’s point of view coincides largely with that of an era that has attempted to place everything on the same level, that has viewed brilliant men with suspicion, especially in political and military arenas. Let me make it clear that I am not antidemocratic—if I were I would not be here [in Mexico]. What I am doing is pointing out certain tendencies in democratic thought that in the field of historical research have led to thoroughly demagogical attitudes.)

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Introduction Clearly there is more at stake here than Gómara’s reputation or Bernal Díaz’s worth as a historian. And although I do not want to overemphasize the importance of Iglesia’s study for current scholarship, I believe that it deserves attention here because it illustrates how closely twentieth-century readers continued to conflate Gómara’s voice with that of Cortés. By defending Gómara, Iglesia is defending Cortés’s heroic image along with a more “common sense” approach to history.10 Between the “historical scientism” that ignores Cortés’s most immediate biographer and the “demagoguery” that places foot soldiers and captains on an equal level of importance, Iglesia feels that historians have denied Cortés his rightful place as the key figure in the conquest (153). Iglesia does not reject Bernal Díaz, only his dismissal of Gómara. Rather, like many historians he feels that the two texts complement each other. But if Iglesia’s analysis calls to mind William H. Prescott’s famous assertion that the chronicles of Gómara and Bernal Díaz are “[t]he two pillars, on which the story of the Conquest mainly rests” (2: 474; bk. 5, ch. 7), he distributes the weight unevenly between these two pillars. For Iglesia believes that Bernal Díaz owes more to Gómara than he would ever admit, especially with regard to the organization of his account.11 While Iglesia’s admiration for Cortés allows for a more sympathetic treatment of Gómara, it also leads Iglesia to contradict his claim that Gómara was independent, an assertion that elsewhere he works hard to defend. He claims that Gómara is only able to appreciate the conquest as a military campaign: “Para Gómara no es posible la penetración pacífica en tierra de indios; el indio, como ser inculto, es mudable, y no cabe tratar con él en pie de igualdad. Hay que someterlo previamente por la fuerza” (“For Gómara, peaceful penetration into Indian territory is not possible; the Indian, as an uncivilized being, is fickle, and one cannot deal with him on an equal footing. One must subdue him forcefully beforehand”; Iglesia 178). According to this reading, any peaceful tendencies on the part of the Spaniards or any appreciation of the Aztec culture is due to the “inspiración cortesiana” (193). When Gómara describes Tenochtitlan, Iglesia says: “Bien se nota en esta descripción tan bella la presencia del espíritu de Cortés” (“It is easy to see in such a beautiful description the presence of Cortés’s spirit”; 193):

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Introduction Si alguna vez menciona [Gómara] el deseo de paz que subsistía en Cortés, apreciamos en el tono de la observación que es el propio conquistador quien habla, y que Gómara está siguiendo con especial fidelidad el texto de las cartas de relación. (206) (If [Gómara] ever mentions the desire for peace that persisted in Cortés, we can appreciate from the tone of the observation that it is the conquistador himself who is talking, and that Gómara is being especially faithful to the text of his letters.)

That Iglesia should be able to read into Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México the benevolent, peace-loving influence of the conqueror is testimony to the success with which Cortés was able to shape his own myth and with which Gómara was able to embellish on it. Further, Iglesia’s reading of the Historia de la conquista de México as a mixture of different voices suggests that Gómara’s history not only played a role in the debate over the conquest, but also contained elements of such a debate, for it presents conflicting arguments about such questions as the status of the American Indians. Whereas in the sixteenth century Las Casas and Garcilaso dismiss Gómara as a mere mouthpiece for his patron, in the twentieth century Iglesia sees Cortés’s voice as the most appealing aspect of Gómara’s Historia. And the impression persists. Jorge Gurría Lacroix, editor of the most widely used edition of Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México (1979), asserts that Cortés dictated his speeches to his secretary (xv). In reading Cortés and Gómara together, I hope to show that Gómara worked more independently of Cortés than many have imagined, but also that he operated under the spell of his patron, so to speak. What I mean by this apparent contradiction is that Cortés’s influence on the subsequent historiography of the conquest was deeper and broader than would be the case if he had merely prevailed upon his secretary to say what he wanted him to say. In fact, that influence is easier to understand once we appreciate how much distance Gómara establishes between himself and his patron while he elaborates on the persona that Cortés has created. If one wants to find a case of more rigidly controlled voices, one could do worse than to examine the 9

Introduction extent to which Gómara’s words find their way into the histories of Francisco Cervantes de Salazar (1566), Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1601–15), and Juan de Torquemada (1615). I have begun my study by reading Gómara together with Cervantes because the Quijote is, among other things, a supreme example of fiction as a testing ground on which to explore the problems of nonfictional representation.12 In other words, Cervantes’s formal experiments in fictional genres engage the reader in many of the questions surrounding the problem of how to represent truth. Although I analyze the writings of Cortés and Gómara much as one analyzes fiction, it is not because much of what they write is probably untrue, but rather because I focus less on their veracity than on their ideological force as stories. I do not, however, wish to disregard their claims to truth, for it is precisely from these claims that they receive much of that ideological force.13 Any analysis of historiography, consciously or not, takes as its starting point some notion of what probably happened, a working version of the events. In an effort to address this starting point as consciously as possible, I open my first chapter with such a version, one that allows me to provide essential background information about the events of the conquest and then to discuss the historical and theoretical problems associated with any such account. In Chapter 2 I turn to Hernán Cortés’s Cartas de relación (1519–26), written during and shortly after the conquest. I argue that Cortés authorizes his voice not only through legalistic maneuvers, corroborating accounts, and other well documented strategies that lend his letters an impartial tone, but also by fully engaging that voice in the conquest, so that the acts of discovering, conquering, and narrating all seem to serve as merely different facets of the same enterprise. This fusion of speaker and protagonist provides a narrative coherence that mirrors and supports Cortés’s ideological justification of the conquest, a coherence that is all the more impressive because several inconsistencies between his ends and his means threaten to jeopardize his political and textual authority. When Cortés suppresses these contradictions, he demonstrates how, even within the stylistic confines of the carta relatoria, a patently artful service to “truth” can offer an effective and compelling service to empire. 10

Introduction Even though the Crown limited Cortés’s authority in New Spain, arranged an inquiry into his actions, and in 1527 prohibited the publication and sale of his Cartas de relación, the conquistador had already secured his status as a hero and imposed his vision of the conquest, thanks primarily to the printing press. The competing accounts of the conquest that emerge from the testimonies of the inquiry, the reports of other conquistadors, the Franciscan and Dominican attempts to preserve (at least to a certain extent) a Mesoamerican version of events, and the historical and political writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas, provide the core of various revisionist histories of the conquest. But the success of this revision was long in coming and is still not complete. During the sixteenth century, it was the humanist historians who prevailed by elaborating on Cortés’s version of events. Of these, the most influential was Francisco López de Gómara, whose Historia de la conquista de México (1552) was widely published, translated, and copied during the rest of the sixteenth century, even though soon after its release the Spanish Crown prohibited its publication and distribution. Chapter 3 situates Gómara, his history, and especially his characterization of Cortés within this historiographical setting. Although Gómara’s Cortés often fits the mold of epic and chivalric heroes, he has picaresque moments, and on a few early occasions he anticipates the figure of Don Juan. In the end, it is easy to see why this portrayal aroused the indignation of both the defenders and the critics of the conquest, and members of either camp could have wanted to see the Historia banned. And yet, what makes Gómara’s Cortés such an effective tool of empire is that he allows Gómara to reveal Spain’s struggle to make sense of that empire. Chapter 4 focuses on three moments in which Gómara provides long set speeches for his protagonist: twice when he has Cortés address his own men and once when he has him speak to an audience of Aztec priests and nobles. In each of these cases I am interested in how Cortés adapts his definition and defense of the conquest to his particular audience within the text, and how these arguments might engage an extratextual audience of sixteenth-century European readers, especially within the context of the contemporary debates over the conquest. The problem of translation deserves special attention in these accounts, because the reported speeches often pass 11

Introduction through a chain of interpreters from Spanish to Mayan to Nahuatl. The role of the translators might appear at first to be insignificant within the operative fiction of Gómara’s history, since he does not refer to the problems of interpretation. But the life stories behind the translators themselves serve either to authorize them as credible mediators or to present their credibility as yet another linguistic triumph on the part of Cortés. One prominent voice to which readers have access only through translation is that of Moctezuma. In Chapter 5 I examine that voice in both Cortés’s Segunda relación and Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México. In each account, as in most of the humanist accounts, the Aztec emperor gives two long speeches in which he recognizes Charles V as his sovereign precisely because he fails to recognize who Charles V really is. This concession nevertheless serves in these narratives as a legitimate transfer of power (translatio imperii), in spite of its dubious legality. My primary interest is in the rhetorical force of the surrender, a force that does not come from Moctezuma himself, but rather from Cortés, even in narratives subsequent to Cortés’s own Segunda relación. Here I look not only at the versions of this surrender in Cortés and Gómara, but the life of the speech in the humanistic historiography of Martyr, Pérez de Oliva, Sepúlveda, and Cervantes de Salazar, as well as important reactions to it from Las Casas, Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, and Díaz del Castillo.

In spite of the significant differences in the various Renaissance accounts of Cortés’s speeches, the general image of Cortés that emerges from them is in my view more important, because it marks the texts’ ideological consistency. When Martyr, Gómara, and Sepúlveda claim that Cortés is motivated by the desire to rescue the victims of human sacrifice and preach the Christian gospel, they define his mission in terms that would almost seem acceptable to Cortés’s most vehement critic, the Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas. But unlike these historians, Las Casas never believes that Cortés was sincere in these motives, much less successful in pursuing them. In 1550 and 1551, when Las Casas and Sepúlveda speak before a royal tri-

12

Introduction bunal in Valladolid on whether Spain can justify its wars of conquest in the Indies, the events in Mexico between 1519 and 1521 take on a special prominence, because Sepúlveda regards Cortés’s conduct as exemplary: “Sed nec ab omnibus, sic bellum est administratum, si vera sunt, quae de rebus gestis in recipienda noua Hispania commentariis quibusdam nuper a me perlectis memorantur” (“But war has not been carried out in this way [unjustly] by everyone, if certain accounts I have recently read of the conquest of New Spain are true”; 29). As a result, Sepúlveda and Las Casas argue almost as much about what happened as about what should have happened. Although it is hard to imagine Las Casas accepting Cortés’s recourse to violence, even if he were to accept the conquistador’s version of events, what is even more inconceivable is that Las Casas could ever accept that version. He could never accept it because it does not correspond to his view of the American Indians, and because it does correspond, in certain key moments, to an accelerated form of his proposed policy of conversion through persuasion. Had Cortés relied on this policy as much as he claims to have done, then, according to the view of Las Casas, there would have been no need for violence. I do not mean to exaggerate the ideological consistency between the two camps, especially because one can see them drifting even farther apart right after the Valladolid encounter, when Las Casas revises his stance and arrives at the conclusion that the American Indians, after converting to Christianity, are under no obligation to submit to the Spanish Crown.14 But part of what allows him to maintain the radical position that they are not obliged to submit is his confidence that the American Indians will submit voluntarily if they are converted peacefully: “sin tardanza, ni duda, vernán los brazos abiertos, con bailes y danzas, a se subjectar y servirles prompta y liberalmente, como desto tenemos larga y cierta experiencia e noticia” (“without delay or doubt, they will come dancing with open arms to submit and serve [the monarchs] quickly and freely, as we know from long experience and true accounts”; Tratados 186). Both sides at least purport to share the goal of peacefully persuading the American Indians to convert to Christianity and submit to the Crown, and both sides tell a story in which the goal is achieved. Las Casas, however, speaks of a possible future, of

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Introduction what will happen if the right road is finally taken, whereas Cortés and those who follow and elaborate on his account tell a story of the recent past, of what Spaniards attempted to accomplish and even managed to accomplish on various occasions when they were not “forced” to resort to violence. Las Casas bases his program of peaceful conversion on a faith in the word of God and also on a faith in the ultimate willingness of all people to listen to and accept that word when it is properly presented. Starting with his first work, De unico vocationis modo omnium gentium ad veram religionem (On the Only Way to Attract All People to the True Religion), he argues that the only way to bring people to Christianity is through persuasive reasoning and gentle appeals to the will. Cicero and Augustine lend support to his claim that rhetorical method and diligence (“modo et industriae”) are central to the evangelizing mission (52–57; 5.5).15 Later in the work (98–101; 5.10) he cites a Renaissance commonplace that he will revisit in his Apologética historia sumaria (2: 529; ch. 47) and in the prologue to his Historia de las Indias: Cicero’s description of a wise and eloquent leader who turned “fierce and savage men” into “kind and gentle” members of the first community: “deinde propter rationem atque orationem studiosius audientes ex feris et immanibus mites reddidit et mansuetos” (“and then, through reason and eloquence he got them to listen more attentively and turned wild savages into kind and gentle men”).16 The “Defender of the Indians,” with Cicero, sees reason and the effective expression of reason (ratio and oratio) as combining to form the foundation of civilized society. In his lengthy paraphrase of this passage Las Casas calls this persuasive ability “industria” (1: 16). For someone engaged in building the first community, industria may appropriately suggest the act of building (Latin struere); but his reference “industriae rethoricae [sic]” in the De unico vocationis modo (52; 5.5) suggests how he sees its rhetorical force, and the term, especially in Renaissance Spanish, emphasizes mental rather than physical capacities. The seventeenth-century lexicographer Sebastián de Covarrubias defines industria as “la maña, diligencia y solercia con que alguno haze qualquier cosa con menos trabajo que otro” (“the cunning, diligence, and skill with which someone does something with less effort than someone

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Introduction else”; 735). Industria, then, highlights the manipulative side of the leader who combines reason and eloquence into the original civilizing force. And in Las Casas this force, although not always tantamount to an evangelizing force, clears the path for conversion. He asserts that any nation, no matter how barbarous it may be, can be attracted and reduced to political virtue (1: 16).17 Spain itself serves as his example, since, as he says, it was likewise drawn into “civilization” and then into Christendom. The story that Las Casas tells is powerful because it mitigates the role of violence (there is no reference to the Roman military conquest of the Iberian peninsula), and because it shows faith in the power of reason when reason is given its full effect in eloquence. Although no one tells quite the same peaceful story about the conquest of Mexico, Cortés and the humanist historians define the conquest largely in rhetorical terms and consider key moments of persuasion to be as impressive and as important as the military victories. Martyr, Pérez de Oliva, Gómara, Sepúlveda, and Cervantes de Salazar not only take Cortés at his word, they expand on his word and give it life by “quoting” him in long set speeches. In these histories a rhetorical vision of the conquest prevails. The term rhetoric might seem to pose a problem, because it has been variously understood as: (1) the affective function of all discourse; (2) argumentative discourse; (3) the art of persuasion, especially in the area of public speaking; (4) the study of style; and (5) a kind of verbal smokescreen (“mere rhetoric”). In this last, popular understanding of the term, rhetoric is usually seen in opposition to the truth, because it is thought to entail deception through the artful use or abuse of language. But all of these definitions bear on the present study, even the last, because rhetoric has often had to define itself in relation to some notion of truth, and because “truth” serves as a rhetorical point of departure for the chronicles of conquest. On the one hand they must establish the veracity of their narratives, while on the other hand they must help justify the conquest by depicting it as a crusade in the name of a higher, Christian Truth that gives meaning to Spain’s empire. Even if we set aside for the moment the “vulgar” view of rhetoric as a form of deception, this verbal art is still suspect as

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Introduction a tool of any crusade that claims to serve truth. Aristotle underscores rhetoric’s versatility when he proposes to define it as “an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion” (36; 1355a). The public nature of rhetoric reinforces the idea that rhetorical discourse is less concerned with transmitting knowledge than with adapting itself to the confines of common knowledge, or at least to the knowledge of its audience. For Aristotle, rhetoric, like its counterpart, dialectic, is concerned with such things as are, to a certain extent, knowledge of all people and belong to no separately defined science. A result is that all people, in some way, share in both; for all, to some extent, try to test and maintain an argument [as in dialectic] and to defend themselves and attack [others, as in rhetoric]. (28–29; 1354a)

Renato Barilli draws out some of the implications of this definition: Rhetoric is concerned with ordinary matters, and ordinary also is the public it addresses, precisely because it deals with issues that interest all the members of a given community. Everybody has a right to take part in debates, discussions, and so on, to understand them, to master the terminology used, to enjoy them if possible, and finally to judge, to approve or disapprove of the speaker’s words. This view is very democratic, even on epistemological grounds, since it suggests that the community, the demos, ultimately determines whether a rhetorical speech is credible, probable, and whether it can be accepted. In a rhetorical universe the notion of “truth” does not obtain, since it would imply external foundations, to be sought in the nature of things, or in discourses themselves, or in some transcendent entity. (viii–ix)

External foundations and transcendent entities are precisely what Spain’s defenders appeal to in their defense of its empire. And yet, this defense takes a decidedly rhetorical turn in Cortés’s Cartas de relación and especially Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México when Cortés appeals to the beliefs already held by his various audiences. This turn, if not at all democratic in Cortés’s case, is nevertheless more engaging and less stable than recourse to a rigid discourse that only imposes and never accommodates. 16

Introduction Another way in which rhetoric challenges the notion of fixed values and truths has to do with its status as an art (Greek techne). It has no subject that is particular to it and so may be used for good as well as evil purposes. For this reason Socrates is wary of rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias; and in the Phaedrus he proposes only an ideal rhetoric in which speakers would know the truth of their subjects and the nature of their audiences (100; 277). Aristotle defends a more flexible form of the art and maintains that a speaker “should be able to argue persuasively on either side of a question, not that we may actually do both (for one should not persuade what is debased) but in order that it may not escape our notice what the real state of the case is and that we ourselves may be able to refute it if another person uses speech unjustly” (34; 1355a). Seen in this practical light, rhetoric can only serve what is “true and just” if one also understands how it can serve their opposites, because the “true and the just,” though for Aristotle naturally “stronger than their opposites,” can still be defeated by them if not forcefully presented. This force itself is not ethical or unethical. “[I]t would be strange,” Aristotle asserts, if an inability to defend oneself by means of the body is shameful, while there is no shame in an inability to use speech; the latter is more characteristic of humans than is the use of the body. And if it is argued that great harm can be done by using such power of words, this objection applies to all good things except for virtue, and most of all to the most useful things, like strength, health, wealth, and military strategy; for by using these justly one would do the greatest good and unjustly, the greatest harm. (35; 1355a–b)

In rejecting the Platonic criticism of rhetoric as contrary to ethics, Aristotle considers the art of persuasion as not only morally acceptable but also necessary for effective moral teaching. In Augustine such a view found an influential Christian advocate (118–19; 4.2), and during the Renaissance, it was widely disseminated through Cicero’s newly discovered De oratore and Quintilian’s Institutionis oratoriae libri duodecim and then through printed editions of Aristotle’s own treatise On Rhetoric, as well as through other rhetorical treatises that followed Trebizond’s Rhetoricum libri quinque, written in the

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Introduction mid-fifteenth century (Vickers 19; William Kennedy 8, 11, 13; Conley 111–15).18 In Spain Nebrija’s compendium in Latin of the rhetorics of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian was published in Alcalá in 1529 at the forefront of numerous other rhetorics written by Spaniards, including Luis Vives, Antonio Lull, Sebastián Fox Morcillo, and El Brocense, who represent both the rearguard of the flourishing of Renaissance rhetoric and the vanguard of another movement, associated with Peter Ramus, which tended to reduce the art to mere elocutio, or style (Menéndez Pelayo 148–203). If these theorists did not agree on the purpose and confines of rhetorical studies, many of them nevertheless followed Vives in looking beyond the arena of public speaking to consider the place of rhetoric in the writing of history, letters, apologies, escapist fiction (fábulas licenciosas), and poetry (Menéndez Pelayo 157). They adapted the art to the discourses at hand, so that it no longer dealt explicitly with debate, although in the process some of them may have implicitly acknowledged the elements of debate that pervade these other types of discourse. Cortés’s letters and Gómara’s history engage in the controversy over the conquest in various ways, but first of all by defining the conquest itself in rhetorical terms. When Cortés, as the protagonist of his own or his secretary’s history, persuades a particular audience, he measures his success in terms of that audience. His strategies change according to when, where, why, and to whom he is speaking. Yet one of the reasons he speaks remains constant in these histories: Cortés claims to be serving the higher interests of the Spanish Empire, that is, a notion of Christian “truth” that supposedly does not change. Christian faith provides the grounding for this notion of truth because the war against the infidel is seen as a war against false beliefs, against those who reject the “true” faith. The ideological justification for Spanish imperialism, not surprisingly, is based on the stable opposition between truth and falsehood. A primary goal of this study is to understand how Cortés’s rhetoric, which owes allegiance only to the needs of the moment, can serve this ideal of a fixed truth.

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Chapter One

Approaching the Conquest

I begin this chapter with a summary of the events that we traditionally call “the conquest of Mexico.” This summary has three purposes: (1) to provide essential background information about these events, (2) to show where I stand with regard to some of the controversies surrounding them, and (3) to serve as a sample narrative that facilitates a discussion of various problems that one must confront when approaching the conquest. Within that discussion, one of my arguments is that in order to analyze sixteenth-century narratives of the conquest as historical narratives, that is, as narratives that purport to represent real events (no matter how figuratively, for I make no neat distinctions here between literature and historiography), one must bring to the narratives a working version of those events. One can revise this version constantly, reserve judgment on many points, and even claim that—for all kinds of reasons— the truth of what happened lies beyond our reach, but one cannot bring to the analysis a blank slate. Such ignorance of or disinterest in the world that produced the narratives and to which the narratives refer would preclude any meaningful inquiry into their relation to that world. For that reason, I prefer to lay my cards on the table and give the reader some idea of how I imagine, at least in broad terms, the reality that Cortés and Gómara claim to depict. This does not mean that I believe this reality to be knowable in a concrete sense, but rather that I believe it to be impossible to ignore. Since this narrative is only a summary, I have limited the documentation primarily to those points on which there is substantial debate, and in most cases I refer the reader to twentieth- and twenty-first-century historians.1

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Chapter One

1. A Brief Account of Events Before Hernán Cortés landed on the coast of Mexico on April 22, 1519, he had heard that a powerful and wealthy civilization lay somewhere in the interior. The Aztecs, in turn, knew of previous Spanish visitors to the coast and had received reports of the progress of this third and largest expedition, including news of its recent military victory over the Chontal-Mayan-speaking people of Pontonchan earlier that spring. And yet neither the Spanish adventurers nor the envoys from Moctezuma understood the full significance of the initial contact. The Aztecs brought lavish gifts of gold, silver, featherwork, and blankets: an impressive display of power, which the Spaniards mistook for an act of submission and to which they responded with an armchair, a crimson cap, and later a few Dutch shirts, Florentine glass, and trinkets.2 Likewise, when the Europeans displayed their horses and artillery, the Aztecs, though alarmed at the destructive force disembarking before them, probably did not realize that the same weapon that shattered a tree with its shot might be turned on human beings. To kill in such a fashion, anonymously and from a safe distance, made no sense according to their notions of warfare.3 The bearded men from the east were violent visitors, to be sure, but they claimed to be emissaries of a foreign sovereign, not an invading force. So as emissaries they were received, though not invited to proceed inland. Cortés was no emissary. In fact, the Spanish monarchs had never heard of him and were only vaguely aware of the newly discovered territory to the west of Cuba. In Cuba itself, however, Cortés was well known, if not always well regarded. An encomendero who had served as a notary and as a magistrate of Santiago, he had little experience to recommend him as captain of a fleet that would eventually include 11 ships, some 500 volunteers, 100 sailors, and 200 enslaved Cubans and Africans.4 But unlike the captains who had gone before him, Cortés was resourceful and bold enough to press Spanish claims on the mainland. For this purpose the Spanish governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, who had sponsored the previous expeditions to Mexico, entrusted this latest venture to him. That same boldness, however, eventually induced Velázquez to have second thoughts about his captain, and for good reason. Before the 20

Approaching the Conquest governor could change the command, Cortés set sail from Santiago harbor, and by early February, with as many men and supplies as he could find, he had left Cuba and was bound for the Yucatan. Sixteen precious horses had been procured, as well as several attack dogs (greyhounds and mastiffs), and approximately 14 cannon, 32 crossbows, and 13 harquebuses (matchlock guns).5 At the island of Cozumel, his first landfall, luck and persistence brought Cortés what previous expeditions had lacked: a reliable interpreter. The natives had indicated that other Spaniards were living in the area, and Cortés made contact with one of them, a priest named Gerónimo de Aguilar. Of those who had been shipwrecked on the Yucatan seven years earlier, only he and Gonzalo Guerrero remained alive. But Guerrero had made a new life for himself among the Mayas and refused to leave. Even Aguilar, when he finally reached the Spanish fleet, was barely recognizable as a Spaniard until he spoke. From Cozumel they worked their way around the peninsula to modern-day Tabasco, where they were unwelcome. Even through Aguilar, Cortés could not persuade the Tabascans to listen to the “good news” that they were now subjects of a Christian king. Instead they gathered what forces they could and tried to repel the invasion with their superior numbers. But the Spaniards eventually managed to deploy their horses on the open field at the Battle of Cintla. The Tabascan line broke and fled before the strange beasts.6 This region was not to the Spaniards’ liking, however, as it contained little gold. They sailed up the coast to San Juan de Ulúa, where evidence of Aztec wealth would draw them inland but where Aguilar could not understand the local language. Fortunately for Cortés, as part of the spoils for the earlier victory the Tabascans had given the Spaniards twenty women as slaves. Among them was Malinali, baptized as Marina and also known as Malinche.7 In addition to speaking Chontal-Mayan, she spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs and of most of the Mesoamerican states under Aztec control. With her, Cortés had obtained the second link in his interpreting chain. The distance between Spanish and Nahuatl was vast enough without the intervening level of Mayan. But until Malinali learned Spanish, she had to communicate through Aguilar,

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Chapter One which helps to explain why at the outset the exchanges between Spaniard and Aztec took the form of a comedy of errors. Each would attempt to manipulate the other continuously, even though neither understood the other well enough to control communication completely.8 Nonetheless, the ability to communicate at all, however imperfectly, set this expedition apart from those preceding it. For Cortés made contact not only with the Aztecs, but with their disgruntled subjects as well, such as the Totonacs from the coastal city of Cempoala. These allies would offer the conqueror leverage when dealing with Moctezuma and would aid in future campaigns. Warriors from other nations hostile to the Aztecs eventually constituted the vast majority of Cortés’s forces. No matter that Cortés mistook these temporary allies for new vassals of Charles V. They, in turn, probably regarded him as a mere tool.9 At times, Spanish allies were nearly as difficult for Cortés to attract as Mexican allies, because Velázquez still had followers among Cortés’s troops and influential friends at the Spanish Court, such as the Bishop of Burgos, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca. To give his position at least the appearance of legality, Cortés made a pretense of following orders and preparing to return to Cuba. When his men protested, he “yielded” to their demands to set up a permanent colony on the mainland. Cortés founded a town, the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, and appointed a town council and magistrates. The town council promptly elected him chief justice of the settlement and captain-general of the royal army. Through such maneuvers Cortés severed all formal ties to Velázquez. Henceforth he would serve the king directly. Now all he had to do was tell the king about it. The reason Velázquez had not given Cortés orders to set up a colony on the mainland was that he was still awaiting the necessary royal authorization. So when Juan de Saucedo’s ship arrived at Vera Cruz with the news that Velázquez had obtained such authority, Cortés had to feign ignorance as he wrote to plead his case to the monarchs. His letter bears the signatures of the appointed town council of Vera Cruz but bears as well all the signs of Cortés’s own prose.10 Like Caesar, Cortés found that at this juncture he could better narrate his own exploits in the third person. As if to drive home the broad base of his support, Cortés entrusted the missive to a recent convert from the

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Approaching the Conquest Velázquez faction, Francisco de Montejo, and to a long-standing friend, Alonso Hernández de Puertocarrero. They also embarked with the gold and other gifts sent from Moctezuma, a cargo at least as persuasive as any letter. Soon after the departure of Puertocarrero and Montejo, Cortés discovered that some of Velázquez’s supporters were planning to steal a ship and warn the governor about the vessel, letter, and treasure en route to Spain. After a swift trial, the leading conspirators were hanged, and some other members of the plot were flogged. But Cortés could not punish all those who opposed him. Instead he resolved to dismantle the remainder of his fleet. He himself had long since passed the point of no return. Now all of his men—the willing along with the wavering—crossed that line as well. As a rearguard, 150 men remained on the coast to garrison Vera Cruz; and to ensure their safety Cortés took some Totonac chieftains as hostages.11 These along with approximately 1,000 porters from Cempoala accompanied the rest of the Spaniards on their march to the highlands. The Cubans would be the first to suffer the rigors of this march, as it quickly took them from sea level to 11,000 feet. Unprepared and unaccustomed to the cold, several of them died from exposure. But after the first mountain pass the going was easier, and everywhere the company was well received, until they reached Tlaxcala. This small independent state was surrounded by enemies and understandably suspicious of these foreigners, who appeared to be on good terms with the hated Aztecs. They greeted the Spaniards by beheading two of their horses with macuauhuitl, long clubs set on two sides with razor-sharp flint or obsidian. It seemed that the Spaniards would have to fight their way through Tlaxcala. Day after day Cortés and his men withstood repeated attacks by warriors as fierce as any yet encountered in the New World, although during a few respites delegations brought food and drink to the exhausted Spanish camp. Warfare was not the same in Mesoamerica as it was in Europe. The horses and superior weaponry brought the Spaniards a definite advantage on the field. But also important at this early stage was the Tlaxcalans’ desire to capture live victims for sacrifice. War was an occasion for gaining honor, and there was no honor in fully pressing one’s

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Chapter One numerical advantage or, for that matter, in defeating a starving army, hence the occasional provisions to the enemy.12 The Spaniards also had rules of warfare, though far fewer when their adversaries were not fellow Christians. Here, isolated and desperate, they not only gave no quarter, they attacked defenseless towns in the vicinity. The Tlaxcalans might have disdained the foreigners’ tactics, but they also seem to have been impressed by their tenacity. In the end, they could not afford to persist in their fight against this new enemy while they still faced a constant threat from the Aztecs. They made peace with the Spaniards and would prove to be their most important allies. If the Tlaxcalans and their enemies the Aztecs agreed on one thing, it was that the Spaniards should not continue their march to Tenochtitlan. But all of Moctezuma’s embassies were accompanied by magnificent gifts that only spurred the Spaniards on. By October Cortés insisted on proceeding to Cholula, a sacred city under Aztec domination. Once inside and surrounded, however, he feared an ambush. His Tlaxcalan escort, encamped outside the city, may have warned him of treachery just in time, or may have manipulated him for ulterior motives.13 Whatever the cause, the Spanish troops turned on the Cholulan population and massacred them by the thousands, to the horror of the Mexicans and their ruler. Now more than ever Moctezuma must have loathed the idea of bringing these foreigners into his city, but his attempts to dissuade the Spaniards from continuing seem to have been halfhearted. He may have realized that it would be no easy task to defeat the approaching army on the open field, where it had proven its effectiveness.14 On November 8, 1519, the Spanish captain and the Aztec emperor finally met on one of the causeways leading to Tenochtitlan. The opulence and solemnity of the reception left the conquistadors awestruck and understandably nervous. From the top of the main temple they would later look upon the mountains that nearly surrounded the valley of Mexico, the lakes that encircled the Aztec capital, and the markets, streets, and canals below. They were trapped in the largest and richest city they had ever seen.15 And by now they knew what the Aztecs did with their captives. Up the same stairs they had just climbed victims were brought screaming to priests who stretched them on a stone, cut into their chests with a flint

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Approaching the Conquest knife, and tore out a beating heart as an offering to demoniclooking idols.16 The Christian conquistadors must have thought that they had arrived at “the very capital of Heathendom,” as William Prescott would later call Tenochtitlan (2: 211; bk. 4, ch. 5). Cortés seems to have reacted to his predicament, characteristically, by striking out. He claims that on his sixth day in Tenochtitlan he seized the Aztec emperor in his own capital and held him hostage (Cartas 214–16; letter 2). As a convenient pretext Cortés blamed Moctezuma for ordering an attack on a group of Spaniards near Vera Cruz. Moctezuma denied the charge, and even produced the coastal lords deemed responsible for the ambush, but could not have gained his freedom even if he had managed to prove his innocence.17 The nine or ten coastal lords suffered an ignoble death—probably burned at the stake—so that the foreigners could demonstrate the extent of their power. How much power they actually had at this point and how thoroughly they controlled the actions of Moctezuma are open questions.18 Although Moctezuma carried on as ruler with some degree of liberty, he probably did so in the constant presence of armed Spanish guards. By the spring of 1520, at least, he was a hostage. But his worth as a hostage would always correspond to his power as an emperor. And this power, though at first supreme, was waning as he was seen to submit more and more to humiliating captivity. During that spring, he either warned his captors that his subjects would suffer their presence no longer, or the Spaniards surmised as much on their own. They said that after they had built the necessary ships, they would take their leave; but instead they took their time and waited, as if they had known that help was on the way. Help was in fact on the way, though not in the form Cortés might have hoped. In April, Pánfilo de Narváez landed on the coast with his own army of at least 800 men, 80 horses, 20 cannon, and as many as 1,000 Cuban slaves. He planned to contest the rights to the conquest of Mexico in the name of the governor of Cuba; but not all of his men shared those plans. In fact, some had come along on the expedition only as a means of joining the man they were supposed to be apprehending.19 By the time Cortés took a small force to the coast and surprised Narváez, he had undoubtedly enticed and even bribed a

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Chapter One substantial number of that party. In the ensuing battle between the two captains, Narváez was quickly overwhelmed, losing an eye as well as his command.20 Most of his men crossed over to Cortés. Another force joined Cortés in May of 1520. A smallpox epidemic had been raging in Cuba during the spring and had at least one carrier from the Narváez expedition. Old World parasites, though unnoticed by the Spaniards, had probably already started to spread among the vulnerable native population on the mainland. Soon after this point, germs would overshadow many other forces in the conquest. No matter that Cortés’s allies suffered as much as his enemies. For the eventual imposition of Spanish rule, no war, even with its attendant upheaval of society, would overwhelm the native population more than disease.21 This second invasion, however, was only starting to make itself visible to the Spaniards. Indeed, the conquest seems to have been most in doubt during the months after the Narváez expedition, for back in Tenochtitlan the inhabitants had risen up against the Spanish soldiers garrisoned there under the command of Pedro de Alvarado. The reckless lieutenant had ordered the massacre of hundreds of Aztec nobles who were celebrating the festival of Toxcatl at the main temple. Alvarado claims to have feared an attack, though the dancers he slaughtered were unarmed.22 Cortés led his men on a forced march to the capital and rejoined his troops, who, with Moctezuma and much of his family and attendants, were besieged in the Palace of Axayacatl. This time the Spaniards’ enemies did not send them food. Instead the Aztecs hurled rocks and insults, and set the palace on fire. They vowed that none of the besieged would make it out alive. Most did not. Among the first to die was Moctezuma. Each side would later blame the other for the emperor’s death, but ultimately it was the Spaniards who, even if they did not kill him outright—a possibility—nevertheless put an end to his reign and placed his person in jeopardy by forcing him to submit to the humiliation of imprisonment.23 Even before Moctezuma’s death, the Aztec lords had chosen his brother, Cuitlahuac, as their next ruler, but he soon succumbed to smallpox. Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec emperor, a nephew of

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Approaching the Conquest Moctezuma, would come to power later that year, when he was only about twenty years old. Against overwhelming odds the Spaniards and Tlaxcalans realized that their only hope lay in escape. On June 30 nearly half of them succeeded in crossing over to Tacuba, using a portable bridge over the gaps in the causeway. The rest were killed along the way, drowned after the bridge gave out, or were captured and forced to ascend the stairs of the main temple. Even those who had escaped had to fight their way toward friendly territory, until at Otumba a large Aztec army finally moved in to finish them off. The starved and battered Spaniards had no artillery, no gunpowder, and only 27 horses remaining. Cortés himself was suffering badly from a head wound. Yet when the Spaniards killed the enemy standard bearer and seized his banner, the attack lost its force, and Cortés and his men put the Aztecs to flight. They had saved themselves from annihilation, though many were near collapse by the time they reached Tlaxcala. Not all of Cortés’s army was eager to return to Tenochtitlan, and Cortés prudently allowed his men to nurse their wounds and regain their strength before leading them on a more deliberate and, if possible, more ruthless campaign of revenge. They would start by taking reprisals against those who had attacked two parties of Spaniards between Tlaxcala and the coast; then they would turn on the neighboring towns under Aztec control. Those that surrendered received Cortés’s magnanimous pardon. Those that resisted were attacked and their inhabitants branded on the face as slaves. In his famous second letter to Charles V, Cortés claims to be reconquering a territory that rightfully belongs to Spain. Moctezuma, he says, had recognized Charles as his sovereign.24 Cortés was seeking recognition of his own. Although no word was forthcoming from the Court, fresh arrivals from Spain and the Caribbean swelled his ranks, so that by the time he was ready to lay siege to Tenochtitlan in the spring of the following year, 900 Spaniards were under his command, 86 of them with horses. The number of Tlaxcalans and others who joined in the fight would eventually approach, and perhaps exceed, 100,000.25 The only way to conquer Tenochtitlan was to control the system of lakes that surrounded it. For this purpose Cortés had

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Chapter One ordered the construction of thirteen brigantines, which were carried in sections from Tlaxcala to Lake Texcoco and launched in May. These brigantines proved indispensable for gaining control of the lakes and for guarding the Spanish advance up the causeways. But the Aztecs showed only disdain for these attackers who seemed to think warriors could be starved into submission. Some of the bolder forays into the city led to disaster, and when once again Spanish captives were sacrificed within view of their countrymen, Cortés discovered how tenuous some of his new “alliances” were. The siege would last almost the entire summer. House by house the Spaniards destroyed the magnificent city until they had cornered its defenders among the corpses of their fallen. Finally, probably intending to surrender, Cuauhtemoc set off in a canoe and was captured.26 Tenochtitlan fell on August 13, 1521. News of Cortés’s appointment as governor and captain general of the province would arrive two years later, as an oppressed population was erecting on the ruins of the Aztec capital a new city for New Spain.

2. Accounting for the Account The preceding account will undoubtedly conflict with many readers’ vision of the conquest of Mexico. Those who are acquainted with Mexican history will question several of its assertions and omissions, and even those whose knowledge of the conquest is limited may criticize its presentation. I will attempt to defend some aspects of my brief account, but I am more interested in treating it as a sample narrative, one that introduces the historical background and highlights some of the problems associated with the interpretation and presentation of that background. One criticism of the content of the account is easy to anticipate: it fails to address the internal circumstances of Aztec society, especially the role that legend and prophecy played in the Mesoamerican interpretation of the arrival of the Spaniards. Where, readers will ask, is Quetzalcoatl? Is it not common knowledge that the Aztecs mistook the Spaniards for gods, and that Moctezuma allowed Cortés to proceed inland because his arrival coincided with the prophesied return of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, god of the wind? Although not everyone 28

Approaching the Conquest subscribes to this theory of the Quetzalcoatl-Cortés identification, it is more than a popular notion. Modern historians of such varied approaches as Davíd Carrasco (148–240), Miguel LeónPortilla (“Quetzalcoatl”), José Luis Martínez (Hernán Cortés 38), and Hugh Thomas (180–87) believe that this prophecy did play a key role in the conquest and maintain that Cortés, if not taken to be a god himself, could have in some way been associated with Quetzalcoatl or perhaps some other god.27 As evidence they can cite both Spanish and American Indian sources. Spanish accounts of the conquest, beginning with Cortés’s own Cartas de relación, almost overwhelm the reader with their number and variety. Letters, chronicles, testimonies, as well as full-blown histories corroborate and contradict each other. Eyewitnesses provide first-hand accounts in which they invariably defend their own actions to the Council of Indies, often in perfunctory relaciones de méritos y servicios. On occasion these chroniclers, despite their lack of training as historians, address a wider audience, even if they do not always admit it. Modern historians tend to favor these first-hand accounts, such as Cortés’s letters, because of their value as documents, and regard with suspicion generic histories of the sixteenth century, such as Gómara’s Historia general de las Indias y conquista de México, because their humanistic vision of history is, to put it mildly, out of favor. Both first-hand accounts and second-hand contemporary histories, however, are valuable if we interrogate them as evidence rather than accept or reject them as authorities. For even when their versions of the conquest strike us as implausible, they interpret the event from a sixteenth-century perspective and so help us to understand its significance. Moreover, a sixteenth-century account of the conquest serves as a cultural document that brings us into closer contact with the society that made the conquest possible. Thus, when Cortés says that Moctezuma receives him as the representative of a descendent of a former ruler of the Aztecs, we have to ask not only whether we can believe him, but also why it might behoove him or at least seem reasonable to him to depict his reception in such a manner. What European legends influence his account of Aztec mythology? With Amerindian sources the problem is even more acute. Unlike the Maya, the Mexica and their neighbors did not develop a writing system before contact with the Europeans. They 29

Chapter One had written characters, but these served as mnemonic devices and were completely intelligible only to those who already knew the story they were telling. It is therefore almost impossible to prove that the Quetzalcoatl prophecy belongs to a preconquest tradition.28 Anthony Pagden (Letters 467–69n42), Inga Clendinnen (“‘Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty’” 16, 35–36), James Lockhart (20), Susan Gillespie (173–207), and Ross Hassig (Time, History and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico 58–59) have suspected that the accounts of the prophecy, just like accounts of several omens foretelling the coming of the Spaniards, were invented by the Aztecs after the conquest either to explain the Aztecs’—especially Moctezuma’s—equivocal response to that arrival or to incorporate it into a cyclical view of time. The Annals of Tlatelolco, which carry the date of 1528 but could have been written later, constitute “the first indigenous document written in European script that we have, and [seem] to have escaped Spanish influence, although who did the transcribing remains mysterious” (Clendinnen, Aztecs 278).29 In any case, these Annals are brief in their description of the conquest and almost silent on the first stages (see also LeónPortilla, “Quetzalcoatl”). Other “native” accounts were compiled well after the conquest by Spanish clerics, most prominent of whom were the Franciscans Motolinía (Toribio de Benavente) and Bernardino de Sahagún, and the Dominican Diego Durán. But even Sahagún’s book, which reproduces Aztec drawings and a Nahuatl narrative in Latin script, is, as many have argued, essentially a Spanish project. Other narrative accounts by American Indians or mestizos are equally or more problematic. Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, a descendent of the royal house of Texcoco, passed down a highly prized corrective to the Spanish accounts. But Germán Vázquez has shown that Alva’s perspective is at least partly European, and that he writes for a predominantly European audience (Alva Ixtlilxochitl 31–36). A true visión de los vencidos, as LeónPortilla has labeled the American Indian account of the conquest, eludes us even though we undoubtedly learn a great deal about the perspective of the conquered from the sources we have. Historians may agree in their general interpretation of historical evidence, but still define the same event quite differently 30

Approaching the Conquest because they place it within different temporal boundaries. The preceding “Brief Account of Events” confines the conquest within a short period: from the arrival of the Spaniards on the coast of Mexico to the fall of Tenochtitlan. One could easily make a case for starting elsewhere—for example, with Columbus’s landfall in the Caribbean. Likewise, the conquest did not really end on a particular day. Indeed, for many it continues still.30 By concluding with images of complete triumph and defeat, this narrative gives the conquest a significance that would change considerably if it treated Cortés’s later trials and disillusions, or if it mentioned the long process by which the Spaniards imposed their power. What a history omits and includes and how it sets temporal limits around an event are usually considered questions of content rather than form. Nevertheless, they depend on formal features, the most basic of which is length. Every presentation of historical data must function within its own limits, which are also open to question. (Can any brief summary of the conquest be reliable?) The benefits of keeping a narrative a certain length should at least outweigh the disadvantages. Consequently, readers judge the length of a narrative according to its apparent purpose, just as they also judge the omissions and inclusions according to the quantitative boundaries that a narrative has set for itself. Given the brevity of the summary at hand, readers might still question, for example, the emphasis on Malinali’s role as interpreter and the silence about her role as Cortés’s mistress. Point of view also obviously shapes a narrative’s content. In this case the account could be criticized as Eurocentric, and not just because it uses traditional names for American Indians, such as Aztec, rather than the more accurate “Mexica,” and Moctezuma instead of “Motecuhzoma.”31 When I call the statue of Huitzilopochtli a “demonic-looking idol,” one can understand this description as a conscious attempt to reproduce the views of the conquistadors trapped in Tenochtitlan; but why provide only a European perspective on a Mesoamerican religious figure? Never does the reverse happen, though this is not to say that, as a narrator, I never condemn Europeans. In fact, personal opinions skew events throughout the narrative. Perhaps more unsettling for some readers is the way I focus on Cortés and use the Spanish leader as a narrative thread that 31

Chapter One lends coherence to the account. I can partly justify this perspective by pointing out that the figure of Cortés is in fact the focus of this study, but it is important to recognize that a European perspective also predominates because it remains the one to which we have the most direct access. By not confronting or revealing the situated nature of my own narrative, I can at least make an attempt to project authoritative objectivity, in spite of the opinions just mentioned. This authoritative tone stems primarily from the air of certainty about uncertain events (e.g., the assertion that Cortés wrote or dictated the first letter). Here I take scholarly discussion out of the narrative and relegate it to a secondary position in the notes. Even this parallel text does not document every assertion and touches only briefly on the debates that revolve around important issues, such as the Cholula massacre. In short, the summary itself does not treat history as a problem. Instead it skirts such issues with the use of qualifiers (“may have,” “must have,” “probably”) and presents an uninterrupted series of events that provides the illusion of re-creating the events themselves, as if they existed in the form of a story to be uncovered. Certainly, narrative is not the only way to bring people into contact with the past. A mural; a series of maps, tables, and graphs; or a set of photographs of ruins and artifacts would together or separately help inform those who are not familiar with the events that we usually call the conquest of Mexico. Written records, likewise, can take the form of an essay or chronology of the conquest, perhaps interspersed with other “key events” of the time. Such a chronology may contain miniature narratives (“narremes,” to use Hayden White’s term [The Content of the Form 14]), but it still lacks a larger narrative structure: 1517

February. Francisco Hernández de Córdoba leaves Cuba on the expedition that would discover the Yucatan, Campeche, and Champoton. September. Charles of Ghent arrives in Castile to take up the Spanish inheritance.

But can any of these non-narrative modes of representation help us comprehend the past as well as narrative can? For W. H. Dray, “[t]he configurations brought into view in histori-

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Approaching the Conquest cal narratives are often such that it takes a narrative adequately to characterize them” (177). In other words, only narrative can capture, which in this case is to say reflect, the forms of lived experience. Dray does, then, view the past as an aggregation of stories to be discovered; he maintains that one cannot, or at least should not, separate facts from form, and that “the form, the configuration, is itself the most important fact that historians discover” (177). For other theorists of historical narrative, such as Hayden White, historians do not “discover” this configuration, but rather impose it on the past: “events are made into a story by the suppression or subordination of certain [story elements] and the highlighting of others, by characterization, motific repetition, variation of tone and point of view, alternative descriptive strategies, and the like—in short, all the techniques that we would normally expect to find in the emplotment of a novel or a play” (Tropics 84). White considers history to be essentially an art, at least insofar as it always represents events figuratively, as “symbolic structures” or “extended metaphors, that ‘liken’ the events reported in them to some form with which we have already become familiar in our literary culture” (Tropics 91). This dependence on figurative language is, according to White, unavoidable in historiography because history as a field has no metalanguage the way “hard” sciences do. That is, historians must use ordinary speech, which is inevitably ambiguous, and can only render “the strange familiar” and “the mysterious past comprehensible” with the techniques of figurative language (Tropics 94). White even goes so far as to specify the “dominant tropological strategies” that endow past events with meaning. They are the four dominant tropes: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, which he postulates as the basis for specific aesthetic, epistemological, and ethical types of historical explanation (70–72). One need not entirely accept what Dominick LaCapra calls White’s “generative structuralism,” which presents “one level of discourse (‘the tropical’) as determinative in the last instance” (34), in order to gain from White’s early theories a better understanding of the extent to which historical description already entails historical interpretation.32 White does not advocate abandoning historical narrative merely because it contains a fictive element. Far from it;

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Chapter One instead he maintains that by understanding historiography’s literary basis, we can better see where it derives its objective appearance or general force. One conclusion that we might draw from White’s critique is that an analysis of the literary elements of historiography need not concern itself with historical veracity. Indeed, it may seem advantageous to bracket off such concerns, for the ideological force of a narrative does not depend on its being “true,” and any preoccupation with its “truthfulness,” apart from being simplistic, would seem to miss the point. If historiographic narratives benefit from the same sort of analysis that illuminates other types of narratives, it is because on one level they function as other narratives do, independent of their relation to historical reality. And on this level I carry out much of my analysis of sixteenth-century historiography, maintaining a critical distance from the kind of engaged reading that concerns itself with an account’s veracity. But to a great extent this critical distance is illusory, for two reasons. First, no matter how much we might avoid making assertions about an account’s relation to “the truth,” the account itself certainly does make such assertions and derives much of its ideological force from them. Just as any critical reading of the sixteenth-century books of chivalry should recognize, at least implicitly, that these books made a claim to truth that was far from serious and quickly belied (for most readers) by a lack of verisimilitude, any critical reading of sixteenth-century histories of the conquest should recognize that these texts made serious claims to truth that gained or lost force from a host of factors, including their degree of verisimilitude. And second, we cannot meaningfully analyze historical narratives without constructing our own historical narrative. For although we can gain a critical distance from historiography, this distance does not free us from the need to refer to history itself, that is, to rest our assumptions on and contextualize our analysis with some notion of “what happened.” And although that referent—history—is not itself a narrative, it is only accessible to us, as Fredric Jameson maintains, “in textual form” (35). We write about events and about accounts of events because we feel that we know enough about them to consider them important. To approach the historiography of the conquest

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Approaching the Conquest with complete impartiality would make no sense. For these writings to mean anything at all to us, we must approach them with preconceptions, even with a little bit of enthusiasm and preferably with a healthy dose of outrage: studium et ira, precisely the emotions that Tacitus claims to be free of (Annals 1.1). The brief account of events at the beginning of this chapter should make evident some of the preconceptions that I bring to this study in New World historiography. I do not consider the Spaniards who invaded Mexico in 1519 to have been heroic, in spite of their courage and resourcefulness, and in spite of the attention I pay in these pages to their heroic stature, especially that of Cortés. The seductive nature of his version of events strikes me as more alarming and more important precisely because he and his men destroyed or enslaved those who opposed them and many who did not. The conquistadors prevailed because they had horses, attack dogs, brigantines to gain control of the lakes of the central valley, larger ships that brought them reinforcements, superior weaponry, and the aid of the Aztecs’ enemies; because they waged total war against peoples who often tried to take live captives for sacrifice; and, finally, because they brought smallpox to Mesoamerica. It should hardly need saying that there is nothing to celebrate about this or any other conquest. Likewise, I hope that it is clear that the historical causes that I have just mentioned are not my conclusions but rather my starting point. They provide some of the context for an analysis of another set of causes of the conquest, a set of ideological causes that are partially reflected in sixteenth-century narratives. I may revise my view of this context, but I cannot carry out a meaningful analysis of these narratives without it.

3. Rhetoric and Renaissance Historiography “History,” says R. G. Collingwood, “is a special kind of science, whose business is to study events not accessible to our observation, and to study these events inferentially, arguing to them from something else which is accessible to our observation, and which the historian calls ‘evidence’ for the events in which he is interested” (251–52). This special kind of science, however, has no rules of argumentation. We approach the past

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Chapter One through evidence, but evidence, as Collingwood stresses, is anything that helps us answer our questions about the past (280–81). Historians cannot prove conclusions by making them logically obligatory in the way that exact sciences can. Instead, “in sciences of observation and experiment” the statement that the premises prove a conclusion “means only that they justify it, that is, authorize anyone to think it who wishes to do so.” To prove here means simply to gain approval (Collingwood 255). Historians cannot demonstrate their conclusions with formal proofs, because, as Chaim Perelman observes, formally correct demonstration requires axioms that are not topics of debate and a system of signs that is free from ambiguity (9). The premises from which historians argue, in contrast, are not agreed-upon axioms, but rather theses that—however reasonable they may seem to the audience addressed—are themselves subject to question. Likewise the language that historians use, as White has emphasized, is the ambiguous language of ordinary speech, and no matter how specialized it becomes, it remains what Perelman calls the “natural language” of argumentation, which contains “ambiguities that cannot be worked out in advance” (9). To say that history as a discipline cannot escape argumentative discourse is merely to acknowledge, again in the terminology of Perelman, that history belongs to the realm of rhetoric. Such a classification is hardly limiting. Scholars have increasingly recognized the importance of rhetorical strategies for disciplines that traditionally seemed to have no use for rhetorical analysis. Even mathematics and the physical sciences have benefited from a new attention to the discursive practices at work within their supposedly objective methods of persuasion. 33 Indeed, in light of the expanded scope of recent rhetorical analysis, Paolo Valesio’s assertion that rhetoric encompasses all discourse no longer sounds as controversial as it no doubt did in 1980 when he made it: Rhetoric is the functional organization of all discourse, within its social and cultural context, in all its aspects, exception made for its realization as a strictly formal metalanguage—in formal logic, mathematics, and in the sciences whose metalanguages share the same features. In other words: rhetoric is all of language, in its realization as discourse. For, to exclude strictly formalized metalanguages from the domain of rhetoric (and even this tentatively—

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Approaching the Conquest until one investigates the possible rhetorical elements in those metalanguages) is to discard something that is not, properly speaking, language; the catholicity of rhetoric, that ranges over the whole of linguistic structure, is thus confirmed rather than weakened. (7)

Modern historical discourse, no matter how persistent its scientific pretensions may sometimes be, cannot escape the vast realm of rhetoric.34 Of course not all historians attempt to make such an escape, but the modern suspicion of the self-consciously rhetorical historiography of the Renaissance is understandable when one compares modern notions of historical truth with that of classical and Renaissance historians. The narratives of Thucydides, Sallust, and Livy, as well as those of Bruni, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini, are usually considered to be more literary than those of modern scholarly historians, which is often another way of saying that they are less accurate. It is hardly surprising, then, that even a scholar of classical historiography such as A. J. Woodman, who is quick to place into question accepted ideas of historical validity, asserts that classical historiography “is primarily a rhetorical genre and is to be classified (in modern terms) as literature rather than history” (197). Cicero provides much of the theoretical framework for this rhetorical view of historiography. No historian himself, he nonetheless says that Atticus encourages him to write history and bring his oratorical skill to the art: “potes autem tu profecto satis facere in ea, quippe cum sit opus, ut tibi quidem uideri solet, unum hoc oratorium maxime” (De legibus 1.5; “You will of course do justice to the genre, since it’s a task which is singularly well suited to an orator—or so it has always seemed to you at least”; qtd. and trans. in Woodman 98). For Cicero this rhetorical nature of history includes “the narrative of ‘what might or could have happened’” (Woodman 199). In other words the very content of classical historical discourse does not require the same “scientific” verification to which modern historiography aspires. Whether or not we then describe it as fictitious depends on our definition of historical truth. Tacitus’s contemporaries might not have accepted his Annals as historically valid if the work had lacked the appropriate descriptions, even in cases where the details needed to be supplied by the imagination of the historian: “Given that he had some hard core information 37

Chapter One about Germanicus’ visit to the forest (and he need have had no more than that provided by Suetonius’ single sentence), he was merely required to elaborate it in a manner which was plausible and true to life” (Woodman 178). One might be tempted to distinguish between modern and classical historians by saying that, whereas modern historians attempt to substantiate their assertions about past events in part by clearly separating knowledge from conjecture, classical historians feel compelled to make sense of the past by filling in gaps in our knowledge with verisimilar conjecture. But it might be better to consider classical and modern historians to be operating along a continuum. Certainly, Tacitus makes conjectures and labels them as such.35 Nevertheless, to lend validity to his historical narrative, he cannot skip over key moments. He must, in other words, find something to say about them even when he has little to go on. The discovery of subject matter is known in rhetorical terms as inventio. A speaker must first of all find something to talk about, as Crassus says in Cicero’s De oratore: “deberet reperire primum quid diceret” (1.142). This subject matter must be both believable and favorable to the speaker: “Invention is the devising of things true or true to life that render your case believable” (“Inventio est excogitatio rerum aut veri similium quae causam probabilem reddant”; Cicero, Rhetorici libri duo qui vocantur de inventione 1.7). The term inventio is neutral with regard to the factual or fictious nature of what is discovered or “thought up” (excogitatum). The material obeys only the rules of poetic truth as expressed in chapter 9 of Aristotle’s Poetics insofar as it reflects “what could have been,” though it differs from poetry because presumably it does not reflect “what should have been.” Even in this respect, however, history vies with poetry as a guide to universal principles. In the prologue to his history of Ferdinand of Aragon (written 1445–46), Lorenzo Valla defends the wide application of history’s specific examples, and then, after quoting Cicero’s famous praise of history as “magistra vitae,” poses a question that strikes at the heart of the problem of how to define historical truth for the Renaissance historian: “An est quisquam qui credat admirabiles illas in historiis orationes utique veras fuisse, et non ab eloquenti, ac sapienti opifice personis, temporibus, re-

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Approaching the Conquest bus accommodatas? quibus nos eloqui et sapere docerent?” (“Or is there anyone who believes that those wonderful speeches in the histories were in any case true, and not adapted by an eloquent and wise artist to fit the characters, times, and circumstances, so that they might teach us to be eloquent and wise ourselves?”; 19–20). Valla does not suppose that the historians intended to deceive their readers with their extrapolated speeches, but rather that these extrapolations served another purpose. For Valla, making the past comprehensible also entails making it meaningful as a model. The humanistic historiography of the Renaissance conceives of inventio along much the same lines as does classical historiography, especially with regard to set speeches. Such speeches inserted into historical narrative are often rhetorical masterpieces, even if today they may strike us as incongruous. In Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda’s Latin account of the conquest of Mexico, for example, Moctezuma speaks as though he had been schooled in classical oratory. But if these speeches do not correspond to what historical figures actually said, they do not for that reason represent a naive approach to history. The opposite may be true. Nancy Struever has shown how rhetorical historiography assumes that we confront the past as already mediated in symbols or language (93), and that, for the humanists, the only tool with which to arrive at and communicate “reality” is artifice (88, 99). López de Gómara, in his capacity as Cortés’s secretary, may have confronted the conquest in the very person of the conqueror, but such contact changes rather than negates the mediation. Further, not all historical narratives are created equal, according to Spain’s most celebrated humanist of the sixteenth century, Juan Luis Vives. For Vives, only historical narratives that treat laws or religious writings “must preserve with the utmost precision the whole truth in its simplest form” (“exactissime servanda est veritas integra, et simplex”). Other historical narratives need only preserve the “essence of the truth” (“satis est servari summam integram”), and to these narratives “are added instructive and entertaining words, judgments and speeches” (“adduntur, quae doceant, quaeque facile detineant, verba, sententiae, orationes”; 205). The “essence of the truth” does not rely on any word-for-word correspondence. Instead it allows the historian the freedom to make

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Chapter One history meaningful and enlightening through speeches and interpretation. Sebastián Fox Morcillo, who like Vives wrote treatises on both rhetoric and history, insists on the decorum of reported speeches. Each speaker requires a treatment that corresponds to his or her station and circumstances. Again there is no reference to word-for-word correspondence. Rather Fox Morcillo offers a set of accepted precepts that could draw on contemporary humanistic models as well as on models from Greek and Roman historians: cum locus fieri postulet, ita dicenda sunt, ut decorum personae loquentis maxime observetur. Nam si milites ad virtutem hortantis oratio ducis interponatur: ea prudens, grauis, animosaque esse debet, si dehortantis timida, pericula proponens, animos adimens: si quid in consilium referatur, prudenter id grauiterque dicendum est: omnino autem mores, ingenium, naturamque illius qui habeat orationem, perspicere, similemque illi sermonem tribuere decet, ut personae sermo congruat: aliter enim gregarius miles, aliter dux, aliter hostis loquitur: ergo aliis humilis tribuatur oratio, aliis grauis et prudens ac imperiosa, aliis superba, irarum aliis minarumque plena. (60v–61)36 (When the occasion demands it, [these] things must be said so as to preserve as much as possible the decorum of the person who speaks. For example, if one is going to insert a speech by a general urging his troops to bravery, it should be prudent, weighty, and spirited; if he is holding them back, it should hold back as well, setting out the dangers and stealing away some of their spirit. If a topic is to be discussed in council, it should be done so with prudence and gravity. In general decorum requires that you look closely at the habits, temperament, and character of the one who gives the address and that you assign him a similar way of speaking, so that the speaking style corresponds to the person; for a common soldier talks one way, a general another, and an enemy yet another. Some should be assigned a plain speech; others one that is weighty, prudent, and imperious; others one that is arrogant; and yet others one that is full of rage and threats.)

The idea of assigning styles to historical personages might strike the modern reader as a suspicious extrapolation, and Fox

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Approaching the Conquest Morcillo’s advice to historians seems as much in the tradition of Horace’s “Ars poetica” and Lope de Vega’s “El arte nuevo de hacer comedias” as in that of the artes historicae. Decorum, what should happen, seems to conflict with historical truth, what did happen. For not only do people say and do things that no historian can ever know, they also speak and behave in a surprising fashion. Fact is stranger than fiction, as we are fond of saying. How does the humanist’s self-consciously artistic rendering of the past take into account the inscrutable actions of history? This question takes on a particular relevance for the New-World narratives, which have to contend with new creatures, landscapes, peoples, and customs: a seemingly unprecedented lack of decorum. The humanists, especially the vast majority of them who never crossed the Atlantic, cannot help but render the strange familiar by incorporating it into their notions of what is acceptable, or at least comprehensible. But Renaissance aesthetics also has a place, indeed a commonplace, for the uncommon. The “marvelous” is a recurring theme not only in poetry but also in travel writing, and so, inevitably, in the supposedly nonfictional genre of the New-World chronicle. In his reading of Columbus, Stephen Greenblatt shows how the explorer presents the marvelous elements of his narrative as a rhetorical proof of his travels. Thus the more unbelievable points of his reports might, ironically, make his reports more believable. Perhaps more important, these marvels must stand in for the material riches that Columbus promises but cannot produce (Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions 52–85).37 A notion of decorum that allows Renaissance historians to incorporate into their narratives incredible marvels and extrapolated speeches might seem permissive. But, to return to the expectations of Fox Morcillo, equally impressive are the limits of decorous discourse. Not only do speakers need to follow accepted roles; historians must maintain an “evenness” (aequabilitas) that is consistent with the dignity of history (22). Fox Morcillo criticizes a recent history written in Spanish about the deeds of the Spaniards in Mexico. The unnamed Spanish historian uses “unsuitably vulgar words” (23v) and digresses in his narration to describe a message scrawled in charcoal on the wall of a cell by a “common soldier” who was held captive and was awaiting sacrifice. For Fox Morcillo such detours are

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Chapter One wholly inappropriate to the lofty theme of conquest (21–22v). They are also detours in which several historians of the conquest of Mexico indulge, and it was probably López de Gómara who in this instance failed to impress the demanding rhetorician.38 As was customary among his humanist contemporaries, Fox Morcillo views historical discourse within a framework that is primarily rhetorical, and his veiled critique of López de Gómara goes beyond the question of subject matter to include the rhetorical categories of arrangement and style. Classical rhetoric, traditionally concerned with the art of public speaking, divides the components of a good speech into five parts: (1) inventio, finding material to talk about; (2) dispositio, arranging this material; (3) elocutio, expressing it well; (4) memoria, memorizing it; and (5) pronuntiatio, delivering it effectively. History, like any other form of argumentative discourse, is composed of the first three of these elements, as sixteenth-century theorists of history and rhetoric realized. Fox Morcillo uses rhetorical terminology in his discussion of historical discourse when he emphasizes that the arrangement (“dispositio”) must fit the subject matter that one has found (“inventioni” [27]). Further, he draws parallels between the organization of a historical narrative and that of an oration, although he insists that the introduction (“exordium”) to a history should not serve to gain the audience’s favor the way it does in a rhetor’s speech (46–48v), but rather to convince the audience of the historian’s impartiality. Fox Morcillo’s preoccupation with impartiality as the foundation of historical discourse (22v, 23, 83) nonetheless forms one type of appeal to the reader, for it attempts to establish the reliability of the historian’s character (ethos), especially with regard to the specific expectations of readers of history. Aristotle grants as much importance to the character of the speaker as he does to the speaker’s appeals to the emotions of the audience (pathos) and to the use of argument itself (logos). Persuasion through character occurs “whenever the speech is spoken in such a way as to make the speaker worthy of credence; for we believe fair-minded people to a greater extent and more quickly [than we do others] on all subjects in general and completely so in cases where there is no exact knowledge but room for doubt . . . character is almost, so to speak, the con42

Approaching the Conquest trolling factor in persuasion” (Aristotle 38; 1356a). Aristotle implicitly recognizes in this circular reasoning that we define “fair-minded people” as those who can persuade us that they are reliable. Any pretense of objectivity, moreover, affects the historian’s prose style, as Cicero acknowledges when he has Antonius discuss style as part of the superstructure that accompanies history’s foundation of truthfulness and impartiality: “Verborum autem ratio et genus orationis fusum atque tractum, et cum lenitate quadam aequabili profluens, sine hac iudicali asperitate, et sine sententiarum forensium aculeis persequendum est” (“The nature of the style, however, and the type of discourse to which (historians) should aspire are easy-flowing and drawn out. The words should glide along with an even smoothness and without the advocate’s cutting edge or the sting of public debate”; De oratore 2.64). Antonius sets up an opposition between smooth and rough, even and uneven, fluid and dry, pleasant and harsh. In contrast to the acerbic style of a committed or compromised speaker, he sees the even smoothness of the historian’s prose as parallel to, if not part of, the historian’s even-handed treatment of the subject matter. Historical discourse is related to rhetoric not only because it contains several rhetorical elements within it, but also because it is itself contained within the traditional arrangement of an argument, which in classical oratory consists of: exordium (introduction), narratio (statement of facts), confirmatio (proof), refutatio (refutation) and peroratio (conclusion). The statement of facts is in itself a history, though sometimes a very short one. My own brief account of events, for example, could function as my narratio, even though I do not follow the traditional arrangement of classical rhetoric in the rest of my argument. On a larger scale, Gómara’s Historia general de las Indias and his Historia de la conquista de México could be used to “show” how the Spaniards were able to conquer part of the New World in a Christian manner and could therefore bolster Sepúlveda’s defense of the wars of conquest as acceptable means for spreading the faith. This is certainly not to say that Gómara wrote his history as a narratio in the service of Sepúlveda’s argument. Nevertheless, in order to place Gómara in his mid-sixteenthcentury context, one must consider how he fits into the Valladolid debate and how his entire history of the conquest 43

Chapter One could be read as the narratio or statement of facts for a larger argument. A rhetorical analysis of historiography can operate on at least two basic levels. On the more general level, it can consider the overall persuasiveness of a given historical narrative, which functions as argumentative discourse in its own right (whether or not it is consciously conceived as such) and is contained within larger rhetorical arguments, that is, as a narratio within a concrete or implied discourse (such as a defense or critique of the society it describes). On another level, a rhetorical analysis can examine the instances of persuasion contained within a historical narrative, for example, in the form of set speeches. Even when historians do not “quote” the characters of their histories, they often describe the rhetorical strategies of those characters. In either case one can analyze the tension between the overall, controlling rhetorical strategy of the narrative itself and the reconstructed or fictional rhetorical strategies depicted within that narrative. The humanistic historiography of the conquest contains this interior tension, because it defends the conquest as a crusade in the name of a divine truth but also reveals the various guises that this “truth” requires in order to gain acceptance in the New World. The different forms that the truth must take, along with the competing voices within each narrative, make more explicit the rhetorical or situated quality of the narrative itself. And yet, far from detracting from the “truth appeal” of these histories, this emphasis on rhetoric adds more psychological drama to the conquest and offers the European readers a privileged position from which they can see through one person’s (usually Cortés’s) manipulation of others. Such a vantage point plays a role in constructing the moral as well as the intellectual hierarchies of imperialism, because it links the capacity to disclose the controlling power of words with the illusion of not being controlled by that power. To see the “truth” on these terms one would have to see how others fail to see it. The sense of righteousness that often accompanies the impression that one knows the truth would, again on these terms, entail a sense of rhetorical superiority.

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Chapter Two

The Means and Ends of Empire in Hernán Cortés’s Cartas de relación

Hernán Cortés claims to have been completely at ease (“en toda quietud y sosiego” [Cartas 248; letter 2]) in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan during the spring of 1520.1 He is holding the Aztec emperor Moctezuma captive, he has sent various expeditions out of the Valley of Mexico in search of gold, and he is awaiting word from Spain in response to his request that the king appoint him commander of the Spanish forces in the vast territory he now claims to have conquered. But the conquest is far from over, as Cortés well knows the following autumn when he describes these events. Instead of an answer from the king, he receives news that Pánfilo de Narváez has landed on the coast with his own army, and that he is contesting the rights to the conquest of Mexico in the name of the governor of Cuba. Cortés makes sure to specify in his Segunda relación that, from the moment he establishes contact with the forces under Narváez, he asks the commander to show him his written orders from the Crown, and that Narváez can produce no such orders (254–55). This same letter also maintains that, once Narváez is defeated and discredited, his followers say that they have been “deceived” because Narváez has led them to believe that he was carrying orders from the king (265). Most of these men proceed to join forces with Cortés. But what about Cortés? Where are his written orders? Although he cannot produce any either, since he is still awaiting the king’s decree and letters patent (cédula y provisión real), this lack of royal papers does not mean that he has no written authority. In a real sense Cortés writes his own authorization with his letters to Charles V. These five Cartas de relación attempt to justify and authorize Cortés’s actions. In order to

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Chapter Two succeed, they must also authorize themselves as the official version of the conquest. The manner in which Cortés succeeds with his Cartas de relación in writing his own authorization for his break with the governor of Cuba, for his expedition inland, and for his manner of proceeding in the conquest has understandably attracted the attention of several recent studies, which demonstrate how Cortés takes advantage of his familiarity with Spanish law and omits or distorts the facts in order to make his expedition inland appear to be legal,2 and show how he makes use of various rhetorical devices and emplots his own conquest in order to suit his interests at Court.3 Here I attempt to build on these studies as I explore the link between Cortés’s political logic of principles, means, and ends on the one hand, and the narrative logic of beginnings, middles, and ends on the other. The narrative coherence that gives shape to Cortés’s political justification of the conquest relies, in my opinion, on a complete fusion of narrator and protagonist in the Cartas de relación. For Cortés does not separate the act of writing from the acts of discovering and conquering; rather he depicts them all as essential elements in his service to God, king, and country, and ultimately to a stable notion of truth. Maintaining the stability of this notion of truth, however, emerges as one of Cortés’s greatest textual challenges, because he “serves” it in so many ways. Inconsistencies between his ends and his means threaten to undermine the ideological justification of the conquest, and he can hold the political and narrative logic together in his writings only to the extent that he can redefine what service to the truth means at the expanding limits of empire.

1. Cortés and Machiavelli Cortés’s rhetorical skill as a letter writer has so thoroughly shaped his reported rhetorical skill as a conqueror that when Ramón Iglesia speaks of Cortés’s “politics of attraction” (28– 31), or when Manuel Giménez Fernández admires his “pluralism” (2), or when Stephen Greenblatt says that “his military strategy relied as much on rhetoric as on force” (Marvelous Possessions 143), one does not always know if these readers are describing the historical figure or the image that the histori-

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The Means and Ends of Empire cal figure largely created for himself. Tzvetan Todorov acknowledges and, ambitiously and self-reflectively, embraces this confusion of the history and historiography of the conquest. He justifies his treatment of documents by stating that the questions he is addressing “refer less to a knowledge of the truth than to a knowledge of verisimilitude” (54): an event may not have occurred, despite the allegations of one of the chroniclers. But the fact that the latter could have stated such an event, that he could have counted on its acceptance by the contemporary public, is at least as revealing as the simple occurrence of an event which proceeds, after all, from chance. In a way, the reception of the statements is more revealing for the history of ideologies than their production; and when an author is mistaken, or lying, his text is no less significant than when he is speaking the truth; the important thing is that the text be “receivable” by contemporaries, or that it has been regarded as such by its producer. From this point of view, the notion of “false” is irrelevant here. (54)

From this disclaimer it appears that Todorov is focusing on the historiography of the conquest rather than on the conquest itself. As he reconstructs two different forms of “symbolization,” he bases this reconstruction on what he himself proves to be exclusively European and European-influenced documents (226–37). Yet when he speaks of “a certain incapacity of the Aztecs to dissimulate the truth” (89), or when he maintains that “by his mastery of signs Cortés ensures his control over the ancient Mexican empire” (119), Todorov draws important conclusions about the conquest as an illustrative encounter; he is writing his own exemplary history in order to understand better the discovery that the self makes of the other (3) and how this discovery can become less tragic (254). Although Todorov explains Cortés’s duplicity by locating it within a “technology of symbolism” that is more “advanced” than that of the Aztecs (160, 252), he is “not eulogizing the conquistadors by acknowledging their occasional superiority; it is necessary to analyze the weapons of the conquest if we ever want to be able to stop it” (254). The semiotic weapons of the conquest that Todorov analyzes, however, are still not necessarily the weapons

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Chapter Two actually used, but rather the weapons that sixteenth-century Europeans could conceive of using. The Cortés Todorov describes is likewise a composite of European and European-influenced accounts of the conquest. As such he is illuminating for a history of ideologies, but for a twentieth- and twenty-first-century audience he is less convincing as a representation of the “real Cortés,” because Todorov does not base his own history of the conquest on premises that modern historians either already accept or could be persuaded to accept. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that any image we have of Cortés must be a historical construct; but if we are attempting to draw lessons from an exemplary history, those lessons will be different if the construct is not our own. The “weapons of conquest” that Todorov analyzes are probably not the weapons used against the “other,” but rather those that the self requires in order to make sense of and gain acceptance for its own imperialism. They are the weapons of an interior conquest, in which a society convinces itself that it has the right to impose its will on others. I believe that Todorov’s study is especially useful if we read it as an analysis of this interior conquest. Todorov’s Cortés has stirred controversy in part because he bears a resemblance to Cortés’s own depiction of himself. Whether or not one feels that Todorov has perpetuated Cortés’s own myth-making will depend on whether one takes The Conquest of America as primarily a contribution to the history of ideologies or as an exemplary history in its own right. In either case, Todorov demonstrates how completely Cortés’s selfmythification succeeded during the sixteenth century and beyond.4 Several critics who have analyzed this self-mythification show how Cortés characterizes himself as an infallible military leader and as a politician who persuades and seduces Indians and Spaniards alike (Pastor 135; Díaz Balsera 223–226; Merrim, “Ariadne’s Thread” 73, 78; Kruger-Hickman 68–69, 101). Within the fiction of his letters, at least, Cortés prefers persuasion to violence. But what type of persuasion? For Beatriz Pastor, Cortés represents himself as something of a plain speaker, a mere medium for a “truth” that triumphs on its own (136). According to this reading, Cortés wins obedience by obeying. Since he always claims to serve the king and the

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The Means and Ends of Empire will of a Christian god, his own initiative plays no role: “El personaje no elige, sino que es eligido por Dios para la empresa, y se limita a ejecutar no sus propios proyectos sino la voluntad divina” (Pastor 144). But, as Jonathan Loesberg observes, the very framing of this project requires initiative, because, divine or not, the project does not always proceed smoothly (246–47). If Cortés did not take control of events on a narrative level, then, especially in the case of the Segunda relación, which he writes after suffering a great defeat, the king would see how precarious this “divine project” is. In short, Cortés’s masterful telling of the story contradicts what some see to be his obedient role in that story. One way in which Cortés could avoid this contradiction is by presenting his narrating voice as a separate entity from the protagonist of his letters. If he split himself in this manner, on one level Cortés the narrator could remain in full control and thus assure the king that his conquest is in good hands, while on another level Cortés the protagonist would merely embody the institutional power of the Crown and thereby not appear to threaten the king’s power.5 Yet, as others have noted, Cortés does not hide all of his artifice, either as a protagonist or as a narrator.6 In her study of the second letter, Viviana Díaz Balsera demonstrates that Cortés takes this show of artifice to a metatextual level in the way he supports his claims to persuasiveness in his speeches to his men by displaying that same persuasiveness in his account of those speeches. Instead of hiding the rhetorical tour de force of his letters, he can flaunt it in order to “prove” that his oratory is as artful as he says it is (223–24). This display of rhetorical skill is, in my opinion, central to Cortés’s narrative strategy throughout the Cartas de relación, because in these accounts he relates his evident artfulness to his supposed truthfulness. When Stephanie Merrim refers to the way froda (“cunning”) prevails over forza (“force”) in the Cartas de relación, she alludes to a commonplace characterization of Cortés as Machiavellian, a characterization that Pastor (125–26) and Checa (198–202) have explored in depth. Summarizing Arnold Hauser, Pastor says: “El mérito fundamental de Maquiavelo fue su capacidad de formular de forma coherente y sistemática una filosofía que partía de la separación entre política y principios

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Chapter Two cristianos, y que constituía la base del realismo político del Renacimiento” (125).7 Although Cortés could not have used Machiavelli’s prince as a model, the conquistador’s famous duplicity nevertheless recalls Machiavelli’s famous precept: “è necessario . . . essere gran simulatore e dissimulatore” (“it is necessary . . . to be a great fraud and hypocrite” [73; ch. 18]). To the extent that Cortés flaunts his deception in his letters, we can trace this parallel between him and Machiavelli’s prince back to his own Cartas de relación. But for Cortés to characterize himself in Machiavellian terms, he would also have to show how he “looks to the end” with the knowledge that any judgment of his methods (or means: mezzi) will depend on the outcome of his endeavor: nelle azioni di tutti li uomini, e massime de’ principi, dove non è iudizio da reclamare, si guarda il fine. Facci dunque uno principe di vincere e mantenere lo stato: e’ mezzi saranno sempre iudicati onorevoli e da ciascuno laudati. (Machiavelli, Il principe 74; ch. 18) (In the actions of all men, and especially of princes who are not subject to a court of appeal, we must always look to the end. Let a prince, therefore, win victories and uphold his state; his methods will always be considered worthy, and everyone will praise them. [Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Adams 51])

This divergence of ends and means leads to the political realism that Hauser mentions, according to which a prince often acts against his word and even against his religion (Machiavelli, Il principe 74; ch. 18). Here, however, at least within the operative fiction of the Cartas de relación, Cortés parts company with the prince.8 The conquistador cannot afford to characterize himself as separating politics from Christian principles, because much of what gives strength and meaning to Spain’s imperial designs on the New World is a deeply felt sense of Christian mission that conceives of the conquest as a crusade in the name of the divine truth.9 If, however, Cortés’s letters flaunt their artifice and characterize the conquistador as a “great fraud and hypocrite,” what truth do they serve? The ideal of a fixed truth may satisfy the religious grounding of the conquest, but the day-to-day actions 50

The Means and Ends of Empire of discovering the New World’s secrets, destroying “false” beliefs and replacing them with “true” ones, and of communicating these discoveries and accomplishments back to Europe require a more adaptable approach. The “truth” according to the Cartas de relación prevails only because its form is not fixed, but rather tailored to the circumstances of each utterance. Cortés may claim to defend the truth in his letters, but he also acknowledges the rhetorical nature of that defense.

2. Cortés’s Written Authority: Fabricating Truth To establish his authority in his letters to the emperor, Cortés must first authorize the letters themselves by proving their reliability. One possible tactic is to appeal to his privileged position as an eyewitness to the majority of events he describes, which is what Bernal Díaz del Castillo does: “digo y afirmo que lo que en este libro se contiene es muy verdadero, que como testigo de vista me hallé en todas las batallas y reencuentros de guerra” (1: 65; prol.). Many modern critics also consider the authority of the eyewitness to be one of Cortés’s central claims to reliability (e.g., Loesberg 246; Pastor 97; Kruger-Hickman 54). But even when Cortés mentions the need to see places and events firsthand, he is often quick to stress the problematic nature of his eyewitness account. First, he recognizes the unbelievable nature of the wonders of the New World, which are difficult enough to accept for those who see them with their own eyes (“los que acá con nuestros propios ojos las vemos, no las podemos con el entendimiento comprender” [232; letter 2]) and even more incredible for the chronicler’s audience (“era cosa maravillosa de ver, y así me paresce que es de oír” [338; letter 3]). As if to confirm Cortés’s fears, nearly a century later Covarrubias will declare that the “Corónicas de las Indias” are in danger of being labeled “fábulas”: “mirad quántas cosas ay en su descubrimiento y en su conquista, que exceden a quanto han imaginado las plumas de los vanos mentirosos que han escrito libros de cavallerías” (580). Beyond the problem of the fabulous places and deeds, Cortés also confronts the dangers of the language used to describe them. For him, much of the New World’s grandeur will be impossible to describe, especially the temples, houses (237,

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Chapter Two 244; letter 2), and treasures of Tenochtitlan: “Entre el despojo que se hobo en [Tenochtitlan] hobimos muchas rodelas de oro y penachos y plumajes, y cosas tan maravillosas que por escrito no se pueden significar ni se pueden comprehender si no son vistas” (429; letter 3). This denial of the transparent nature of language is more than a modest disclaimer to ask for the reader’s indulgence, and more than the hyperbole of the traditional “inexpressibility topos” (Curtius 159–60). Here his insistence on the inexpressibility of the Aztec grandeur hints at how language could misrepresent, despite the best efforts of the writer. Cortés claims to guard the truth by guarding his tongue, or rather his pen. This is the simplest example of how the idea of “truth” in the Cartas de relación depends on a judicious handling of language. Cortés’s extreme caution when mediating between the New World and the Old does not disappear or diminish with time. On the contrary, as Pastor notes (147–48), it grows steadily until the abilities of the writer are of no avail. In the Quinta relación, Cortés comes to a descriptive impasse that directly parallels the halted progress of his Honduran expedition: “Y querer yo decir la aspereza y fragosidad deste puerto y sierras, ni quien mejor que yo lo supiese lo podría explicar, ni quien lo oyese lo podría entender” (580). Years later a scribe would endeavor to finish Cortés’s thought for him by adding: “si por vista de ojos no lo viese y pasando por él no lo esperimentase” (675).10 This claim echoes Cortés’s statement from the third letter (“cosas tan maravillosas que por escrito no se pueden significar ni se pueden comprehender si no son vistas” [429; letter 3]) and develops the conquistador’s assertion along logical and expected lines; but any such claim could ironically jeopardize the authority of the eyewitness account itself by making any mediation between seeing and believing suspect. “No creáis más de lo que por vuestros ojos viéredes,” says Moctezuma, according to Cortés (211; letter 2). If Charles V took this fellow emperor’s advice to heart, he would not believe anything that Cortés tells him. Yet Cortés would only truly undermine his own authority here if, like Bernal Díaz, he based that authority on his role as eyewitness. Instead he openly confronts the complexities and limitations of language as mediation and even uses these complexities and limitations to his advantage. 52

The Means and Ends of Empire But Moctezuma is not referring to such linguistic difficulties in his warning to Cortés. When he tells the conqueror not to believe anything other than what he sees with his own eyes, Moctezuma is referring to what his own enemies from Tlaxcala and Cempoala may have told Cortés about him, the Aztec leader. He is talking about lies. Cortés might be able to convince his readers at Court that he is not going to give them a false account by mistake, for he claims to know the limitations of his medium; but how can he convince them that he is not giving a false account on purpose? In his attempt to prove that he is not lying, Cortés calls on others to corroborate his version of events. Here his legal training is decisive (Frankl 12; Valero Silva 15; Elliott, “The Mental World” 48). During the fifteen years he worked in Hispaniola and Cuba, first as a notary and later as a secretary to the governor, a municipal official, and an encomendero, Cortés must have become an expert at drafting legal documents (Elliott, “The Mental World” 48). Other voices, in the introductions and addenda to the letters, frame Cortés’s narrative and appear to confirm his account, as does the first letter, which also gives information about Cortés that would be difficult for him to give in first person. Frankl makes an excellent case for reading the first letter as the work of Cortés, and he shows how its structure and general ideology parallel that of the other letters (9, 58–73). Valero Silva (34) and Elliott (“Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V” xx) agree that Cortés must have dictated a large part of the letter, although Bernal Díaz says that Cortés only read it after it was completed (1: 207; ch. 54). Regardless of who the real authors were, the letter signed by the Municipal Council of the Town of Vera Cruz serves Cortés’s purposes better than anything he could have signed, which is perhaps why his own “First Letter” has never been found, assuming it was ever written at all (see also Blázquez-Garbajosa 31). Cortés’s next step after authorizing his Cartas de relación is to authorize his conquest of Mexico. This “next” step, however, cannot really be secondary, because the reliability of any eyewitness account depends on the reliability of the eyewitness who provides it. Here Cortés shows his understanding of the imperial perspective by not separating the notion of loyalty to the truth from loyalty to the king. He must appear to serve both, at all times and in all ways, because if he can combine his 53

Chapter Two allegiance to the monarch with the pursuit and defense of “truth,” he presumably authorizes his imperial reader in the process and ultimately authorizes Spain’s trans-Atlantic crusade. Fabricating this apparent fusion of word and deed is perhaps the most important rhetorical move in the Cartas de relación, since it satisfies the power that Cortés is attempting to persuade. In the first letter Cortés’s zeal for finding out facts sets his expedition apart from those that preceded it. As KrugerHickman notes, “[t]he informing function is made to seem the key duty of the expedition” (80). Since the speakers in the first letter claim to be the first to learn anything substantial about the new land, they also claim to be the only ones capable of supplying the monarch with a reliable report on it: las relaciones que hasta agora a Vuestras Majestades desta tierra se han hecho, ansí de la manera y riquezas della como de la forma en que fue descubierta y otras cosas que della se han dicho, no son ni han podido ser ciertas, porque nadie hasta agora las ha sabido como será ésta que nosotros a Vuestras Reales Altezas enviamos. (106; letter 1)

The first expedition, under Francisco Fernández de Córdoba, returns to Hispaniola after only one battle, in which the Spaniards do not fare well (109; letter 1). Juan de Grijalba’s expedition lasts longer but is only slightly more productive. At Cozumel he finds fresh water and then returns to his ship without proceeding inland or making any noteworthy discoveries: “se tornó a sus naos sin calar la tierra ni saber el secreto della” (113; letter 1). Grijalba does not even leave the coast when he reaches the mainland, and consequently Cortés—or, if you like, the Municipal Council of the Town of Vera Cruz—accuses him of having invented all that he describes of the interior. This is, however, the wrong type of inventiveness, because in rhetorical terms it is at the primary stage of inventio or discovery that Grijalba falls short. In the first letter the historical validity of an explorer’s account seems to depend on the extent to which the rhetorical act of discovery parallels the physical act of exploration. Since Grijalba never really leaves his ships, he has, so to speak, no rhetorical ground to take off from, only a lost chance at discovery that will lead him astray, that is, away 54

The Means and Ends of Empire from the truth, which is understood here as concrete information, the terra firma of historical discourse: “nunca más vido cosa alguna de la tierra que de contar fuese, por lo cual Vuestras Reales Altezas pueden creer que todas las relaciones que desta tierra se les han hecho no han podido ser ciertas, pues no supieron los secretos dellas más de lo que sus voluntades han querido escribir” (116; letter 1). Between the “cosa” and the “voluntades” lies a gulf that would divide history and fiction according to their two types of discovery. According to the first letter, Grijalba and the others were inventive because they merely made up stories to tell, whereas Cortés is inventive because he has the curiosity to discover the secret of every place he visits: “como el dicho capitán Fernando Cortés esté tan inclinado al servicio de Vuestras Majestades y tenga voluntad de les hacer verdadera relación de lo que en la tierra hay, propuso de no pasar más adelante hasta saber el secreto de aquel río y pueblos” (126; letter 1). Each of the Cartas de relación and many of the other letters to the emperor drive home the same message, so that by the Quinta relación Cortés can speak of “el estilo que tengo, que es no dejar cosa que a Vuestra Majestad no manifieste” (526; letter 5). He would have us believe that he cannot bypass anything of note in his explorations or in his accounts. The rhetorical stage of inventio, which normally lies outside narrative, assumes a prominent place in Cortés’s letters because he turns the very process of discovery into subject matter. As he writes about the adventure of finding something worth relating (“que de contar fuese” [116; letter 1]), Cortés attempts to establish his own obsession with truth-finding by cultivating an image of the truth as solid ground. By defining the truth in physical terms Cortés equates the truth with the limits of the known world, limits that he himself extends by means of discovery, and limits that he defines with other sorts of “truth telling.” Cortés not only attempts to stake out a claim to honesty by contrasting his “reliable” speech with that of other major figures in the drama (“pues ansí era,” Cortés says of Moctezuma, “que él no me guardaba la palabra ni me decía la verdad” [196; letter 2]); he also presents the limits of the known world as the limits of the world “in the know,” that is, the lands acquainted with the word of God, because service to the “truth”

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Chapter Two also means spreading the good news (the Christian gospel) to the New World. From Cozumel (124–25; letter 1) to Tenochtitlan (239; letter 2) and beyond (559–60, 573–74; letter 5), Cortés professes a special knack for converting the inhabitants of Mesoamerica, for spreading the truth to them about Christianity, and for convincing them that they are now vassals of the Spanish monarch. Before Cortés’s arrival, Córdoba has almost no verbal exchange with the natives, and Grijalba, according to the Primera relación, only talks business, saying that he has come to trade (“rescatar” [114, 115; letter 1]). In contrast to Cortés’s evangelizing mission stand the narrow interests of these captains and, above all, the greed of their superior, Diego Velázquez (117; letter 1). Whereas Cortés’s rival appears to take an interest only in gold and thereby, according to the tradition of the Siete partidas, excludes himself from royal service (Frankl 49–51), Cortés can claim to spread the word and keep his word, and thereby serve his king as a reliable communicator. This reliability may seem monotonous on occasion thanks to the lengthy descriptions and legalistic prose that the carta relatoria requires of its authors (see Delgado Gómez 57), but Cortés not only manages to keep his story moving; he also keeps his reader aware of his efforts in this regard. He takes pains to avoid the dangers of the digression, since for him any elaboration is prolixity, and prolixity can lead to a lie: “me parescía justo a mi príncipe y señor decir muy claramente la verdad sin interponer cosas que la disminuyan y acrecienten” (232; letter 2). He repeats these sentiments frequently (161, 242, 291, 305; letter 2. 385; letter 3. 622; letter 5), as if he might arrive at the truth by purifying his narrative, by deleting the elements that, however truthful they may be in themselves, would distort the larger truth he is trying to convey. Such distortion through prolixity would presumably render his narrative less believable, or at least less effective. For history to be effective, as Luis Vives observes, it must not only be true; it must appear to be true (“non vere modo narrandum est . . . sed verisimiliter” [Vives, De ratione dicendi 213; 3.4]). Although the conventions of verisimilitude that guide Cortés’s cartas relatorias differ from those that Vives prescribes for humanistic historiography, both Vives and Cortés imply that a poorly composed account, though factual, would lack the necessary 56

The Means and Ends of Empire vigor to prevail over a false but more believable narrative. History for both writers must beat fiction at its own game by adhering to many of the same principles. Avoiding the extraneous is a classical topos for all narrative, one that finds two of its most well known Spanish proponents in López Pinciano (2: 39–40; epístola 5) and the canon from the Quijote, who attacks the books of chivalry not because they are untrue, but rather because they are not true-to-life. For el canónigo, the monstrosity of their structure matches the monstrosity of their content and reflects their lack of verisimilitude: No he visto ningún libro de caballerías que haga un cuerpo de fábula entero con todos sus miembros, de manera, que el medio corresponda al principio, y el final al principio y al medio; sino que los componen con tantos miembros, que más parece que llevan intención de formar una quimera o un monstruo que a hacer una figura proporcionada. (1: 482; pt.1, ch. 47)

Principios, medios y fines are the components of the political logic of principles, means, and ends as well as of the canon’s narrative logic of beginnings, middles, and ends.11 If Cortés’s principios, medios y fines coincide with one another and with those of the Crown, then he is telling the Crown’s own story and in such a way that he is always the protagonist, even as narrator. This convergence of narrative and politics corresponds to the complete convergence of narrator and protagonist in the Cartas de relación. By combining these two entities Cortés can present the acts of discovering, conquering, and writing as if they all served the same pursuit and defense of the truth. Likewise, he constructs the notion of “truth” in accordance with these three acts. First, he presents the truth as the physical world, to which one gains access through exploration and observation. Second, he refers to a higher truth, the metaphysical world, the most essential principles of which the crusading Christians claim to understand already. This understanding includes the sense of duty to reveal these principles to the rest of the world, to spread Christian doctrine so that fewer souls will be lost in the worship of “false” gods. In this sense conquest serves the truth inasmuch as one conceives of the conquest as conversion, which is in fact how it is portrayed in the Cartas de relación. Finally, Cortés speaks of truth as event or lived 57

Chapter Two experience. He can only capture this truth in his narrative by controlling that narrative and acknowledging its limits. Yet the constraints and necessities that dictate the form that the truth must take impinge on Cortés’s narrative to such an extent that the information he conveys to his audience depends on his immediate needs as a writer, even though writer and audience supposedly share the same interests: “me esforzaré a decir a Vuestra Alteza lo menos mal que pudiere, la verdad y lo que al presente es necesario que Vuestra Majestad sepa” (161; letter 2; emphasis added). Cortés will “tell the truth” plus “something else;” except that this “something else” turns out to be a minus rather than a plus, because it reveals the constraints placed on the account. Cortés paraphrases his rhetorical construction of the truth when he makes the audience’s knowledge, represented here by the verb sepa, subordinate to the immediate needs of the speaker, as if in this brief and specific instance a pragmatic hierarchy could supersede the political hierarchy between monarch and subject. He repeats this formula of “truth plus everything you need to know” in the conclusion to his Segunda relación: “Yo he escripto a Vuestra Majestad, aunque mal dicho, la verdad de todo lo suscedido en estas partes y aquello de que más nescesidad hay de hacer saber a Vuestra Alteza” (308; letter 2). Expediency in the name of a divine and imperial Truth outweighs allegiance to a more mundane and immediate concept of truth, understood here as a full account of what happened. There arises even in Cortés’s own narrative the possibility that one notion of the truth may interfere with another. Whereas the conflict between the Crown’s interests and Cortés’s allegiance to the truth remains merely a possibility or suggestion with respect to Cortés’s correspondence with the king, it is unmistakable in his own depiction of his conduct throughout Mesoamerica. In a word, Cortés lies—early and often. This is not to say that we as readers can easily distinguish Cortés’s truth-telling from his lying, but that he frequently defines his own actions as deceptive and sets aside his own speech acts into categories of true and false. Besides his initial duplicity when he allies himself with opposing states (“con los unos y los otros maneaba, y a cada uno . . . le daba crédito de más amistad que al otro” [188; letter 2]), Cortés says that he lies about the purpose of his journey and his orders from Charles V 58

The Means and Ends of Empire relating directly to Moctezuma. For example, he assures Moctezuma’s subjects “que Vuestra Majestad tenía noticia dél y me había mandado que lo viese, y que yo no iba a más de verle” (169; letter 2). Perhaps his most famous fiction is his identification of Charles V with a Mexican Messiah figure, destined to return to Tenochtitlan from the East. Cortés says that Moctezuma recognizes the European emperor as his natural lord, but not because a Papal Bull of 1493 granted dominion over his land to the Catholic monarchs, or because the Christian “truth” is more compelling than the pagan “lie” he has been living. Rather, Moctezuma submits to Charles V, we are to understand, because he believes that the Spaniards are descendents of a former Mexican leader, and that their arrival is really a return, prophesied by the Aztecs. Far from illuminating Moctezuma with the true origin of his lord, Cortés says he is willing to play the role provided for him by the native mythology: “Yo le respondí [a Moctezuma] a todo lo que me dijo, satisfaciendo a aquello que me paresció que convenía, en especial en hacerle creer que Vuestra Majestad era a quien ellos esperaban” (212; letter 2).12 All this deception may not seem surprising and would not necessarily be significant if it were not for the double allegiance that Cortés establishes in his Cartas de relación. According to the imperial ideology that he attempts to satisfy, the interests of the Crown must coincide with the pursuit and defense of truth; or better yet, they must be the pursuit and defense of truth. By making the Crown’s ends and means the same and then betraying its purported ends, Cortés has effectively shut himself out of the imperial program. How can Cortés avoid this displacement and still use the same underhanded methods in the name of the Crown? One possible tactic would be to claim that honesty is not necessary with “naturales.” But Cortés never singles the Mexicans out in this way. He admits that he lies to them, to be sure, but he says that he lies to Spaniards as well. He tells his men that his ships are not seaworthy when he decides to scuttle the fleet (164; letter 2), he pretends not to know of all the members of the Velázquez faction who have taken part in a plot against his life (448; letter 3), and he tricks Francisco de Garay’s men into sending a landing party to him by disguising three of his own men as members of the rival expedition (167; letter 2). 59

Chapter Two Another possible solution would be for Cortés to present his tactics as sanctioned by God. He certainly uses divine sanction elsewhere, so that his often miraculous military victories seem to prove his faith in God and his service to the divine truth (e.g., 131–32; letter 1). But to say that God sanctions his deceit because it serves the divine truth is to beg the question. How can deceit serve the divine truth? As Sissela Bok has observed, “[t]o lie for the sake of the truth . . . is surely the most paradoxical of excuses” (86). But there are many examples of just such an attempt at justification, especially, as in Cortés’s case, when the lies are presented as serving a higher truth, such as some political or religious dogma: “The more dogmatic the belief that one possesses truth, the greater the liberties taken on its behalf with truth-telling!” (Bok 91). Certainly this rationale plays a role in Cortés’s use of deception, but such an attempt at justification within the letters can never be satisfactory because the letters build their own authority on the notion that the Crown’s ends and means will coincide in every way and on every level. Cortés cannot resolve the problem outright, because according to the terms he has set, the truth must prevail at every level of the conquest. What appears to be a contradiction for us, however, need not appear to be a contradiction for Cortés. For instead of confronting his dilemma, he suppresses it by showing that on every level service to the truth requires an artful mastering of language. If, when the “truth” means “what happened,” the form it takes inevitably suits the needs of the moment, this notion seems even more logical in the New World where the needs of the moment are especially unpredictable and where one of Cortés’s favorite figures for the truth is territory within the boundaries of knowledge. This territory, and hence this truth, is constantly stretched by his own exploration. At the end of his fourth letter Cortés explains why he must interpret his orders freely and even add to them: y siempre terné cuidado de añadir lo que más me paresciere que conviene, porque como por la grandeza y diversidad de las tierras que cada día se descubren y por muchos secretos que de cada día de lo descubierto conoscemos hay necesidad que a nuevos acontecimientos haya nuevos paresceres y consejos, y si en algunos de los que he dicho o de aquí ade-

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The Means and Ends of Empire lante dijiere a Vuestra Majestad, le paresciere que contradigo algunos de los pasados, crea Vuestra Excelencia que nuevo caso me hace dar nuevo parescer. (523; letter 4)

New information requires a revised plan of action, though the general plan supposedly remains the same, in accordance with Spain’s imperial project. Cortés takes advantage of the fact that Spain’s place in the New World, although dependent on ideological consistency, also depends on the adaptability and initiative of those on the frontier, because the New World is too new, the whole “truth” is not yet known. Even if on a metaphysical level Christendom feels that it does possess the whole Truth, on a physical, everyday plane it must confront the expanding world that—for better or worse—it would embrace. Cortés conflates these two levels within his narrative and subordinates them to his own rhetorical powers. He claims to present the truth properly to the inhabitants of Mesoamerica and back to the Europeans, so that within his letters all forms of the “truth” take on a certain persuasive power that assures the Crown’s success in New Spain. He depicts his mastery of language as an essential component of the “truth” and so also of the conquest.

3. Conquering and Convincing Any depiction of language as instrumental to the conquest clearly distracts from other factors that played a part in the Spanish victory, most noticeably from the brutality of the conquistadors. Indeed, when Cortés admits that the conquest depends on artifice, that is probably the smallest confession he can make, and one that will in the end suit his purposes. If one considers the role played by the Spaniards’ horses, attack dogs, superior weaponry, their altogether different notion of warfare, the smallpox epidemic, and—in the initial stages— Moctezuma’s indecisive behavior, the real role of rhetoric in the conquest may have been minor. But if Cortés can emplot these other factors, or at least the ones he knows about, in rhetorical terms, then he can make artifice central to his service to the empire. When Aristotle proposes to define rhetoric as “an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion” 61

Chapter Two (36; 1355a), he emphasizes the adaptability of rhetorical discourse, its accommodation of each particular audience. Cortés likewise characterizes his own speeches within the Cartas de relación as more accommodating than imposing, even when he is in fact imposing a new order and ideology on his audience. José Rabasa describes Cortés’s dialogue with the Aztecs as “apparently neutral,” because, when Cortés accepts the Aztecs’ identification of the Spaniards with the descendents of former inhabitants of Mexico, he incorporates Aztec culture and history into a new order dominated by the Spaniards (“Dialogue as Conquest” 145–52). For the audience outside of the letters, however, there is nothing neutral about this exchange. The rhetorical power that Cortés wields within his narrative reflects his domination as much as or more than any “native mythology.” If Cortés uses a “particularly modern form of colonial power,” by claiming to rely on an exchange that pretends to be objective (Rabasa, “Dialogue as Conquest” 152), it is worth stressing that he makes this pretense transparent for the reader of the Cartas de relación (see Checa 205). By claiming that the key to his success and to the empire’s success in Mexico relies on his artful use of language, Cortés not only suppresses the problem of how his service to the divine and imperial Truth can involve the use of artful deception; he also makes it possible for his letters, by themselves, to prove his suitability for the conquest, because they display his art at every level. Díaz Balsera shows how this self-authorization operates with regard to Cortés’s speech to his men in Tlaxcala: “Al Cortés afirmar que logra como capitán persuadir a sus soldados, el lector puede juzgar el grado de credibilidad que merece como cronista sin tener que salir fuera del texto. Mientras más o menos persuasivo sea Cortés contando su éxito persuasivo como capitán, tanta credibilidad ganará este pasaje como testimonio de su alegado liderazgo” (223; emphasis in original). In other words, Cortés convinces his audience outside of the letters by showing that he is convincing in them. But Cortés never reproduces his own convincing oratory in the narrative. Instead he redirects his speeches in the letters so that they only address the audience outside of the letters, that is, his ideal reader, Charles V. His rhetorical skill as a writer may support his claims to rhetorical success as a speaker, but that

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The Means and Ends of Empire speaker’s conquering voice is never on display. When Cortés does reproduce a speech, it is the voice of the conquered, Moctezuma, who addresses Cortés and thus places the conqueror in the same audience as the ideal reader, a move that can only help authorize Cortés’s conquest by identifying him with the emperor. The physical conquest narrated in the letters also functions as a means of persuasion for the audience outside of the text. Cortés cannot persuade the king to grant him his commission if he does not succeed in battle; and success in battle serves to demonstrate his loyalty to the Crown just as much as it supposedly confirms his faith in God, because according to the ideological framework in which he operates, the divine and the imperial truth are one and the same: “Y como traíamos la bandera de la cruz, y puñábamos por nuestra fe y por servicio de Vuestra Sacra Majestad en su muy real ventura, nos dio Dios tanta victoria que les matamos mucha gente sin que los nuestros rescibiesen daño” (178; letter 2). Cortés conquers in Mexico in order to convince the king to allow him to conquer in Mexico. The circle ends in 1522 when Cortés finally receives the authorization he has been seeking. This victory, however, does not mean that he can stop pleading his case. After narrowly surviving his Honduran expedition, which he describes in his fifth letter, he must face the prospect of a residencia, or inquest, into his actions as captain and governor. The fifth letter then stands as a defense against the accusations that he is ambitious and disloyal to the Crown: “si ansí fuera, no me fuera yo seiscientas leguas desta cibdad por tierra inhabitada y caminos peligrosos y dejara la tierra a los oficiales de Vuestra Majestad” (277; letter 5). Even if Cortés does not fare well at the residencia, there is yet another audience to which he can appeal, for his letters reach the printing press as well as the Court. Although such cartas relatorias as Cortés wrote were not usually written for publication, and Cortés may not have originally intended to have his own letters published, he evidently grasped the importance of appealing to an audience that extended well beyond the king, the Court, and the Council of the Indies.13 Back in Seville, Peter Martyr of Angleria will remark that one of the volumes Cortés has sent to Spain is making the rounds in

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Chapter Two the bookstands in the public squares (“per platearum podia vagatur” [115; dec. 8, ch. 10]). With these early editions in Spanish along with numerous early translations of his second and third letters, Cortés succeeds in shaping his own image throughout the empire and beyond, making it more difficult for the Crown to deny him his importance. In 1527, Pánfilo de Narváez succeeds in his petition to have the Crown prohibit the publication of Cortés’s letters, and, even though this ban seems to have been rescinded in the same year, no more editions of Cortés’s letters were published in Spain for over two hundred years (Adorno and Pautz 6–9). A year before the ban, however, Cortés knows that he has already won the battle of the printing press. At the end of his fifth letter he suddenly appears indifferent to the findings of the upcoming inquest, satisfied as he is, “con hacer lo que debo y con saber que a todo el mundo tengo satisfecho y les son notorios mis servicios y lealtad con que los fago. Y no quiero otro mayorazgo para mis hijos sino éste” (661; letter 5). The legacy of an honorable reputation, however, will dictate to a large extent the material estate that Cortés can leave his children, because the debate over different versions of the conquest will for decades to come bear on the property rights of the conquistadors and their descendents as well as on the human rights of the conquered peoples of America. Cortés prevails outside of his letters in the same way that he often prevails within them: by dominating the language of conquest. For his readers, as for his men and allies, and even ostensibly for his enemies, he not only makes sense of the conquest; he emphasizes that he does so according to his own terms. During the grueling Tlaxcalan campaign, for example, when many of his men want to return to the coast, Cortés maintains that he is able to make them think of their duty as Christians and as subjects to the king: yo los animaba diciéndoles que mirasen que eran vasallos de Vuestra Alteza y que jamás en los españoles en ninguna parte hobo falta, y que estábamos en dispusición de ganar para Vuestra Majestad los mayores reinos y señoríos que había en el mundo y que demás de facer lo que a cristianos éramos obligados en puñar contra los enemigos de nuestra fee, y por ello en el otro mundo ganábamos la gloria y en

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The Means and Ends of Empire éste consiguíamos el mayor prez y honra que hasta nuestros tiempos ninguna generación ganó; y que mirasen que teníamos a Dios de nuestra parte y que a él ninguna cosa es imposible, y que lo viesen por las vitorias que habíamos habido donde tanta gente de los enemigos eran muertos y de los nuestros ningunos. Y les dije otras cosas que me paresció decirles desta calidad, que con ellas y con el real favor de Vuestra Alteza cobraron mucho ánimo y los atraje a mi propósito, y a facer lo que yo deseaba, que era dar fin a mi demanda comenzada. (182; letter 2)

As Delgado Gómez points out, Cortés here links his own endeavor with God’s designs and the interests of the empire (182– 83n106), but the last words of Cortés’s summary of this key speech characteristically turn the focus back on Cortés himself. According to Cortés, his men resolve to fight on not just because that is the right thing for them to do, but also because it is what he wants them to do. If the unadorned truth is not enough to convince the Spaniards, then it will be less likely to suffice for the Indians. Nevertheless, Cortés claims to draw them to his cause by means of persuasion. Iglesia calls this façade Cortés’s “política de atracción” (31), the fiction that allows Cortés to declare that life proceeds as usual in the city of Cholula the day after the Spaniards have massacred, by Cortés’s own count, more than 3,000 of its inhabitants: “después de les haber hablado muchas cosas acerca de su yerro solté dos de ellos. Y otro día siguiente estaba toda la cibdad poblada y llena de mujeres y niños muy seguros, como si cosa alguna de lo pasado no hobiera acaescido” (194; letter 2). Just as he says that he attracts his men to his purpose, Cortés maintains that his words can bring back the Cholulans and even attract them into his alliance with the Tlaxcalans (194; letter 2). It is hard to overstate Cortés’s claims to success in winning the respect and even the love of the Indians. Upon his return from Honduras, the Indians of New Spain receive him, he says, “como si yo fuera su propio padre” (641; letter 5). Small wonder that the image of Cortés as a beloved conqueror persisted into the twentieth century (Iglesia 69), only to give the revisionist studies, such as Guzmán’s, a more polemical tone. Even more important for his Cartas de relación, and definitely more difficult for modern readers to believe, is Cortés’s 65

Chapter Two assertion that he convinces the Aztecs to stop their human sacrifices, at least temporarily: Yo les hice entender con las lenguas cuán engañados estaban en tener su esperanza en aquellos ídolos . . . y que habían de saber que había un solo Dios, universal Señor de todos . . . Y el dicho Muteeçuma y muchos de los prencipales de la dicha cibdad estuvieron conmigo hasta quitar los ídolos y limpiar las capillas y poner las imágenes, y todo con alegre semblante. Y les defendí que no matasen criaturas a los ídolos . . . y en todo el tiempo que estuve en la dicha cibdad, nunca se vio matar ni sacrificar alguna criatura. (239; letter 2)

The “alegre semblante” with which the “chapels” are cleaned and decked with images could refer to the Christian images, to the “chapels” themselves, or to the smiles on the faces of everyone who does the cleaning and redecorating. Everything, then, had a happy look to it. And although this look could be deceiving, as later accounts, most notably López de Gómara’s, will acknowledge,14 here the semblance of happiness seems to suffice, especially given the weight of Cortés’s “Yo les hice entender,” which implies instant understanding. This phrase, “hacerle(s) entender” or “darle(s) a entender,” appears repeatedly in the Cartas de relación (e.g., 204; letter 2. 352; letter 3. 559–60; letter 5), and although Cortés claims great success in the early letters, his ability to influence the Indians seems to grow, building to a crescendo in the fifth letter as he goes about persuading them to work for him (556–57), provide him with food and guides (566, 622, 629–30), destroy their idols (566, 574), and become vassals of the emperor (638). These peaceful means are more impressive than force of arms, and far more effective. Where in his Guatemalan campaign Pedro de Alvarado has failed with violence, Cortés says that he can succeed with love: “que por amor o por otra manera los atrajera a lo bueno” (636; letter 5). All of this peaceful persuasion, however, must pass through “las lenguas” (239; letter 2), the interpreters. Would this mediation not diminish the role of Cortés’s own skillful use of language in his dealings with the Indians? It would, if the interpreters in the Cartas de relación were more than mere

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The Means and Ends of Empire “lenguas.” But that is practically all they are, especially Malinali, whose cooperation with the Spaniards has intrigued readers for centuries. Bernal Díaz del Castillo will later provide a plausible explanation for her actions,15 but almost all Cortés tells us is where he got her: “la lengua que yo tengo que es una india de esta tierra, que hobe en Putunchan” (192; letter 2). We do not even learn her name until the fifth letter: “Marina, la que yo conmigo siempre he traído, porque allí [en Tabasco] me la habían dado con otras veinte mujeres” (575; letter 5). Her life before she is given to the Spaniards remains a mystery to the reader of the Cartas de relación, who is left to explain why she is helping them. Has Cortés persuaded her to join him just as through her he will later persuade others to do so? By turning Marina into pure language, and then reducing her by way of synecdoche to a body part that he can possess as his own (“la lengua que yo tengo”), he appears to conquer with his mastery of language and, at least in her case, to turn his physical conquest into a mastery of language.16 Central to Cortés’s fusion of conquest and persuasion is the case of Moctezuma. When he decides to take the Aztec emperor captive, he claims to conquer his mind along with his body: me paresció . . . que convenía al real servicio de Vuestra Majestad y a nuestra seguridad, que aquel señor estuviese en mi poder y no en toda su libertad porque no mudase el propósito y voluntad que mostraba en servir a Vuestra Alteza. (214; letter 2)

He seizes Moctezuma so that the Aztec emperor will not change his mind. But even before he takes him into his custody, Cortés sets about defining Moctezuma’s role as an emperor-vassal. In response to the news from the coast that Moctezuma’s vassal Cuauhpopoca has had some Spaniards killed at Moctezuma’s orders, Cortés approaches the emperor with another version of events, giving him the opportunity to punish his supposedly guilty subjects and thus show the Spanish monarch “su buena voluntad” (215; letter 2). Moctezuma plays his role perfectly in the Cartas de relación, with the result that Cuauhpopoca, Cuauhpopoca’s son, and fifteen others are publicly burned at the stake, even though beforehand Cortés has them admitting that they were following Moctezuma’s 67

Chapter Two orders. The real proof of Moctezuma’s supposed conversion appears when Cortés begs him to return to his own house: Y me dijo todas las veces que gelo decía [que se fuese a su casa] que él estaba bien allí y que no quería irse porque allí no le faltaba cosa de lo que él quería, como si en su casa estuviese, y que podría ser que yéndose y habiendo lugar, que los señores de la tierra, sus vasallos, le importunasen o le induciesen a que hiciese alguna cosa contra su voluntad que fuese fuera del servicio de Vuestra Alteza. (218; letter 2)

Cortés’s Moctezuma prefers to remain under Spanish control for three related reasons. First, he says that he is fine where he is, a banal statement if we consider the symbolic importance of his residence among the Spaniards, who on the day of Cuauhpopoca’s burning demonstrate the extent of their physical control of Moctezuma by placing him in leg irons. But Moctezuma’s assertion “que estaba bien allí” is less banal in view of the other reasons he gives for staying with the Spaniards, for those reasons imply that maybe he would not be “fine” elsewhere, even in his own home. When he says that he has everything he wants, “as if he were at home,” he speaks as if he had undertaken a journey beyond his home city. Although Cortés presents this journey as more mental than physical, it has involved a lot of changing places. Moctezuma had welcomed Cortés into his city, twice telling the Spaniards that they were in their own home: “‘Pues estáis en vuestra naturaleza y en vuestra casa . . . pues estáis en vuestra casa y naturaleza” (211; letter 2). One of the purposes of these loaded phrases of hospitality is presumably to define who the host is, that is, who is making whom feel at home. We might be inclined to say that Cortés has made himself feel a little too much at home, but the phrases are so loaded in this context because Moctezuma, so the story goes, believes that Cortés and his men are in fact returning to an ancestral homeland of sorts, and what Cortés almost claims to have done is reverse roles by bringing the Aztec emperor inside the palace of Axayacatl and making him feel at home there. By remaining in his new home, a Spanish space that now encompasses Aztec space, Moctezuma demonstrates how thoroughly he has become the vassal of Charles V, for he asserts—and this is his third reason for staying put—that in 68

The Means and Ends of Empire Spanish custody he has greater freedom to do what he really wants to do, which is serve the Spanish monarch. Changing places creates the occasion, or literally the “place” (“habiendo lugar”), for Moctezuma’s vassals to prevent him from being a good vassal himself, the place for them to lead him to do something “outside of Your Highness’s service.” By preferring to stay physically within a space that represents a newly expanded Spanish domain, Cortés’s Moctezuma metaphorically incorporates himself and his realms inside that domain, even though the confines of the Palace of Axayacatl will soon seem small indeed, and even though he has admitted, through his fears of what will happen to him on the outside, that his hold over his realms is growing tenuous. Others do not always submit so easily in the Cartas de relación, but even with the most recalcitrant adversaries Cortés portrays the use of force, no matter how devastating, as just another instrument within a larger strategy of persuasion. When he says that he has his men cut off the hands of suspected Tlaxcalan spies, he also sends the mutilated spies back to their lord with a message about his invincibility (179; letter 2); likewise, when he attacks defenseless towns, he continually describes these massacres as exemplary punishments (e.g., 180–81; letter 2). It comes as no surprise, then, that he turns the burning of Cuauhpopoca into a public spectacle or that he often says that he fights even when he is weak precisely to hide his weakness (e.g., 403; letter 3). This emphasis on the importance of psychological warfare, so often commented on by critics, forms part of a narrative strategy that presents the conquest as something other than mere physical struggle. Cortés claims to convince by conquering as much as he claims to conquer by convincing. His use of violence has no meaning within the letters except as a means of persuasion (see Merrim, “Ariadne’s Thread” 78). By the Quinta relación Cortés takes the game of appearances to another extreme, in which he pretends to have magic powers. He claims to have discovered through an informant that some of the Aztecs that he has brought with him on the Honduran expedition are planning a revolt. This plot, as presented in the letters, could merely be an excuse to kill Cuauhtemoc, who is no longer useful to him as a hostage (Guzmán xviii), but according to Cortés it is an opportunity to 69

Chapter Two make the Indians believe, through his artful handling of the matter, that he is using another type of art. He has Cuauhtemoc and Tetlepanquetzal hanged and then spares the others, who are supposedly only guilty of listening to the two ringleaders. Cortés is confident that they will not threaten him, for they are already frightened: “porque nunca han sabido de quién lo supe, que no creo se tornarán a revolver. Porque creen que lo supe por algund art, y así piensan que ninguna cosa se me puede esconder” (565). It turns out that they believe, he says, that he uses a compass and sea chart not only to find his way, but also to find out what they are thinking: “Yo también les hice entender que ansina era la verdad, y que en aquella aguja y carta de marear vía yo y sabía y se me descobrían todas las cosas” (565). Here again Cortés implicitly equates the truth with the territory that he discovers, for he claims to use the same device to chart his way through the secrets of the New World as he does to “chart” his way through the secrets of its inhabitants. Moreover, in this case his artifice not only deceives; it looks like magic. But according to the Cartas de relación, Cortés needs this dangerously artful deception to keep his allies honest. Cortés brings the lie into the service of the truth, an acceptable maneuver within the imperial ideology only because the Cartas de relación show that the entire imperial mission of discovering, conquering, and informing requires artifice.

By arguing that Cortés’s display of rhetorical skill is central to his narrative strategy, I am not suggesting that he talks his way to Tenochtitlan or even that he claims to do so in his letters. I am arguing, rather, that he takes the other factors of the conquest (except smallpox) and emplots them in rhetorical terms, subordinating them to rhetorical skill and thereby placing the conquest in a domain that he can master in his letters. At this level my reading follows that of Díaz Balsera; when Cortés manipulates the language of conquest so that much of the conquest appears to rely on a mastery of language, the letters can stand as evidence for themselves and authorize Cortés as conqueror by carrying out a conquest of their own.

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The Means and Ends of Empire To satisfy the official ideology of the Spanish Crown and to make himself indispensable to that Crown, Cortés must show that the end (the Crown’s project) and the means (Cortés himself) are consistent on every level as different facets of the same pursuit and defense of the truth. Yet what these letters in fact show is that in his explorations and conquests, in his handling of his rivals and subordinates, in his exchanges with the inhabitants of Mesoamerica, and even in his reports to the king, allegiance to the Crown relies as much on artifice as it does on allegiance to the truth. Cortés can only reconcile these conflicting allegiances by demonstrating that service to the “truth” also relies on artifice, which is what he ends up doing, consciously or not, by linking the supposed veracity of his accounts first to a judicious handling of language and then to a mastery of language. Even in Cortés’s dispatches to the monarch, the presentation of what he sees and what he does requires that he confront the problems of mediation, so that he can claim to have the rhetorical skill, the art, that is necessary to meet such a challenge. By revealing the rhetorical strategies that he uses to defend the “truth,” however, Cortés places the very notion of truth on slippery ground. When he links the supposed veracity of his Cartas de relación to his own ability to master language, he underscores the potential problem. If his account has to be artful to be reliable, then there is nothing fixed about its content. His own capacity and his own immediate needs determine what he says and how he says it: “me esforzaré a decir a Vuestra Alteza lo menos mal que pudiere la verdad y lo que al presente es necesario que Vuestra Majestad sepa” (161; letter 2). The truth “lies” somewhere between those two factors. Indeed, Cortés’s definition of his conquest as service to the truth changes as the conquest proceeds, as he explores and discovers “secrets” that extend the bounds of his knowledge and of the Spanish empire. The conquest itself redefines the limits (Lat. fines) of this physical truth, even though the higher, spiritual Truth that supposedly justifies the conquest remains fixed. Cortés mediates between and eventually fuses these two notions of truth by pursuing the physical and the spiritual ends of the Spanish empire within the same coherent narrative.

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Chapter Three

Convincing Likeness Gómara’s Cortés

In 1523, when Cortés was at the height of his power in New Spain, he received news that the captain he had sent to Honduras, Cristóbal de Olid, had defied his authority, much as he had defied the authority of Diego Velázquez four years earlier. Cortés suspected, correctly, that the governor of Cuba was behind this betrayal and that he was taking every opportunity to hinder Cortés’s progress on the mainland. In his Cuarta relación he adds to these accusations: “Yo me informaré de la verdad, y si hallo ser ansí, pienso inviar por el dicho Diego Velázquez y prenderle; y preso, inviarle a Vuestra Majestad” (517). With regard to this threat, Elliott comments: “Nothing could have been better calculated to alarm the already nervous members of the Council of the Indies” (“Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V” xxxiv). The Crown would take immediate steps to limit Cortés’s authority in New Spain and would arrange a special inquiry to look into his actions. But Cortés had already secured his status as a hero, thanks in large part to the printing press. His Segunda relación was published in Seville in November of 1522, in spite of the efforts of the Velázquez faction, which had managed to delay the printing by several months (Delgado Gómez 71).1 The third and fourth relaciones were published, also in Seville, as soon as they were available, and the second and third were translated into Italian, French, Flemish, and Latin within a few years of their release.2 More printings in Spanish would have followed had the Crown not prohibited the publication and distribution of the letters in 1527. Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz have recently demonstrated that this prohibition was sought by Pánfilo de Narváez, and that one of Cortés’s advocates, Francisco Núñez, appears to have succeeded in hav72

Convincing Likeness ing the ban lifted within a month of its issue (6–9). As Adorno and Pautz note, however: “Bataillon’s original evidence for the prohibition (its presence in the law code of the second half of the sixteenth century) and the nonexistence of any Spanish edition of Cortés’s letters published between 1527 and 1731 remain unexplained” (9). Consequently, it may be too early to disregard entirely Bataillon’s earlier argument that the Crown prohibited the publication and distribution of Cortés’s letters because it considered him to be a threat to its bureaucratic power in the Indies (80–81). Such an attitude may still explain the Crown’s willingness to grant Narváez’s petition, as well as the fact that the letters were not republished in Spain until the eighteenth century, even if the prohibition was quickly canceled. The model that Cortés provided, of a conquistador operating almost entirely on his own initiative, was dangerous for the centralized empire, which closely guarded its authority with legions of bureaucrats. But if the Cartas de relación threatened the empire’s system of government, they did not challenge the imperial project itself. The image that Cortés created for himself as a loyal vassal, a brilliant and daring captain, and as an artful manipulator of men flourished during the reign of Charles V. Here I examine how that image evolved in various accounts between 1521 and 1552, and then how it found its fullest expression in López de Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México. There is no question that Gómara celebrated his patron, but his view of historiography precluded the sort of panegyric that readers often accuse him of providing. The apparent flaws in Gómara’s Cortés complement his strengths and, in the end, make him more convincing on various levels: as a more verisimilar character, a more effective instrument of empire, and a more compelling symbol of European superiority.

1. Competing Accounts (1521–1552) Peter Martyr of Angleria (Pietro Martire d’Anghiera [1457– 1526]), whom Morison calls the first historian of the New World (71), was also the first to make the news from across the Atlantic accessible to a wide European audience with his eight Decades, written in Latin between 1493 and 1526, and known

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Chapter Three collectively as his De orbe novo . . . decades.3 Martyr came to Spain from Rome with Iñigo López de Mendoza, the Count of Tendilla, in 1487; he served the Catholic monarchs as a soldier, historian, chaplain, and teacher of young noblemen; and in his later years he was named secretary to the Council of the Indies. The Catholic monarchs even entrusted Martyr with an embassy to Egypt, which he carried out successfully in 1502. His contact with Egyptian society and with ancient Egyptian monuments and hieroglyphs would give him a unique perspective on Aztec culture, and would influence his judgment of the Aztec writing system.4 When Martyr left Rome, he promised his friend, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, to write to him frequently and provide him with the latest information about the Spanish Court. He wrote to the Cardinal and then to several others over the years, and in 1493 he was the first to inform his fellow Italians about Christopher Columbus and his voyage. His De orbe novo thus began as letters sent to Italy, and each section would always retain its epistolary form, but the resulting history later grew into an independent project that he would continue till his death.5 Because he wrote in Latin and because he was well situated to receive news from the New World, Martyr became the first to make that news available to the rest of Europe. He interviewed explorers who had recently returned to Spain, and he read the official reports sent by captains. Between these first reports and the more polished humanistic historiography of later years, Martyr functions as a key transitional figure. As a confidant at Court who also had inside knowledge of Hapsburg politics, he also provides insight into the official reaction to Cortés’s conduct, especially his defiance of the governor of Cuba. He may well have influenced that reaction.6 Martyr probably could have written more polished accounts himself, but a sense of urgency impinged on the composition of his letters, which he dedicated to famous personages in Italy, where they were eagerly awaited. Francis A. MacNutt says that while Martyr composed his decades, “sometimes the messenger who was to carry them to Rome was waiting, booted and spurred, in the ante-chamber” (47). The fifth decade, sent in 1523, treats the key events of the conquest of Mexico, and was dedicated to Pope Adrian VI, whom Martyr knew well and

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Convincing Likeness whom he had helped when the Flemish counselor, turned Bishop of Tortosa, had shared the regency of Spain with Cardinal Jiménez. After Adrian’s death, Martyr dedicated this decade to Pope Clement VII. In 1530 the first edition of all eight decades of the De orbe novo was published in Alcalá de Henares. Various editions followed during the next two centuries, as well as translations into French, Italian, German, and English. Although between 1525 and 1528 Fernán Pérez de Oliva’s Historia de la Inuencion de las Yndias presented a translation of Martyr’s first decade, the entire De orbe novo was not translated into Spanish until the late nineteenth century (see MacNutt 49–52 and Torres Asensio xxiii–lii). The primary source for Peter Martyr of Angleria’s account of the conquest is the version supplied by Cortés himself. Following the general tenor of Cortés’s letters, Martyr’s Cortés not only misleads and manipulates his men, allies, and adversaries; he also incorporates deception into his overall justification of the conquest. On occasion Martyr uses the verb seducere to describe how Cortés “leads” men “away” or “astray” (60v; dec. 4, ch. 7. 65; dec. 5, ch. 2. 74; dec. 5, ch. 5. 114; dec. 8, ch. 9). Although these are not cases of sexual seduction, any reader of the Vulgate would pick up on the verb’s sexual connotations, which here add a new dimension to Cortés’s charms, a dimension that Gómara will develop to great effect.7 While speaking of the members of the Narváez party who did not resist Cortés, Martyr says that the captain-general must have inspired fear in them when he was magistrate of Santiago: “we think, also, that the leaders were seduced beforehand by Cortés’s cunning ways” (“putamos et seductos prius astu Cortesii primarios” [74; dec. 5, ch. 5]). Martyr’s De orbe novo was the first work to put Cortés’s conquering voice on display in the form of set speeches. Cortés gives long set speeches to his men during the Tlaxcalan campaign and to the Aztec priests and nobles after he has cast down their idols from the main temple. Moctezuma’s two speeches from Cortés’s Segunda relación are condensed into one, so that the Aztec emperor welcomes the Spaniards at the same time as he instructs his vassals to yield to the foreigners. Martyr’s Moctezuma makes this formal transfer of power (translatio imperii) before Cortés takes him prisoner. The tears he sheds at

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Chapter Three the end of his speech are therefore more startling; and Martyr appears to sympathize with the Aztec ruler and nobles during this sudden turn of events (69; dec. 5, ch. 3). Later, Martyr allows his readers to see the motives for the Aztec uprising and almost identify with their desire to be free from a foreign power (74; dec. 5, ch. 5). But if Martyr can sympathize with these pagans, as he evidently does when he draws frequent parallels to ancient history, he also displays great admiration for Spanish bravery and endurance, and especially for Cortés’s artful machinations. Martyr’s Cortés demonstrates his greatest adaptability when he incorporates Aztec legend into his argument against human sacrifice and when he ends his speech by presenting the Aztecs with a cross and an image of the Virgin Mary. With such maneuvers he is able to convert himself “from a lawyer into a theologian” (“iureconsulto Cortesius theologus effectus” [72v; dec. 5, ch. 4]). The protean image of the conqueror allows him to “conquer” in various ways and thus turn the conquest into more than a military triumph. Martyr’s development of Cortés’s ad hominem arguments greatly influenced later accounts of Cortés’s speeches, which in turn directly and indirectly engaged in the mid-century debates over the justification of the conquest. But when Martyr expands on Cortés’s summary of his own speeches, events in Mexico are more the news of the day than history, and the terms of the debate over the conquest are still being set. The spiritual and intellectual hierarchy that will for Sepúlveda and others justify the conquest comes across less coherently in Martyr’s account, in part because of his ambivalent reading of Aztec culture, and also because he was not responding to any coherent critique of the conquistadors. The first biography of Hernán Cortés appeared in 1530, the same year as the Alcalá edition of the De orbe novo. The biographer, Lucio Marineo Siculo, came from a modest background in Sicily, where he says he only learned to read and write at the age of 25; but by the time he was in his forties in 1483 he was invited to Spain and offered a lectureship in poetry and rhetoric at the University of Salamanca. Soon he even gained an appointment as royal historian at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella (Rummel 701–04). In 1530 he published his De rebus Hispaniae memoralibus, which appeared in Spanish that same

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Convincing Likeness year. In the section that treats illustrious men, he dedicates several pages to Cortés, whom he probably interviewed during the conquistador’s stay in Spain from 1528 to 1530. When the work was republished in 1533, the Crown prohibited the reprinting of the Cortés section and ordered that this section be torn out of the first edition (León-Portilla, “Hernán Cortés, primera biografía” 96). It is not hard to see why. Marineo says that Cortés deserved not only the title of marquis (which Charles had given him), but also that of king, and he further claims that the conquistador brought more men to Christ in a day than each of the apostles in several years (98). Marineo’s praise of Cortés’s rhetorical skill is equally exaggerated, although he does not quote Cortés at length. Even more revealing than the way in which he has Cortés sway his troops and his adversaries is Marineo’s description of how Cortés defends himself in person in front of the emperor: “Vimos también el razonamiento que hizo delante el Emperador en defensa suya contra los envidiosos y murmuradores que le molestaban. El cual razonamiento iba lleno y adornado de muchos colores retóricos y argumentos muy fuertes y firmes” (101). For Marineo this speech reflects in spoken form the elegance of Cortés’s written defense in the Cartas de relación. Although Peter Martyr had already made the inevitable comparison between Cortés and Caesar as leaders (63; dec. 5, ch. 1), Marineo is the first to compare their writings, saying that in his Cartas Cortés imitated the conqueror of Gaul (101). Another of Cortés’s admirers at the University of Salamanca would write an account of the conquest only to have it disappear. Hernán Pérez de Oliva, professor of Moral Philosophy and one-time rector of the University, put fascinating speeches into the mouths of Cortés, Moctezuma, and others; but the fragment in which these orations appear was not published till 1927, and the manuscript may not have circulated widely, since, as William Atkinson comments, “no contemporary mention of it, not even by the author or his nephew, is known” (in Pérez de Oliva, “Algunas cosas” 394). Once again Cortés’s primary set speeches are his harangue to his troops during the Tlaxcalan campaign and his sermon against idolatry delivered to the Aztec priests and nobles, wherein Pérez de Oliva gives him a flourish that will not reappear until Gómara. In the first speech

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Chapter Three he has Cortés demonstrate to those who want to retreat how they turn the conquest inside out. He stresses this inversion by inverting the forms of the words that describe his audience, a rhetorical play known as adnominatio: “‘Yo os ruego que me digais por que quereis tornar con desonor a do partistes con honrra, o porque siendo vencedores os dais por vencidos del temor’” (455). In the second speech he has Cortés link the Aztecs’ idols with their practice of human sacrifice: “‘estos vuestros dioses son hechos de poluo y crueldad’” (464). The metonymy of cause for effect (cruelty stands for the blood that it causes priests to spill in sacrifice) turns back on itself, for it is understood that the gods demand cruel sacrifices, but are in turn created from ground seeds (dust) and the blood of sacrificial victims. Thus Pérez de Oliva’s Cortés has it both ways. On the one hand he insists on the physicality of the idol-god as a mere object, a product of cruelty; on the other hand, when he implores his audience to give up idolatry, he implies that this physical product is the source of the cruelty in the first place. Pérez de Oliva’s account of the conquest may have vanished during the sixteenth century, but his Diálogo de la dignidad del hombre won him fame and was continued by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, also a student at Salamanca, and later a professor at Osuna and the University of Mexico.8 Cervantes de Salazar published his dialogue in 1546 and dedicated it to Hernán Cortés. This introductory letter, besides starting the legend that Cortés burned his ships, compares the conqueror to Alexander and Caesar (by now a commonplace parallel) and then turns around and sets him apart from ancient models: “en los [negocios de guerra] tuvo tan nuevos ardides, que no se puede decir que en alguno V. S. imitó a los antiguos” (Obras no pag.). For Cervantes de Salazar, Cortés’s other qualities, such as his prudence and magnanimity, though important, are not as original as his artifice. Martyr, Marineo, Pérez de Oliva, and Cervantes de Salazar had not gone to the Indies, though Cervantes de Salazar would leave for Mexico soon enough. They could all, therefore, fall prey to the criticism of one who crossed the Atlantic probably more than any other historian of his time: Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés. Oviedo apologizes for his style, but, as Bernal Díaz del Castillo will do, he asserts that its simplicity reflects its veracity. He says that he will write: 78

Convincing Likeness a desviada de todas las fábulas que en este caso otros escritores, sin verlo, desde España, a pie enjuto, han presumido escribir con elegantes e no comunes letras latinas e vulgares, por informaciones de muchos de diferentes juicios, formando historias más allegadas a buen estilo que a la verdad de la cosa que cuentan. (1: 9; bk. 1, “Dedicatoria”)

Oviedo does in fact cultivate a plain style that sets him apart from the humanistic historiographers of his time, although he was not always free of literary pretensions, for he began his writing career in 1519 with a book of chivalry, Don Claribalte. He later rejects the entire genre on moral grounds (see Merrim, “The Castle of Discourse” 330), and one might wonder if the vehemence with which he attacks his fellow historians is not colored in some way by his desire to atone for the sins of his youth. Oviedo, along with Las Casas, is considered to be one of the monumental figures of New World historiography, and in the opinion of O’Gorman was the first to incorporate events in the Indies into the flow of universal history (Cuatro historiadores 70). Named cronista general de las Indias in 1532, he published the first part of his General y natural historia in 1535 and worked on the rest, which encompasses events up to 1548, until his death in 1557. But his nemesis, Bartolomé de Las Casas, prevented the completed work from being published (Iglesia 80). Gómara definitely had access to Oviedo’s manuscripts (Iglesia 92–93), and lifted from them small portions, such as Cortés’s handling of his men when they are frightened by their first sight of Tenochtitlan (4: 218; bk. 45). Although Oviedo criticizes Cortés and his panegyrists, praises Diego Velázquez (2: 149; bk. 17), and even offers to help the governor in his case against Cortés (Pérez de Tudela xcii), he obviously admires the conqueror, comparing him to Caesar and calling his men “cortesanos” (4: 97–98; bk. 20). He also helps circulate Cortés’s letters by providing a commented version of them in which he transcribes large sections of Cortés’s prose, only changing the first-person narrative to third. Elsewhere, however, he does allow Cortés a chance to speak in the first person. The most elaborate speech comes after the Spaniards’ retreat from Tenochtitlan, when in Tlaxcala his men wish to return to the coast (4: 72–74). Only Oviedo gives a substantial account of this speech before Gómara, and he 79

Chapter Three undoubtedly influences the version in the Historia de la conquista de México, though the set speeches differ significantly. Oviedo focuses more on the religious nature of the conquest, drawing an extended parallel from Liber judicum 7.5. He is also quicker to have Cortés blame himself and his men for their own misfortune and look to their greatest reward in the afterlife. Divine intervention is the driving force in Oviedo’s narrative, more than the individual hero or collective effort.9 For all his criticism of those who are not eyewitnesses, Oviedo himself witnessed very little of what he described. During the 1540s two prominent conquistadors, Andrés de Tapia and Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia, wrote their own accounts of the conquest. Andrés de Tapia’s “Relación sobre la conquista de México,” unedited until García Icazbalceta published it in 1866, served as a source for Gómara, as is evident from their versions of the exchange between Cortés and Moctezuma when the former takes the latter prisoner (Vázquez 103). But Tapia did not influence Gómara’s image of Cortés as a master of oratory. Cortés speaks in the relación frequently, but never at length, and his speeches are sometimes more like terse commands. On the whole, Andrés de Tapia downplays the role of rhetoric. In his account of Cortés’s attack on the idols, he has the marqués give a brief speech and then perform miracles: Cortés leaps, almost flying in mid-air (“saltaba sobrenatural”), so that he can hit the top of the tall stone images (111). Once he has replaced the idols with Christian images, the Indians ask Cortés to make his god bring rain to save their corn crop. Cortés has his men pray for rain, which arrives immediately, to the astonishment of the Mexicans (112).10 Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia was an encomendero in Cuba before the conquest and in Mexico afterward. He wrote in response to the New Laws, passed in 1542, which, if not partially revoked in 1545, would have quickly phased out the encomienda system. An encomienda was in many ways like a feudal fiefdom. A Spaniard was entrusted with the care of an assignment of Indians who were then to serve him with tribute and labor. In practice this service often amounted to a form of slavery. Like many infuriated encomenderos, Vázquez de Tapia protested against the New Laws with an account of his merits

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Convincing Likeness and service. Unlike the rest, however, he expanded his relación into a short history of the conquest, which is of interest here primarily because it is also given to a miraculous explanation of events and because it differs drastically from his testimony at the residencia, or inquiry into Cortés’s actions. In his earlier testimony Vázquez de Tapia had accused Cortés of ordering for no apparent reason the massacre of 20,000 Cholulans (Martínez, Documentos 2: 39). Later he coincides with the conqueror’s own account, mentioning no such number and maintaining that the Spaniards acted in self-defense (Vázquez 142–43). As Gurría Lacroix observes, Vázquez de Tapia may have been coerced during the inquiry to sign a prepared statement, or else years later he was afraid to impugn the image of Cortés (Vázquez de Tapia 18). By the time the Crown had promulgated the New Laws, circumstances had changed. Any condemnation of his captain’s conduct would implicate the others who participated in the conquest and would therefore undermine the defense of the encomienda system. Bartolomé de Las Casas had much to do with changing these circumstances. At Court and in his many writings, the Dominican defended the Indians and attacked the wars of conquest and the encomiendas. Although most of his work remained unpublished for centuries, he did have eight short treatises published in Seville in 1552 and 1553, among them his Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, a preliminary draft of which he had written ten years earlier (Saint-Lu 21). Unlike his Historia de las Indias, the Brevísima does not attack the conquistadors individually. Instead it robs them even of their notoriety. Las Casas’s protagonists are the American Indians, the victims, instead of their anonymous murderers, torturers, and enslavers. And yet, Cortés does speak in the text, even though Las Casas never mentions him by name: Dícese que metiendo a espada los cinco o seis mil hombres en el patio [en Cholula], estaba cantando el capitán de los españoles: Mira Nero de Tarpeya, a Roma cómo se ardía; gritos dan niños y viejos, y él de nada se dolía. (Tratados 50)

By putting in the captain’s mouth the first verses of a wellknown ballad, Las Casas makes him condemn himself, for the flames that he conjures up evoke the infernal punishment that, 81

Chapter Three according to Las Casas, awaits him in the afterlife. And the parallel with Nero may do more than merely call to mind the archetype of an inhumane tyrant. Here Cortés sings of Nero and like Nero, who supposedly sang while Rome burned, an act that, beyond emphasizing his indifference to suffering, also alludes to another kind of indifference, namely, to those who must endure his singing. Nero’s notoriously inflated sense of his artistic talent heightens the insult to Cortés, who cultivates an artful image of his own. The Brevísima serves as a not-so-brief narratio, or statement of facts, for the other treatises that Las Casas had published in 1552 and 1553, and especially for Domingo de Soto’s summary of the Valladolid debate of 1550 and 1551, Sepúlveda’s twelve objections, and Las Casas’s twelve replies. Sepúlveda’s own account of events came later with his De orbe novo (c.1562), but his argument, outlined in his dialogue Democrates secundus, uses an extremely brief narratio of Cortés’s conquest of Mexico when he argues that the Spaniards are superior to the Indians.11 Indeed, according to the fiction of the dialogue, it is a chance meeting between Democrates’s interlocutor, Leopold, and Hernán Cortés in Prince Philip’s palace that triggers the discussion of the wars in the New World (7). Cortés knew Sepúlveda and probably influenced his work, and although the conqueror had died by the time Sepúlveda and Las Casas spoke before the royal tribunal in Valladolid, his persona still weighed heavily on the proceedings. The Valladolid debate altered all further discussion of the conquest and, along with it, all subsequent visions of the most famous conqueror. Although by this stage most of the major wars of conquest were over, the question of whether these wars had been just or not carried real consequences, both for the Europeans who defended claims to their landholdings as compensation for their service, and for the American Indians who labored in the encomiendas. In the wake of the New Laws, Las Casas and Sepúlveda understood that the debate over the conquest affected not only future conquests but also the aftermath of past conquests, that is, the rights and privileges of (as well as the relationship between) Spaniards and American Indians. By the time Gómara wrote his account of the conquest, the image of Cortés had taken on a new political significance. A

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Convincing Likeness revisionist history had started to take hold, but primarily among Spain’s enemies and among those within Spain who opposed the conquest. On the whole, Cortés had succeeded in giving his silver tongue more of a reputation than his sword, and the oratorical skill that he had claimed to possess in his Cartas had started to acquire a life of its own. In Gómara this skill would be on display as never before and would allow a more fully developed figure of the conquistador to engage in debates over the conquest, even as these debates continued after his death. But the same set of historiographical conventions that allowed Gómara’s Cortés to respond across time and space to his midcentury critics also allowed, and required, a plurivocal and nuanced portrayal of its subject matter. And the subject matter of the Historia de la conquista de México, thanks largely to these conventions, was as much Cortés as the conquest itself.

2. History as Biography: Theory and Practice in Gómara Francisco López de Gómara published his Historia general de las Indias y conquista de México in 1552 on the heels of the Valladolid debate. This work—divided into two parts: the Historia general de las Indias and the Historia de la conquista de México—was, as Wagner says, “the first real history published of the conquest of the Indies down to about 1550, when [Gómara] finished it” (“Gómara” 263). It was also an instant success. Within two years of its release, there were eight Spanish printings of part one, the Historia general, and nine of part two, the Historia de la conquista de México. During the rest of the sixteenth century the Historia general was published eight times in Italian, eight times in French, and twice in English, while the Historia de la conquista de México saw ten printings in Italian, nine in French, and two in English (Wagner, The Spanish Southwest 50–81).12 In 1553 the Spanish Crown banned the publication, sale, and distribution of both parts of the history, and, although various printings appeared the following year and one during 1555, neither part was published again in Spanish until the ban was lifted in 1729. In spite of the ban, however, Gómara’s history greatly influenced Spanish historians of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

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Chapter Three Cervantes de Salazar went so far as to plagiarize huge portions of the text, sections that were then incorporated whole into the works of Herrera and Torquemada (see Díaz-Thomé 25). Gómara was born in 1511 in the province of Soria.13 His family was probably of modest means, but nonetheless able to afford him an excellent education. In the Anales de Carlos Quinto Gómara calls Pedro de Rhúa his teacher (245), and it is likely that he studied independently with the well-known humanist, famous for his critique (Cartas censorias [Burgos, 1549]) of Antonio de Guevara’s historical works. Gómara was ordained as a member of the secular clergy before he went to Rome in 1531, where he may well have spent most of the following decade in the service of the Roman Church hierarchy, since, as Robert Lewis observes, “[h]e mentions audiences with Clement VII and otherwise gives evidence of close acquaintance with the affairs of the Papal Court” (31). But we do not know for certain how long Gómara stayed in Italy or in what capacity. He says he was in Venice with Diego Hurtado de Mendoza in 1540 (Los corsarios 112), author of the Guerra de Granada. Lewis believes that Mendoza influenced Gómara and perhaps even encouraged him to begin his own career as a historian (31). Gómara probably met Cortés around the time of the invasion of Algiers in 1541, though he may not have sailed with the fleet as he claims in the Historia de la conquista de México (373; ch. 251), since he retracts that claim for the 1554 edition (Wagner, The Spanish Southwest 56). He entered Cortés’s service shortly after the conquistador returned from Mexico to attend to the lawsuits and inquiries brought against him by the audiencia under Nuño de Guzmán (Lewis 32). During these years, until Cortés’s death in 1547, Gómara served him as secretary and chaplain in Valladolid, where he met other conquistadors as well as several intellectuals who approved of the conquest. Among those to gather at the Cortés residence were two historians who would draw on Gómara as a source for their own accounts of the conquest: Francisco Cervantes de Salazar and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. Both of these humanists undoubtedly influenced Gómara through personal contact and through their earlier writings. Cervantes de Salazar’s dialogue on the dignity of man was published in Alcalá de Henares in

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Convincing Likeness 1546, and Sepúlveda’s Democrates secundus, though unpublished in the sixteenth century, circulated in manuscript form. In 1545 Gómara dedicated his history of the two Barbary pirates, Oruch and Jaradín Barbarroja, to Pedro Alvarez Ossorio, Marquis of Astorga and father of Cortés’s son-in-law. Although this work, now known as the Crónica de los corsarios Barbarroja,14 was not published until the nineteenth century, it served as a primary source for Prudencio de Sandoval’s Origen de Barbarrojas (Merriman xv). In the dedication to his history, Gómara says he is working on a biography of Cortés, which will be finished soon, “placiendo a Nuestro Señor” (17). Gómara published the Historia general de las Indias and the Historia de la conquista de México in late 1552, well after Cortés’s death in 1547. Although Gómara received payment from Cortés’s son for his work (Iglesia 153) and probably remained in the pay of the second Marqués del Valle for several years afterward (Lewis 37), he did not serve as a mere spokesperson for Cortés. Wagner even believes that Cortés’s family had a hand in prohibiting the publication of Gómara’s history, because it was too critical of the conqueror. To support this theory, Wagner points out that the revised 1554 edition omits several unfavorable comments about Hernán Cortés and his mother (55–56).15 But these revisions either did not satisfy the family or do not point to the real reason behind the prohibition, because the book remained banned until 1729 (Lewis 319). Other theories abound to explain why the Crown suppressed Gómara’s work. Gurría Lacroix believes that Las Casas used his influence to have the Historia general de las Indias and the Historia de la conquista de México prohibited because they defended the enslavement of the Indians and attempted to justify the conquest (López de Gómara, Historia de la conquista de México xxii). Iglesia shows that Gómara was freely critical of the emperor’s policies in all of his works, and thinks that this independence motivated the royal censorship and that the same fate would have befallen the Anales and Los corsarios had they been published. Finally, Merriman (xvii) and Bataillon (“Hernán Cortés, autor prohibido” 80–81) both suspect that the image of a conquistador acting largely on his own initiative was a threat to the Crown’s authority. This theory could also help to account for the prohibition of Cortés’s Cartas. In the end there

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Chapter Three is no lack of reasons why several people would have wanted to see the work banned, and all the theories offered above to explain the prohibition are compatible, even Wagner’s. Gómara, though a champion of the Spanish Empire and of Hernán Cortés, was independent enough from both to incur the wrath of the bureaucrats of the first and the descendents of the second. In his note to potential translators of the Historia general and the Historia de la conquista de México, Gómara says that he is already working on a Latin version of this history, but in his dedication to Charles, the Latin version he mentions is not merely a translation. “Quedo haciéndola en latín, y acabaréla presto. Dios mediante, si vuestra majestad lo manda y favorece. Y de allí diré muchas cosas que aquí se callan, pues el lenguaje lo sufre y lo requiere” (Historia general 8). Given the royal reception to the Spanish version, it is hardly surprising that there is no full version extant in Latin. Nevertheless, it appears that the fragment De rebus gestis Ferdinandi Cortesii, which Iglesia has identified as the work of Gómara, is the beginning of his expanded biography of Cortés.16 It treats only Cortés’s early life, up to the moment he embarks for Mexico, but in far more detail than the Historia de la conquista de México. The fragment also omits a few of Cortés’s less glorious adventures, such as the year he spent wandering around Spain “a la flor del berro” (Historia de la conquista de México 8; ch. 1) and the energy he expended trying to avoid matrimony with Catalina Xuárez (11; ch. 4). There are other notable differences as well, but the essential characteristics of the conqueror coincide with those in the Historia de la conquista de México, even though the De rebus gestis provides a more glorified and less compromising vision of him.17 Furthermore, the Latin fragment also displays the macabre irony typical of Gómara’s Castilian prose. After a lengthy description of the inhabitants of Hispaniola, Gómara (at least it sounds like Gómara) says that everything has improved after contact with the Spaniards, except that from among the thousands who used to inhabit the island only one or two remain (“Hispanorum commercio omnia in melius mutari contigit, praeterquam quod ex tot mortalium millibus qui insulam incolebant, vix unus aut alter superstes” [qtd. in Iglesia 323]). During the last years of his life, Gómara traveled to Flanders and composed another work, the Anales de Carlos Quinto, 86

Convincing Likeness around 1557–58. Although Gómara probably considered the Anales to be incomplete, and although they remained unpublished until 1912, Merriman shows that they served as an important source for several historians. The most prominent was Prudencio de Sandoval (1560–1621), who copied extensively from Gómara’s Anales for his own Historia de la vida y hechos del emperador Carlos Quinto (Valladolid, 1604–06) (Merriman xxxix–xl). Gómara ended his days in relative obscurity. Lewis believes that he died not long after writing his last will and testament in 1559 (49). He had risen from a modest provincial family to mix with some of the most powerful religious and political figures of his age, but by the time of his death Gómara had fallen from royal favor because of the decrees banning his work. Yet, if the Historia de la conquista de México was dangerous to the empire in the short term, it successfully served that empire for centuries by providing the core of the prevailing version of the conquest. Gómara discusses theoretical questions of historiography most fully in the dedication to his Crónica de los corsarios Barbarroja. He starts his address to the Marquis of Astorga by dividing history into two genres: “Dos maneras hay, muy ilustre Señor, de escribir historias; la una es cuando se escribe la vida, la otra cuando se cuentan los hechos de un emperador o valiente capitán” (13). This exclusive view of history largely accords with Gómara’s practice of the art in Los corsarios, De rebus gestis, and the Historia de la conquista de México. Although the Historia de la conquista de México includes much cultural history as well as biography, this digression from the life of the conqueror is set apart from the rest of the narrative. Simpson, saying that it interrupts the flow of the narrative (xxv), omits it altogether in his English translation. The story of the conquest generally follows the trajectory of the life of its hero. But since Cortés’s fame rests entirely on the conquest, events after his victorious return to Spain in 1528 receive much less attention. Biography and conquest revolve around each other and define each other. In the Historia general Gómara’s narrative takes the form of a geographical tour of the Indies, with long sections dedicated to cultural history; and in the Anales chronology imposes a rigid structure that does not lend itself to individual focus. Yet even in these two works Gómara 87

Chapter Three overcomes his own formal barriers to biography by providing numerous and often lengthy vignettes of famous personages. Both Iglesia (100, 103) and Lewis (143–47) have commented on Gómara’s vision of history as the composite of the lives and deeds of “great men,” and they have noted that such a conception, typical of the Renaissance, is individualistic, aristocratic, and heroic. Iglesia likens it to a portrait gallery, a “colección de semblanzas” (101), which calls to mind Fernán Pérez de Guzmán’s Generaciones y semblanzas, a widely read book of lives that saw three printings in Spain during Gómara’s lifetime (Pérez de Guzmán xxviii). Especially representative of the flourishing genre was Fernando de Pulgar’s Claros varones de Castilla, which gives more extensive treatment of its subjects and which enjoyed greater popularity, published eight times by the middle of the sixteenth century (Pulgar xxiii– xxix). Gómara makes no mention of these possible models, citing instead classical precedents: Suetonius, Plutarch, and Saint Jerome (Los corsarios 13), but he does seem to attempt to adhere to the three guidelines that Pérez de Guzmán sets for the historian: la primera, que el historiador sea discreto e sabio, e aya buena retorica para poner la estoria en fermoso e alto estilo; porque la buena forma onra e guarnece la materia. La segunda, que el sea presente a los prinçipales e notables abtos de guerra e de paz; e porque serie inposible ser el en todos los fechos, a lo menos que el fuese asi discreto, que non reçibiese informaçion sinon de presonas dignas de fe e que oviesen seydo presentes a los fechos . . . La tercera, es que la estoria non sea publicada biviendo el rey o prinçipe en cuyo tiempo e señorio se hordena, porque el estoriador sea libre para escriuir la verdad sin temor. (5–6)

Most of the “great men” about whom Gómara writes have passed away by the time his histories appear in print, though, as he clarifies in Los corsarios, this condition applies only in the case of fully developed biographies. For Gómara the only true vida that survives from his works, according to his own definition in Los corsarios, is that of Hernán Cortés in the Historia de la conquista de México. He clearly distinguishes between the project of writing a vida and the less demanding

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Convincing Likeness and far more common project of recounting somebody’s deeds (hechos): De la primera usaron Suetonio Tranquillo, Plutarco, San Jerónimo y otros muchos. De aquella otra es el común uso que todos tienen de escribir, de la cual para satisfacer al oyente bastará relatar solamente las hazañas, guerras, victorias y desastres del capitán: en la primera se han de decir todos los vicios de la persona de quien se escribe; verdadera y descubiertamente ha de hablar el que escribe vida; no se puede bien escribir la vida del que aún no es muerto; las guerras y grandes hechos muy bien, aunque esté vivo. (Los corsarios 13)

A history of hechos can more easily satisfy its audience, while a vida does not necessarily satisfy anyone, or propose to, since it must uncover even the subject’s vices. The Historia de la conquista de México fits into this category, since its ostensibly thorough treatment of Cortés probably satisfied no one, not even those in whose service Gómara worked while writing it. The “biographies” of the two Barbarroja brothers should not be held up to the same exacting standards because he is not writing their lives but their history: “no escribo vida sino historia” (Los corsarios 13). Instead of giving a well-rounded portrait of them, he concentrates on their most notable deeds. Although the Historia general de las Indias achieves its own artistic unity, it also serves as a backdrop for Gómara’s more famous Historia de la conquista de México. All the other explorations and conquests, even the conquest of Peru, receive far less attention than Cortés’s feat. The conquest of Mexico receives separate treatment not only because Gómara had more direct information and personal interest in it, but because for him it was the greatest of conquests, just as for him Cortés was the greatest of conquerors: por cuanto [Cortés] hizo muchas y grandes hazañas en las guerras que allí tuvo [en la Nueva España], que, sin perjuicio de ningún español de Indias, fueron las mejores de cuantas se han hecho en aquellas partes del Nuevo Mundo, las escribiré por su parte, a imitación de Polibio y de Salustio, que sacaron de las historias romanas, que juntas y enteras hacían, éste la de Mario y aquél la de Escipión. También la

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Chapter Three hago yo por estar la Nueva España muy rica y mejorada, muy poblada de españoles, muy llena de naturales, y todos cristianados, y por la cruel extrañeza de antigua religión, y por otras nuevas costumbres que aplacerán y aun espantarán al lector. (Historia general 73; ch. 50)

Cortés’s heroic qualities are not the only reason Gómara sets his conquest apart from the others. Unlike Marius and Scipio, his triumph stands out as much for where it takes place and against whom as for how. Although Jugurtha and Hannibal are formidable opponents, and although they bestow on their victors great importance, they are not as foreign to Polybius and Sallust’s contemporary readers as the Aztecs are to Gómara’s. Even Atahualpa and the Incas do not capture the Spanish imagination in the same way, probably because their religion does not display the same “cruel strangeness” as the religions of Mesoamerica. The promise of both pleasing and frightening customs entices the reader as much as Cortés’s triumphs. At a safe distance, the Europeans can reserve for last the novelties that horrify them the most. In the same dedication of Los corsarios, Gómara answers those critics who say that as a clergyman he should not write about infidels or war, charges that could easily pertain to his New World historiography as well. In spite of his inexperience in war, Gómara claims that he is able to write a true history, and he gives examples of ancients and even Church Fathers who wrote about wars and other nations, as well as of heretics and infidels (14–15). Here he disagrees with the views of one of his models, Polybius, who claims that military and political experience are necessary qualifications for the historian (444– 45; 12.25). As a clergyman Gómara claims to possess a different type of experience that serves him especially well in writing about the corsairs. He knows and feels the destruction that the Barbarrojas have wrought on Christendom, and he hints that as a man of the Church his religious commitment qualifies him as a historian of events that deeply affect the Christian community. He does not purport to write “sine ira et studio,” that is, with the Tacitean claim of impartiality in vogue among theorists of history at the time, such as Fox Morcillo (22v–23, 83). Rather, he suggests that he will use his anger and partiality to give a more inspired, and presumably more thorough, account. 90

Convincing Likeness Yet Gómara comes dangerously close to contradicting his defense of historical commitment when he indirectly answers others who will criticize his Historia general because he never went to the Indies himself. In speaking of the difficulties of arriving at the truth even in recent history, he shows his mistrust of eyewitnesses as well as of second-hand sources, “los cuales todos suelen por odio o por envidia o por gracia y lisonja, encubrir la verdad contando las cosas muy al revés de lo que fue” (16). Although Gómara cannot avoid this same criticism with regard to his own histories, he can claim some critical distance and alleviate suspicions by making a show of interpreting his sources carefully and by stressing that eyewitnesses are too involved to be thoroughly reliable. Gómara never claims complete detachment from the events he narrates, but he is careful to dissociate himself from those who are so involved that their self-interest prevents them from either arriving at or disclosing the “truth.” In the case of the conquest of Mexico, Gómara also needs to distance his history from eyewitness accounts, including that of his patron, though he never sees the firsthand account that future readers will be most inclined to compare with his Historia de la conquista de México: Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, completed by 1584 though not published until 1632. Díaz del Castillo’s political engagement may be more straightforward than Gómara’s, especially because the Las Casas camp directly threatens his reputation as a conquistador and his landholdings in Guatemala (see Adorno, “Discourses on Colonialism”). But the contrast with Díaz del Castillo should not blind us to Gómara’s own need to respond to the political context of his book. Jonathan Loesberg has argued that Gómara’s “generic” history authorizes itself differently from the firsthand accounts of Cortés and Díaz del Castillo, with the result that the real debate between Gómara and Díaz del Castillo can take place only at the level of form (258–59). According to this reading, Gómara overshadows open reference to the present in his narrative by placing that narrative within a tradition of written histories and by looking ahead to the future, endowing the events he narrates with a significance that transcends their contemporary context. This future, says Loesberg:

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Chapter Three has the same quality as the past; its importance is precisely the fact of temporally enduring significance given primarily by an historical content. In such a situation, a reader more normally looks to form for the explanation of the history it encompasses rather than to political context for an explanation of form. And turning a reader’s attention to form and away from the ostensibly political content is precisely the political achievement of successfully performed generic history. (251)

The resulting split between emphasis on form and emphasis on content parallels the split that Loesberg establishes between the narrator and the protagonist in Cortés’s Cartas. Whereas with the Cartas Loesberg sees Cortés separating his narrative strategies as a letter writer from his military and political strategies as a conqueror, in the Historia de la conquista de México Loesberg imagines the reader dissociating the form of the history from the political forces that shaped that history. Gómara thus authorizes his work, in Loesberg’s view, by writing in the classical tradition and by transcending the moment of its composition. Loesberg does not, however, account for the several passages in the Historia de la conquista de México that refer directly to the political forces that shaped that moment. Loesberg sees a further division within the Historia de la conquista de México between two coexistent but contradictory narrative lines, “one that places the conquest in a line of divine histories, the other which makes it a tale of secular heroism” (253). For Loesberg, the narrative of divine history attempts to justify the conquest as a necessary step toward conversion, because Gómara believes that the Indians are subject to their religion, “to the point at which reason is a useless appeal” (253). According to this view, the only exchange of information before and during the conquest comes at a secular level, and here the Aztecs, with their splendid capital of Tenochtitlan, rival the Europeans. When “Gómara depicts Montezuma’s empire as an extensive and civilized political entity,” for Loesberg it is “as if the savage idolator-Indians belonged to some other text” (254). But in Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México the Aztecs’ advanced civilization does not make them any less idolatrous, and Loesberg’s separation between divine and secular narrative lines does not help to account for Cortés’s numer-

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Convincing Likeness ous speeches against idolatry, including the one Gómara “reproduces” in his chapter 86. For there Gómara credits the conqueror with combining reason with religious zeal in a feat greater than military conquest: “Más honra y prez ganó Cortés con esta hazaña cristiana que si los venciera en batalla” (129; ch. 86). And more to the point, this attempt at conversion is at the same time a political and religious act, because within the world of the Historia de la conquista de México, just as within the world of Cortés’s Cartas, serving the divine truth and serving the empire are one and the same thing. Any split between political and religious goals would endanger the legitimacy of the conquest. It is on precisely this point that Las Casas repeatedly attacks Sepúlveda and others, in spite of Sepúlveda’s efforts not to invert the empire’s stated priorities (Democrates secundus 30). For Las Casas any secular motivation independent from the higher goal of spreading and defending the faith inverts the natural order that the Spaniards claim to uphold: parece preposterar y pervertir el doctor [Sepúlveda] la orden natural, haciendo del medio fin y de lo accessorio principal. El fin de todo este negocio y lo que tiene Dios por principal es la predicación de la fe, dilatación de su Iglesia . . . Lo accessorio y menos principal es los bienes temporales y que se aprovechen los españoles que allá fueren, de lo cual el reverendo doctor muchas veces en sus escriptos como por fin principal echa mano. (Tratados 192)

Elsewhere Las Casas puts it even more plainly when he accuses Sepúlveda of “making the means the ends and the ends the means” (“medium . . . facere finem et finem medium” [Apologia 652; 60]). In Chapter 2, I have discussed how the spiritual and political hierarchy of principles, means, and ends parallels the narrative hierarchy of beginnings, middles, and ends. Las Casas seems to be referring to both when he attacks Gómara for getting his story wrong: “no escribió [Gómara] sino lo que Cortés de sí mismo testificaba, con que al mundo, que no sabía de su principio, medio y fin cosa, Cortés y Gómara encandilaron” (Historia de las Indias 3: 1871; bk. 3, ch. 27). But he does not charge Gómara with inverting this order, only with providing a different story. For the historian, the coherence of the narrative supports the coherence of the politics. If Gómara

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Chapter Three did not reconcile the two narrative lines that Loesberg describes, political consistency would be impossible. This narrative, political, and religious consistency allows the conquest to include something for everyone, as Gómara has Cortés tell his men before the final campaign against Tenochtitlan: ‘“vamos ya, sirvamos a Dios, honremos a nuestra nación, engrandezcamos nuestro rey, y enriquezcamos nosotros; que para todo es la empresa de México’” (Historia de la conquista de México 189; ch. 120; emphasis added). And yet, the narration of this “Mexican enterprise,” which purports to serve God, country, king, and conquistador, will only persuade the reader of its full coherence if that coherence extends to yet another level, namely, that of the narrator himself. In his Cartas de relación, Cortés achieves such consistency by fusing his roles as discoverer, conqueror, and writer; that is, he authorizes his actions and his account by portraying his account as an extension of the actions that it narrates. His words—addressed to his men, the Mesoamericans, and the emperor alike—are among his most notable deeds. Gómara, by contrast, cannot participate in this circle, for he himself is not a textual agent of history, and his connection to one of those agents—Cortés—is, in the eyes of many readers, a liability. Instead, he establishes a distance between himself and his patron at the same time as he defines the role of a historian in terms that connect him to the larger political and religious goals of the empire. He draws this connection most clearly in the dedication to the Marquis of Astorga in Los corsarios Barbarroja, where he relates the search for truth in history to a more general notion of service to the truth in all spheres of life. In this way his vision of his duty as a historian parallels the ideals that guide his judgment of the protagonists of his history. He adds to his claim that he will speak the whole truth “sin haber de fingir mentiras o verosimilitudes” by also maintaining that he will fulfill his duty “contando llanamente las cosas” (Los corsarios 16). Following this declaration of sincerity and openness, however, comes one of Gómara’s more obscure passages, in which he seems to be separating polemical historiography from that which is guided by reason: Locura es a mi ver poner las cosas feas y hermosas, malas y buenas en opinión, y no en razón; porque quien quiera de

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Convincing Likeness cualquier gente y tierra que sea que llevare por su guía a naturaleza podrá fácilmente llegar a la cumbre de la virtud. Empero, si este tal quisiere seguir como animal bruto su apetito, entrarse ha redondamente en el piélago de los vicios; tanta es la conformidad, tanta semejanza tiene el linaje en las obras santas y buenas, en las cosas malas y bellacas. (16–17)

Gómara starts here by focusing on the problem of historical truth; then he quickly shifts emphasis and outlines instead a “natural” path to virtue. One might say simply that truth for the historian is a virtue, but he has combined his discussion of historiography with another discussion of the virtues and vices of historical figures. The difference between the pinnacle of virtue and the sea of vice is for Gómara the difference between Cortés on the one hand and the Barbarroja pirates on the other. Their histories demonstrate the deceptive proximity of the different paths they have followed, and Gómara urges the Marquis of Astorga to compare them: “entienda y conoza muy bien en qué son iguales estos dos tan nombrados capitanes, Cortés y [Jaradín] Barbarroja, y cuán diferentes principios y sucesos tuvieron entrambos, y cuán diversamente hoy día vive cada cual con su Rey y señor” (Los corsarios 17). Their different beginnings and principles carry them toward different ends. Only one, we are to conclude, has discerned the difference between virtue and the semblance of virtue. Considering that Gómara started this comparison with a discussion of the practice of writing history, he seems to be drawing a parallel between the good historian and the virtuous hero of history. Both must avoid the pitfalls of false semblances in order to find what they seek, truth for one and virtue for the other. When Gómara tells the Marquis of Astorga to look carefully at Jaradín Barbarroja’s life so that when he sees the life of Cortés he can see their similarities and differences, he lets the reader see some of the guarded admiration that he feels for both Oruch and Jaradín Barbarroja. Like Cortés, they have risen to fame from humble beginnings, with daring, cunning, and ingenuity. Oruch’s boldest act, the burning of his ships at Bujía, recalls Cortés’s scuttling of his own fleet at Veracruz, except that Oruch’s strategy backfires: his men are stranded, and he regrets his decision (Los corsarios 41). Yet the degree of success does not separate pirates from conqueror so much as 95

Chapter Three the different principles (principios), that define that success and the different means (medios) that guide them to it. Unlike Cortés, the pirates have not prospered by winning friends, but rather by double-crossing them. Oruch has only one friend when he dies, Ben-Alcalde (61), whom his brother alienates along with other supporters, such as Cartaçan (69–70). Neither Barbarroja wins reliable allies because neither is reliable himself, according to Gómara, who considers “inconstancia” to be a characterizing trait of Turks and Arabs (77). In the Historia de la conquista de México, Gómara draws a sharper contrast between Cortés and another Spaniard, Pánfilo de Narváez, when he summarizes their encounter. ¿Cuánta ventaja hace un hombre a otro? ¿Qué hizo, dijo, pensó cada capitán de estos dos? Pocas veces, o nunca por ventura, tan pocos vencieron a tantos de una misma nación; especial estando los muchos en lugar fuerte, descansados y bien armados. (160; ch. 101) Costó esta guerra muchos dineros a Diego Velázquez, la honra y un ojo a Pánfilo de Narváez, y muchas vidas de Indios, no a hierro, sino de dolencia. (161; ch. 102)

For Loesberg this passage is one of the “ironic encapsulations of events or chapters” that often run “counter to the shape of any of [Gómara’s] themes or forms” (255). In Gómara’s series of questions at the end of the Narváez episode, Loesberg sees “no rhetorical suggestion of the workings of providence or any other explanatory force” and says that the irony of the following comment on what the war cost Diego Velázquez, Narváez, and the Indians “adds nothing to any larger structure”: Since Gómara has amply proved himself able to control, with impressive skill, narrative structures at both the small and the large scale, I would suggest that both the rhetorical questions and the aimless irony indicate the same recurrent technique, recourse to any arbitrary linguistic form on the basis that form itself is its own justification. (Loesberg 250)

While there is something to be said for the observation that Gómara’s formal resolution does not always coincide with any larger message, here the rhetorical questions strike at the heart of one of the narrative’s central themes, namely, how to carry out a successful conquest. They underscore the reason why 96

Convincing Likeness Cortés is a successful conqueror. His manner of defeating Narváez parallels his strategy for the conquest as a whole, for he outwits Narváez more than he overwhelms him. Cortés’s carefully groomed reputation, his bribery, and his smooth talking prevail over Narváez’s divisive strategy, which jeopardizes Spain’s foothold on the continent. The answer to Gómara’s question, “What advantage has one man over another?” (160; ch. 101), is that one man has great personal advantages that overcome another’s material advantages. Cortés prevailed because of who he was and in spite of what Narváez had. The irony of one man’s material advantage being immaterial in the end highlights a primary historical cause for the outcome of the conquest. In Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México, that historical cause is Cortés’s character.

3. Gómara’s Protean Hero Cortés takes on several guises in Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México, but three main facets of his character predominate: the soldier, the politician, and the religious crusader. Cortés thus embodies the union of three dimensions of the idealized Spanish life, a union that is necessary for the empire to present a cohesive and credible image of its mission in the New World. By contrast, Gómara pays little attention to Cortés’s post-conquest commercial pursuits in mining, agriculture, livestock, silk, and sugar. The chapters that cover his second stay in Mexico focus instead on the expeditions off the Pacific coast and into what would be called the Sea of Cortés. In spite of the important role that commercial enterprises played in the actual process of expansion and empire-building, they do not play a key role in the attempts to justify Spain’s empire, at least not in Gómara. Although Gómara presents an idealized image of his protagonist, he also brings out some of the apparent contradictions in his character. For example, during the siege of Tenochtitlan, Gómara’s Cortés repeatedly shows compassion for the inhabitants of the city he feels forced to destroy (Historia de la conquista de México 215; ch. 135. 218; ch. 137. 226; ch. 142); he even consoles Cuauhtemoc after the capital’s fall (228; ch. 143) and later rescues the emperor from torture (231; ch. 146). But Gómara also makes him bear the responsibility for that 97

Chapter Three torture (277; ch. 179), as well as for the slaughter of unarmed men, women, and children during the siege (225; ch. 142), and for the branding of slaves afterward (229; ch. 144). Gómara’s portrayal of Cortés as both compassionate and cruel to the American Indians parallels another set of alternating images in the Historia de la conquista de México: Cortés as a loyal subject to the Spanish Crown and as a renegade who takes matters into his own hands. Cortés prevents a “comunero” revolt in Mexico (238; ch. 152) and refuses to resume the governorship after Ponce de León’s death. He even encourages Marcos de Aguilar, Ponce de León’s replacement, to proceed with the inquiry into his own activities (297; ch. 190). Gómara defends Cortés against all charges of disloyalty, and says that the conquistador always spouted two old sayings: “‘El rey sea mi gallo’” and “‘Por tu ley y por tu rey morirás’” (298; ch. 190). Yet this loyalty is so strong that it is, ironically, difficult to control. Understandably, many see Cortés as something of a loose cannon when he abruptly departs from Cuba and orchestrates his break from Diego Velázquez. He and others, including Gómara, will argue that such acts serve the emperor’s interests better in the end, and that if he had been slavishly obedient to his immediate superiors, Cortés would have been another Grijalba, postponing the conquest indefinitely. Instead, he walks the line between following imperial policy and reshaping that policy through his words and actions. For Gómara, he is valuable to the Crown precisely because he is dangerously unpredictable. Gómara defines Cortés’s contradictory character most succinctly in the framing chapters of his work (1–7 and 251–52), that is, in the sections that treat his youth and early years in the Indies and those that summarize his life in a biographical sketch such as Pérez de Guzmán might have written. The young Cortés in Gómara anticipates characteristics from two Spanish literary types that flourish after the writing of the Historia de la conquista de México: the pícaro and the Don Juan.18 As might be expected, the picaresque elements appear first. In spite of Cortés’s “virtuous” parents and their good intentions, he is as difficult for them to control as he will be for others: “Daba y tomaba enojos y ruido en casa de sus padres, que era bullicioso, altivo, travieso, amigo de armas” (8; ch. 1). They send him to Salamanca in the hope that he will eventually study law, not 98

Convincing Likeness because he is studious, but rather because he has a natural ability (“ingenio”) that will prove useful later when he manipulates men and laws for his own purpose: “Pues era muy buen ingenio y hábil para toda cosa” (8; ch. 1). The two years that Gómara says that Cortés spends studying at Salamanca have occasioned innumerable “armas y letras” eulogies. But Demetrio Ramos Pérez has shown in his study “Cortés en Salamanca” that the more elaborate claims about these years— that Cortés studied at the University and even received a degree in law—originate with Las Casas and Bernal Díaz, not with Gómara (403–06). Gómara dwells less on Cortés’s studies than on his abandonment of them: “Volvióse a Medellín harto o arrepentido de estudiar o quizá falta de dineros” (8; ch. 1). Using a technique that he will repeat throughout the Historia de la conquista de México and elsewhere, Gómara provides alternate and often contradictory explanations of an event. Here the image of a bored, restless youth who spends his time and money on other pursuits besides Latin is far stronger than that of a poor noble who reluctantly leaves his studies merely because he cannot afford them. Adventure and gold attract Cortés to the Indies, according to Gómara, but another type of adventure prevents him from embarking with Nicolás de Ovando, governor-designate of Hispaniola: Mas entretanto que Ovando aderezaba su partida y se aprestaba la flota que tenía de llevar, entró Fernando Cortés una noche a una casa por hablar a una mujer, y andando por una pared de un trascorral mal cimentada, cayó con ella. Al ruido que hizo la pared y las armas y broquel que llevaba, salió un recién casado, que, como le vio caído cerca de su puerta, lo quiso matar, sospechando algo de su mujer; empero una vieja, suegra suya, se lo estorbó. Quedó malo de la caída, recreciéronle cuartanas, que le duraron mucho tiempo; y así no pudo ir con el gobernador Ovando. (8; ch. 1)

The image of the future conqueror fallen and helpless, the victim of his own desire (and of someone’s else’s poor construction), does nothing to diminish his heroic stature. On the contrary, that Cortés should find an ally in the mother-in-law of the jealous husband hints at how thoroughly he has succeeded in his romantic conquest. Gómara suggests that 99

Chapter Three Cortés’s ability to win the favor of women saves his life, though this ability also endangers his life in the first place. After recovering from his fall, Cortés decides to go to Italy instead of the New World, “mas no pasó a Italia, sino andúvose a la flor del berro, aunque no sin trabajos y necesidades, cerca de un año” (8; ch. 1). Covarrubias defines andarse a la flor del berro as “darse al vicio y a la ociosidad, entreteniéndose en una parte y en otra, como haze el ganado quando está bien pacido y harto, que llegando al berro corta dél tan solamente la florecita” (209). This expression suggests that the young Cortés was living the easy life, perhaps even deflowering his way across the countryside. Yet the difficulties he encountered during this year on his own suggest that he may have run into more trouble, or at least lived as something of a vagabond. This characterization, however, does not harm Cortés’s reputation any more than his romantic misadventure. In the Historia de la conquista de México this “school of hard knocks” is every bit as valuable to him as any time he may have spent reading Caesar’s Commentaries in Salamanca, as many have imagined him doing. Diego Velázquez, who will later recognize Cortés’s qualities and ask him to be “oficial del tesorero . . . por ser hábil y diligente” (10; ch. 4), contributes to Cortés’s education as a hero by having him arrested in Cuba. Gómara describes in detail Cortés’s dashing escapes from the law, from his fiancée Catalina Xuárez, and later from a storm at sea (11–12; ch. 4). In the Historia de la conquista de México these are not detours from his life as a hero so much as preparation: “por semejantes peligros y rodeos corren su camino los muy excelentes varones, hasta llegar do les está guardada su buena dicha” (12; ch. 4). Gómara’s account of the young Cortés includes many picaresque elements, though of a much higher order than those associated with Francisco Pizarro, who, Gómara says, was abandoned as a newborn baby and suckled by a sow (Historia general 209; ch. 144). According to Gómara, Cortés does not spend any time in a pigsty, but he does live hand to mouth for a while and get himself into much serious mischief, and he emerges the better captain for it. Diego Velázquez asks Cortés to lead his fleet “porque era hombre diligente, discreto y esforzado” (Historia de la conquista de México 16; ch. 7), but changes his mind upon hearing other things about Cortés that

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Convincing Likeness he should have already known: “que era extremeño, mañoso, altivo, amador de honras y hombre que se vengaría en aquello de lo pasado” (17; ch. 7). The qualities that commend him to Velázquez and those that make him dangerous to the governor are the same qualities that turn him into a successful conqueror: his bravery, pride, and above all, his cunning (maña). Maña is a form of dexterity and deception that both recalls and replaces the hands: “Maña, vale destreza, y díxose a manu, por ser la mano el instrumento de los instrumentos . . . En otra sinificación maña vale ardid, astucia y engaño” (Covarrubias 785). The hidalgo, whose social class shuns all work with the hands in favor of warfare, becomes a mañoso, a master of sleight of hand in peace and war. Maña and its near synonym, industria, recur in Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México as well as other accounts of the conquest to describe a key quality of Cortés. He cannot conquer in Gómara without it, and in one episode he metaphorically takes it away from his opponents. During the Tlaxcalan campaign, in which Gómara describes Cortés as a good man with his hands (“buen hombre por las manos” [86; ch. 49]), his Cempoalan ally, Teuch, tells him that the Tlaxcalans who bring the Spaniards food are really spies. After interrogating five or six Tlaxcalans, Cortés sends all fifty of them back to their camp with their hands cut off. Here Gómara follows and expands on Cortés’s Segunda relación (179).19 Although neither Gómara nor Cortés draws an explicit connection between manos and maña here, both imply that Cortés, by cutting off the spies’ hands, puts an end to their trickery. The butchery carries meaning, even if part of the message is the horrifying novelty of the punishment, which leaves the Tlaxcalans wondering what its full significance is. They start to fear the Spaniards because of their brutality, their unpredictability, and their apparent ability to read minds: “Grandísimo pavor tomaron los indios de ver cortadas las manos a sus espías, cosa nueva para ellos, y creían que tenían los nuestros algún familiar que les decía lo que ellos tenían allá en su pensamiento” (85; ch. 48). Gómara not only has the Tlaxcalans acknowledging that these messengers were in fact spies; he makes their credulity an essential stage in their submission.

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Chapter Three If, in spite of his maña, Gómara’s Cortés fits the pícaro mold only imperfectly, in many ways he is more closely suited to the character of the Don Juan. Indeed, before Cortés is “conquistador de México,” he is a “conquistador de mujeres,” visiting married women in the night and going to great extremes to avoid marrying Catalina Xuárez. Again, far from condemning him, these romantic escapades for Gómara stand as proof of Cortés’s virility and ingenuity in spite of, or perhaps because of, the pain they may have caused the jealous husband in Spain and the abandoned Catalina in Cuba. In regard to this last “conquest” of Cortés’s and the trouble it brought him, there is a tradition from Las Casas to Eulalia Guzmán that bristles in response to the stories of his youthful boldness in Cuba, probably because this series of romantic conquests, narrow escapes, and bold encounters places Cortés within a recognized heroic mold. The most telling conquest strikes Las Casas as the least likely and establishes Cortés’s power more than any other. After Diego Velázquez has ordered Cortés arrested and Cortés has twice eluded the governor’s forces, he finds sanctuary in the church in Santiago. But when Velázquez is on campaign, Cortés decides to slip away from the church and surprise the governor in his quarters: Diego Velázquez temió, por verle armado y a tal hora; rogóle que cenase y descansase sin recelo. El dijo que no venía sino a saber las quejas que de él tenía, y a satisfacerle y a ser su amigo y servidor. Tocáronse las manos por amigos, y después de muchas pláticas se acostaron juntos en una cama; donde los halló a la mañana Diego de Orellana, que fue a ver al gobernador y a decirle que se había ido Cortés. (12; ch. 4)

This encounter contains many of the elements of a seduction in the manner of a Don Juan. Cortés surprises the governor in his quarters, frightens him because he is armed, eventually wins his confidence, and finally even shares his bed. This is not to say that Cortés and Diego Velázquez are lovers in this scene, but that the anecdote defines their power relationship in many of the same terms as those of a romantic conquest. Later, when he reaches Mexico, Cortés will deceive Velázquez by escaping

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Convincing Likeness from the contractual agreement that the two had reached at another juncture. The power terms of the relationship are also evident from the vehemence with which Las Casas denies Gómara’s version of the incident: ¡que diga Gómara que no le quiso hablar [Cortés] por muchos días y que había ido armado a preguntar que qué quejas tenía dél y que iba a ser su amigo y que se tocaron las manos y que durmieron aquella noche en una cama! Yo vide a Cortés en aquellos días, o muy poco después, tan bajo y tan humilde, que del más chico criado que Diego Velázquez tenía quisiera tener favor. (Historia 3: 1870; bk. 3, ch. 27)

At the end of the Historia de la conquista de México, in the other framing chapters, Gómara’s apparently balanced judgment of the conqueror resembles in form many of the character sketches in the Historia general and the Anales. Wagner thinks that Cortés’s family considered this final portrait, along with other parts of the whole work, to be “too balanced,” a theory that would explain the portions that were excised for the 1554 edition, including two passages that perhaps carry the philandering image too far: “Fue muy dado a las mujeres, y diose siempre. Lo mismo hizo al juego, y jugaba a los dados a maravilla bien y alegremente” (375; ch. 257). Cortés is not the only one playing with dados here. The quick repetition of the different forms of the verb dar followed by another form of the verb (dados), but with a different meaning (“dice”), links the conqueror’s two “vices” as two types of surrender or “giving in.” He is “given” to women and to gambling. As in the early chapters, however, Gómara presents these apparent faults as strengths, for they help explain Cortés’s success. A certain amount of daring and surrender to the unknown is necessary for victory. Cortés gambled everything in the conquest, and dared to gamble at every stage of the conquest, though in his own camp he took fewer chances, just as he did in his own home, according to another sentence that was excised in 1554: “era celoso en su casa, siendo atrevido en las ajenas; condición de putañeros” (375; ch. 257). Whether in Diego Velázquez’s quarters or Moctezuma’s palace, Gómara depicts Cortés’s boldness as one of the keys to his success. Both of these excerpts

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Chapter Three are good examples of Gómara’s concise, biting, and often insightful observations that, however accurate they may or may not be, are consistent with the persona of the conqueror that emerges from the pages of the Historia de la conquista de México. Cortés’s greatest military exploits in the Historia de la conquista de México come during the first stage of the conquest, especially when the Spaniards are trapped in Tenochtitlan (169–70; ch. 108) and after the “noche triste,” when he saves the day at the Battle of Otumba by killing the enemy’s standard-bearer: No ha habido más notable hazaña ni Victoria en Indias después que se descubrieron; y cuantos españoles vieron pelear este día a Fernando Cortés afirman que nunca hombre peleó como él, ni los suyos acaudilló, y que él solo por su persona los libró a todos. (176; ch. 111)

It is not difficult to see why Bernal Díaz might take issue with this account, which in its hyperbole reduces the foot soldier to little more than a spectator of the deeds of the great captain. Cortés’s single-handed victory puts him more in the role of a legendary knight-errant than of a modern military commander. In fact Gómara makes him both. Iglesia (167) points out the “lenguaje caballeresco” that Gómara’s Cortés uses when speaking to the fat cacique in Cempoala: “no venía sino a deshacer agravios y favorecer los presos, ayudar a los mezquinos y quitar tiranías” (59; ch. 33). He uses this language elsewhere, when he speaks to Teudilli, Moctezuma’s envoy (48–49; ch. 27), and when he reproaches the Tlaxcalans for not following the rules of chivalry: “el haberle llamado a su pueblo para matarle en el camino sobre seguro y en celada y no desafiándole primero” (92; ch. 53). Often the general atmosphere of the narrative recalls the books of chivalry, such as when Gómara describes a particularly marvelous ford that the Spaniards encounter on the Honduran expedition: “Era aquel paso una losa o peña llana, lisa y larga cuanto el río ancho, con más de veinte grietas por do caía la agua sin cubrilla; cosa que parece fábula o encantamiento como los de Amadís de Gaula, pero es certísima” (282; ch. 181). Another chapter title carries the comparison even farther: “Que se juntaron ciento y cuarenta mil hombres contra Cortés” (79; ch. 46). The synecdoche (Cortés 104

Convincing Likeness for Cortés’s army) often dominates Gómara’s account of the conquest, and, given Gómara’s concept of history as the composite of the lives of “great men,” such a substitution is hardly fortuitous. Cortés’s success at winning allies throughout the conquest is in the Historia de la conquista de México as much a testimony to his political as his military skill, especially when he plays different factions against one another (49–50; ch. 28), acting like the diplomat he claims to be. He also manipulates Spaniards, as when he masterfully orchestrates his own appointment as captain-general (52–55; chs. 30–31) and when he draws into his favor many of Narváez’s troops (155; ch. 98). He is always a step ahead of everyone else, as when he plots to seize Moctezuma, and then nonchalantly meets with the emperor, going to his palace “disimuladamente” and joking with him before making his move: “comenzó a burlar y tener palacio como otras veces solía” (134; ch. 83). Cortés is at home at Court in the Historia de la conquista de México, and even more of a courtier than in the Cartas. Gómara frequently puns on the conqueror’s name: Como se juntaron él [el cacique de Cempoala] y Cortés, hizo cada uno su mesura y cortesía al otro. (57; ch. 32) Mil placeres hacían aquellos señores [tlxacaltecas] y mucha cortesía a Cortés. (93; ch. 54) Conocía Cortés a casi todos aquellos que venían con Narváez. Hablóles cortésmente. (161; ch. 103) Cortés les hizo mucha cortesía. (272; ch. 176) [Pánfilo de Narváez] no hacía otro que dar quejas de Cortés en corte. (304; ch. 195) Anduvo Cortés muchos años congojado en la corte. (374; ch. 256)

Other echoes with “cortesía,” “corte,” “cortesano,” etc., are often only slightly less obvious (chapters 55, 66, 78, 91, 92, 113, and 196). Even if Gómara did not want to play with the implications of Cortés’s name, the association would still be unavoidable. The terms are too common not to coincide with

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Chapter Three some frequency, and furthermore they are bound together with Gómara’s characterization of Cortés in such a way that they inevitably complement each other. At Moctezuma’s court Cortés takes charge. The phrase “tener palacio” is relatively common, and usually means simply to make small talk (Moliner 2: 610). But just before Cortés seizes the emperor, the expression connotes a gradual taking of possession. To take and hold Moctezuma captive, Cortés employs the same disarming charm with which he first talked his way into the leader’s confidence. Gómara has Cortés display the same nonchalance or “sprezzatura” that is the hallmark of il cortegiano in Castiglione’s immensely popular treatise, translated into Spanish by Juan Boscán in 1533 and published the following year.20 The move from general to courtier and then to religious crusader is as seamless in Gómara’s narrative as it is in Cortés’s own Cartas de relación, and the fusion of these three roles enhances the coherence of the military, political, and religious dimensions of the conquest. Gómara says that Cortés casts down idols and preaches the Christian faith in Cozumel (27; ch. 13), Pontonchán (41; ch. 23), Cempoala (73; ch. 48), Zacotlan (77; ch. 44), Tenochtitlan (137–39; chs. 85–86), and in practically every town he comes upon: Siempre que Cortés entraba en algún pueblo, derrocaba los ídolos y vedaba el sacrificio de hombres, por quitar la ofensa de Dios e injuria del prójimo, (y con las primeras cartas y dineros que envió al emperador después que ganó a México, pidió obispos, clérigos y frailes para predicar y convertir los indios). (257; ch. 168)

In his chapter “De la conversión” (361–63; ch. 239), Gómara describes how difficult it was to put an end to polygamy, sodomy, idolatry, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, even after the Franciscan missionaries arrived in 1524 and Bishops Julián Garcés and Juan de Zumárraga in 1527. Still, by removing idols and preaching against pagan practices, Gómara’s Cortés not only paves the way for conversion, he assumes the role of the primary agent of conversion. To a great degree, Gómara gives Cortés credit for the process that he started: “¡Qué fama, qué loa será la de Cortés! El quitó los ídolos, él predicó, él vedó los sacrificios y tragazón de hombres” (362; ch. 239). 106

Convincing Likeness The warrior, politician, and religious crusader complement each other perfectly, but do not allow room in the Historia de la conquista de México for the merchant. Although Spaniards engaged in much trade in the Indies, Gómara minimizes its importance as he celebrates the chivalric ideal that brings church, state, and warrior together under one banner. The merchants in the Historia de la conquista de México, besides those who help finance a major part of Cortés’s expedition to Mexico (16–18; ch. 7), are mostly unsavory figures, such as Diego Velázquez— who seems only interested in making money—and Malinali’s kidnappers (46; ch. 26). Even the Tlaxcalans exhibit the same bias when they warn Cortés to be wary of the Cholulans because they are merchants (99; ch. 58). Those who focus solely on trade are not the most successful characters in the Historia general or in Los corsarios, where traders are often traitors, and where Gómara plays on common stereotypes and prejudices when he singles out for special criticism a Genoan and a Jew (Los corsarios 41, 57). Although Gómara calls Cortés “cuidadoso y ardid en negocios” (155; ch. 98), and suggests that he bribed Narváez’s men on at least two occasions (155; ch. 98. 160; ch. 101), he shows him passing up opportunities to sack, enslave, or trade (e.g., 42; ch. 23) and defines him in opposition to the greedy and shiftless characters who display more allegiance to money than to their god, country, and honor. Among the many possible models for the character of Cortés in the Historia de la conquista de México (the knight errant, Caesar, Machiavelli’s prince, Castiglione’s courtier, Polybius’s Scipio Africanus), the most suggestive, besides Caesar, is Odysseus, the original hero as liar. He does not parallel Gómara’s Cortés so much for his particular actions as for his legendary resourcefulness and reputation for stretching the truth as successfully as he stretches the bow. For an empire that attempts to justify its expansion by purporting to serve the truth, Odysseus provides a particularly challenging model, but not an impossible one. In 1550 one of Charles’s secretaries, Gonzalo Pérez, published a Spanish translation of the first thirteen books of The Odyssey. The complete Ulixea, along with a dedication to Philip II, would appear in Venice twelve years later (Brenes Carrillo 76).21 Although The Odyssey often allows us to see through Odysseus’s trickery, as when he, in the guise of a foreigner, 107

Chapter Three tells his own wife about meeting her husband (“D’est’arte le dezia mill mentiras / Però muy semejantes a las veras” [Pérez 625; bk. 19]), on many occasions we are no more privy to the truth than Odysseus’s audience, and could take a lesson from one of the wanderer’s more perceptive listeners. In Book 11 Alcinoos, the king of the Phaiacians, questions the veracity of Odysseus’s stories by displaying an ironically unquestioning stance. He says that he believes Odysseus, but at the same time shows that there is no way of proving whether or not his stories are lies, and that their verisimilitude, their poetic truth, makes them suspect. Alcinoo le respondio de aqueste suerte. Vlyxes, los que aqui te estamos viendo No te tenemos cierto en mala estima, Ni por embaydor, ni mentiroso, Como andan por el mundo muchos hombres, Contando mill mentiras, quando saben Que nadie las ha visto, y que se pueden Alargar, y pintarlas a su modo En ti es muy al reves, que bien se vee, Tu platica ser tal, qual es el alma. Y no ay ningun poeta, que pudiera Contar con mas prudencia, y buen estilo, Las penas y trabajos, que has passado. (Pérez 371–72; bk. 11)

“Your speech is just like your soul,” says Alcinoos. Would a liar’s speech be just like a liar’s soul? To say that Odysseus is more poetic than a poet makes one wonder how true the poet’s tales are supposed to be. In the context of sixteenth-century Spain, Alcinoos’s veiled skepticism could reflect the skepticism of other audiences who have no way to verify the histories told to them by explorers and conquistadors returning from across the ocean. Charles could speak the same words to Cortés, who, although he does not relate his adventures “the way a poet would,” nevertheless describes them artfully enough to make them both alluring and suspect. Against the background of Alcinoos’s double-edged words, Gonzalo Pérez’s dedication to Philip II takes on a special relevance. He extols the virtues of Homer and Philip, calling one the best of poets and the other the best of princes. The two, he 108

Convincing Likeness says, have much in common. But he must word such compliments as carefully as Alcinoos has worded his: Quanto a otra virtud, que Homero alaba mucho en Nestor, y en otros Principes, que es el dezir y tratar verdad, de los quales dize que no mentiràn, porque son muy discretos: bien se, que ha auido pocos en el mundo, ni los haurà, que ygualen a V. M. en ella: porque no solo V. M. se precia de dezirla, y tratarla con todos, mas aun no puede sufrir a los que no la tratan, ni consiente que a sus oydos llegue cosa contraria della, agora sea en perjuyzio de tercero, ò se diga por via de lisonja, que es la manera de mentir mas sabrosa y dissimulada, y que en las orejas de los Principes solia hallar en otros tiempos muy grato acogimiento. (Pérez 3v)

Homer praises the virtue of honesty in Nestor, but this is not a translation of a poem about Nestor. Homer’s real protagonist does not deserve such praise, an ironic touch that helps reveal the flattery present in Gonzalo Pérez’s praise of Philip’s intolerance of flattery. Flattery is the “tastiest and best disguised method of lying” because the victim, here Philip, cannot unveil it as a lie without criticizing himself.22 Gonzalo Pérez and Alcinoos both underscore the paradox that lies may be necessary for unveiling other lies, and that the truth, as much as the lie, often requires artifice. La Ulixea does not break down any notion of a fixed truth, but it makes it easier to see how Spanish society could understand service to the truth to be anything but fixed. Cortés transforms himself and serves the “truth” better by adapting himself and his story to his changing circumstances, just as Odysseus changes his shape and his story with the help of Minerva. Gómara makes the justification for this adaptability clearer when he reveals that Cortés’s most potent adversary in the New World is not Moctezuma or Cuauhtemoc but rather someone who can speak to these leaders in the guise of their “false” gods; that is, Satan himself. The devil, we are told, advises both Moctezuma and Cuauhtemoc at decisive moments. When Cortés brings his brigantines to Lake Texcoco and prepares to lay siege to Tenochtitlan, Cuauhtemoc is initially inclined toward peace, but the devil, in the form of Huitzilopochtli, persuades him to make war on the Spaniards (Historia de la conquista de México 208; ch. 132). Earlier, after the Cholulan 109

Chapter Three massacre, when Moctezuma does not know whether to let the Spaniards proceed to Tenochtitlan, he closes himself in a temple for eight days of prayer and fasting: Sacrificó muchos hombres para aplacar la ira de sus dioses, que estarían enojados. Allí le habló el diablo, y esforzándose que no temiese los españoles, que eran pocos, y que venidos ellos haría de ellos a su voluntad, y que no cesase en los sacrificios, no le aconteciese algún desastre; y tuviese favorables a Uitziloputchtli y Tezcatlipuca para guardarle; porque Quetzalcouatl, dios de Chololla, estaba enojado porque le sacrificaban pocos y mal, y no fue contra los españoles. Por lo cual y porque Cortés le había enviado a decir que iría de guerra, pues de paz no quería, otorgó que fuese a México a verle. (105; ch. 63)

In the end, Moctezuma is swayed by two opposing forces that present almost contradictory arguments. On the one hand, Satan assures the Aztec leader that he need not fear the Spaniards, provided that he continue to offer sacrifices; on the other, Cortés threatens war if Moctezuma will not allow him to come in peace. Key to both arguments is the example of Cholula, where Quetzalcoatl refused to help the Cholulans, because they failed to offer him enough and adequate sacrifices, and where Cortés earns the fear of those who had only marveled at him before (“comenzaron de allí en adelante a temerle” [105; ch. 63]). In the middle is Moctezuma, powerful but highly suggestible, misguided in his “diabolical” religion but close to a measure of salvation, if not of his soul, then at least of his character. In order to save Moctezuma and convert him from adversary into ally, the person who grants the conquest its legitimacy in the Historia de la conquista de México with his friendly reception of the Spaniards and his allegiance to Charles, Cortés will have to mislead him as well, by giving him to believe that Charles descends from a former ruler of the Mexicans. Part of what justifies this deception in Gómara is the devil’s enormous appetite for sacrificial victims, which gives urgency to the Spaniards’ mission. Once Cortés enters the capital and gains Moctezuma’s friendship, the sacrifices subside for a time, even if they do not stop altogether (139; ch. 96).23 By luring Moctezuma away from the influence of the devil, Gómara’s Cortés transforms the Aztec leader into a symbol of 110

Convincing Likeness Christian triumph. Moctezuma continues to consult with the devil, but the celebration of mass and the preaching of the gospel take their toll, and after months of suffering the Spaniards’ presence, the devil presents Moctezuma with a choice: “o se tenía de ir él o los españoles” (149; ch. 94). Moctezuma’s reaction is characteristically ambiguous, for he both urges the Spaniards to leave and offers them aid. By the time of his death later that spring, however, he has become more fully incorporated into the Spanish camp, to the point that Gómara lends credence to the reports that Moctezuma wanted to convert: “Pidió el bautismo, según dicen, por Carnestolendas” (167–68; ch. 107). Although it is unclear here whether the request itself or the timing of the request is merely a report, Gómara’s lament that the Spaniards do not grant it in time shows that he would like to consider the Aztec leader to be a willing convert, even during the late winter and early spring when he is still conversing with the devil. Gómara’s summary of Moctezuma’s attitude toward the Spaniards likewise turns into wishful eulogy: Afirman que nunca Moteczuma, aunque de muchos fue requerido, consintió en muerte de español ni en daño de Cortés, a quien mucho amaba. También hay quien lo contrario diga. Todos dan buenas razones; mas empero no pudieron saber la verdad nuestros españoles, porque ni entonces entendían el lenguaje, ni después hallaron vivo a ninguno con quien Moteczuma hubiese comunicado esta puridad. Una cosa sé decir, que nunca dijo mal de españoles, que no poco enojo y descontento era para los suyos. (168; ch. 107)

Gómara puts in doubt all the information concerning Moctezuma’s behavior toward the Spaniards and then turns around and affirms his constancy toward them. The need to incorporate the fallen Aztec emperor as a convert to the Spanish cause is strong enough to overcome the most blatant of contradictions. Even the fickleness of Moctezuma’s character fades from view as Gómara seems to transfer it to the contradictory reports of that character.

Gómara wrote within a humanistic tradition that viewed history as primarily the composite of the lives and deeds of great 111

Chapter Three men. The most demanding form that history could take for him was, fittingly, the biography, or vida, although only one of his works aspires to such a status: the Historia de la conquista de México. If Gómara had been able or inclined to complete his life of Cortés in Latin, he might have considered it more representative of the genre, and he might have been seen in a better light by his contemporary, the demanding theorist of historiography, Fox Morcillo. Gómara’s conception of the biographical genre precluded panegyric, and he criticizes Cortés on several occasions, even as he embellishes on the conquistador’s heroic image. Gómara’s Cortés suffers from no great interior conflicts, and his character does not develop over time so much as reveal itself by confronting challenges. In this sense, he resembles the chivalric heroes who are in vogue during the sixteenth century. But if Cortés is not conflicted, he is, unlike these heroes, flawed inasmuch as he is willing to stoop to bribery, cruelty, and— above all—deception. Like the picaresque antihero, the conquistador de mujeres, and like Odysseus, who all triumph (or at least survive) by manipulating others with language and other forms of cunning, Gómara’s Cortés redefines himself at every step. The difference here is that Gómara’s Cortés purports to serve a higher purpose, and the nature of that purpose becomes clearer as Gómara portrays Moctezuma and, to some degree, Cuauhtemoc less as villains than as victims, under the sway of the devil, whom the history shows to be in direct confrontation with Cortés. Cortés himself sees it this way when he tells his men that the devil causes his horses to collapse in Tlaxcala (87; ch. 50).24 In Gómara’s story of a Christian crusade, one reason that his hero must take on many forms is that his real adversary is more formidable than any mortal.

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Chapter Four

Quoting Cortés in Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México

1. Voice and Irony Gómara’s text speaks to the reader in more ways than do Cortés’s Cartas de relación. The first speaker is the historian himself, who already, as a narrator, has a less clear-cut persona than the captain who writes missives to the king. And within the narrative, other voices make themselves heard as the characters of the drama speak directly or indirectly and offer visions of the conquest that inevitably conflict with one another. Among these other voices, not surprisingly, that of the protagonist speaks the most often and carries the most influence.1 Starting with the dedication to Martín Cortés, Gómara is ostensibly speaking as Hernán Cortés’s former secretary now in the pay of the conqueror’s son, and in this guise he naturally defends his patrons, past and present, and extols the conquest of Mexico. And yet his history is not by itself a univocal justification of the conquest. As Gómara makes clear at the end of his Historia general de las Indias, history does not properly fulfill that function: Yo escribo sola y brevemente la conquista de Indias. Quien quisiere ver la justificación de ella lea al doctor Sepúlveda, cronista del emperador, que la escribió en latín doctísimamente; y así quedará satisfecho del todo. (320; ch. 224)

Gómara suggests that we could read his history as the narratio, or statement of facts, for Sepúlveda’s argument. But, as noted in Chapter 1, we can also turn this relationship around. If Gómara’s narratio forms part of a larger rhetoric, it also contains elements of that larger rhetoric within. Whereas in Sepúlveda’s dialogue, the Democrates secundus, a “wise” Aristotelian Democrates definitively corrects the “misguided” 113

Chapter Four Leopoldus, who has questioned Spain’s right to wage war in the Indies, in Gómara’s history no one voice prevails so completely, not even that of Cortés. Instead Gómara presents a mixture of voices that address the issues of the debate over the conquest. The least consistent voice that Gómara presents is his own. Here a comparison with Cortés’s Cartas de relación is helpful. Although Cortés’s letters to Charles do not speak with one unchanging voice, the voice that dominates the letters speaks as a single entity both inside and outside the text. That is, the conqueror and the letter writer present themselves as the same, speak with the same voice, and largely define the conquest on the basis of that unity. Cortés makes his account of the conquest form an integral part of the event itself. Gómara’s narrator, on the contrary, must establish a critical distance from the outset. His credibility as a historian hinges on his independence, on the separation of narrative and the event narrated (narratio and narratum). Nothing distances Gómara’s narrator from the events he narrates more than irony. For beyond his occasional criticisms of the conquistadors, and beyond his varied and often contradictory explanations for the same event, he shows a fondness for ironic endings and transitions: “Al pueblo llaman los vecinos Potonchán, que quiere decir lugar que hiede, y los nuestros la Victoria” (42; ch. 23). What for the Spaniards is the site of a great victory, for the Tabascans is a place that stinks. The double meaning of the battle site suggests that the arrival of Christianity might not be universally seen as the joyful occasion that the rest of the chapter claims it to be. Gómara sets up a contradiction, although a fleeting one, before proceeding with his narrative. Such instances of irony are declared, at least to some degree, because Gómara expressly states two contradictory names for the same site (“Victory” and “Place of Stench”), which imply contradictory interpretations of the same event and possibly also of the results of that event. On other occasions the irony is more difficult to detect, or rather, more difficult to prove. In his discussion of “Clues to Irony,” Wayne Booth examines many of the contextual indicators (e.g., conflicts of fact, clashes of style, our knowledge of the author’s beliefs) that we use to recognize irony when that irony is not overtly labeled as such. He understandably sets 114

Quoting Cortés aside one indicator, voice (or delivery, pronuntiatio, in Quintilian, Institutionis oratoriae libri duodecim 8.6.54),2 because he views it as pertinent only to the spoken word (49–76). But once we identify a statement as ironic, the issue of voice returns, as we can see in Booth’s chapter “The Ironist’s Voice.” There, however, he treats authors who establish themselves as ironists. Our expectation of irony colors our reading of “reliable authors who convince us that they are pretty much the real man or woman talking to us: the Henry Fielding, the Laurence Stern, the Jane Austen,” etc. (176). Gómara, most would agree, establishes himself in another way. He may use double intentions and direct barbs that criticize Cortés and the other conquistadors, but he devotes far more energy to the glorification of their deeds. His ironies stand out against the general tone of his work, with the result that the circumstances of an utterance set off one voice from another, as when he describes the brutal “pacification” of Pánuco. After Gonzalo de Sandoval has overtaken the resisting Huaxtecs, he sets apart 460 lords, chiefs, and wealthy men: Hízose proceso contra todos ellos, por el cual, y por sus propias confesiones, los condenó a muerte de fuego. Consultólo con Cortés, soltó la gente menuda, quemó los cuatrocientos cautivos y los sesenta señores; llamó a sus hijos y herederos que lo viesen para que escarmentasen, y luego dioles los señoríos en nombre del emperador, con palabra que dieron de siempre ser amigos de cristianos y españoles, aunque ellos poco la guardan, tanto son de mudables y bulliciosos. (Historia de la conquista de México 244; ch. 156)

Not surprisingly, the escarmiento, or punishment meted out to one party for the purpose of warning another (Covarrubias 535–36), fails to produce the desired effect on the young Huaxtecs, because they do not maintain unwavering loyalty to the men who have just burned their fathers at the stake. When Gómara explains this reaction by calling these young men fickle and restless, we might be tempted to take his comments as ironic. To read them in this way, however, we have to make the narrator’s voice more mudable than the Huaxtecs. An ironic reading of such passages reminds us of the performative nature of literary interpretation; it draws our attention to that first stage of reading in which we give life to 115

Chapter Four words on a page and thereby inject them with the expressive power of voice.3 Gómara’s irony is not unique in this respect, but his changing voice does take on special relevance for a narrative that emphasizes the spoken word. In a history sprinkled with decisive speeches, the delivery is up to the reader, and that delivery extends beyond the inverted commas. If irony accentuates both the voice of the narrator and the critical distance of that voice from the events it narrates, it also sets that voice against itself, thus endangering the authority that any critical distance provides.4 For some readers, such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Gómara’s irony, along with other aspects of his critical distance, may have inadvertently undermined the legitimacy of the conquest.5 Yet part of what makes his narrative an effective tool of empire is the way in which it dramatizes Spain’s struggle to make sense of that empire. The conflicting voices engage the readers as audience; and even when characters speak to an immediate audience within the text, they also address the readers who listen in from outside the text. Although several characters speak in the Historia de la conquista de México, most of them, Spaniards as well as American Indians, usually speak anonymously or in groups. Gómara assigns the long speeches only to Aguilar, Moctezuma, and Cortés. Some critics have made interesting claims about the authenticity of Cortés’s speeches in the Historia de la conquista de México, basing these claims on Gómara’s close contact with his protagonist. Iglesia says that these speeches are mostly the work of the conqueror himself (164–65), and Gurría Lacroix believes that Cortés dictated them to Gómara directly (López de Gómara, Historia de la conquista de México xv–xvi). But as Lewis observes, set speeches were an integral part of Renaissance historiography (186), and all humanists who treat the conquest in any detail are merely following the tradition of Livy, Tacitus, and other ancient historians when they fabricate speeches “appropriate to the occasion.” The sermocinatio, or set speech put in the mouth of a person for the purpose of characterization, is a standard rhetorical strategy (Lausberg 425; vol. 2). Of course, characterization is only one of the functions of the set speech. In Gómara set speeches are key events in his narrative. Frequently they comment directly

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Quoting Cortés on the nature of the conquest, and they often also function as acts of conquest. Gómara provides fourteen set speeches of at least one hundred words in the Historia de la conquista de México. Many shorter exchanges are also important, as are long addresses given in indirect discourse (e.g., Cortés’s words to his men in chapter 99 regarding Narváez), but the following list gives an idea of the key moments when oratory takes center stage. 1. Cortés’s speech to his troops before embarking from Cuba (20–21; ch. 9) 2. Aguilar’s tale of his shipwreck and adventures in Yucatan (26; ch. 12) 3. Cortés’s response to his dispirited troops in Tlaxcala (89–90; ch. 52) 4. Moctezuma’s welcome to the Spaniards in Tenochtitlan (110–11; ch. 66) 5. Cortés’s exchange with Moctezuma when he seizes the emperor (134; ch. 83) 6. Cortés’s sermon on idolatry to Aztec nobles and priests (137–39; ch. 86) 7. Moctezuma’s plea to his nobles that they recognize Charles V (145–46; ch. 92) 8. Cortés’s talk to his men when the Aztecs urge them to leave (150; ch. 94) 9. Cortés’s speech to his men when they fear imminent sacrifice (150–51; ch. 95) 10. Cortés’s requests of Moctezuma regarding Narváez (157–58; ch. 100) 11. Cortés’s response to his men’s demand that they retreat (179–81; ch. 114) 12. Cortés’s speech to his men before returning to Tenochtitlan (188–89; ch. 120) 13. Cortés’s speech to his allies before returning to Tenochtitlan (190; ch. 121) 14. Cortés’s briefing of his men before the final siege (206; ch. 130) Cortés not only speaks the most often, but with the most flourish and to the greatest effect. His speeches consistently

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Chapter Four define the conquest, give it direction, and move it along. Although they do not always define the conquest the same way, the most important themes reappear as Cortés must remind his men of what they are fighting for: God, king, glory, and gold, usually in that order. He shifts the emphasis according to the needs of the moment, because sometimes those needs weigh heavily upon him. On four occasions he places himself in predicaments, only to talk his way out of them: twice when his men urge retreat, once when he realizes that he is trapped in Tenochtitlan, and once more after he starts toppling the idols from the main temple in that city. His speeches not only complement his physical actions in the Historia de la conquista de México, they often correct and sometimes even overshadow them. The three speeches by Cortés that I discuss below represent different types of rhetoric, even though they can all be classified as deliberative, that is, as attempts to persuade an audience to take a particular action.6 Cortés’s first speech establishes his character and the relationship between him and his textual audience, his men. It also urges them to action, as does the address to the troops during the Tlaxcalan campaign. But this later speech is as much dehortative as exhortative, since Cortés must dissuade his men from turning back, or even turning on him. Had he not addressed them at this point, says Gómara, some of the troops would have mutinied and forced Cortés to return to the coast (90; ch. 52). His “sermon” on idolatry, given at the main temple in Tenochtitlan, addresses a different textual audience, the Aztec priests and nobles, and exhorts them to make such drastic changes in their view of the world and their relationship to the divine that it almost appears to be lifted from the pages of hagiography, as if another Catherine of Alexandria risked martyrdom.7 In each of these speeches, the setting and implied audience naturally influence Cortés’s defense of the conquest. My focus here is on how Gómara’s Cortés adapts that defense to these changing circumstances.

2. Trusting the Translators When Cortés speaks to Moctezuma and the Aztec priests and nobles, how are we, as readers, to imagine the reception of his

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Quoting Cortés carefully chosen words when we know that they travel through a chain of interpreters, first into Chontal-Mayan and then into Nahuatl? Likewise, when Moctezuma’s words come to us in beautiful Castilian, to what extent are we to consider them to be his? Although on occasion Gómara recognizes that the language barrier prevents the Spaniards from knowing Moctezuma’s true feelings (e.g., 168; ch. 107), in the case of the set speeches he usually eludes the problem of translation, because within the operative fiction of the Historia de la conquista de México Cortés’s flourish is presumably not lost on his Aztec or Tlaxcalan audiences. In this move Gómara is not alone. From Columbus onward, most of the early chroniclers downplay the complications of cross-language mediation. Eric Cheyfitz considers this repression of the difficulties of translation to be central to past and present imperialisms: We must be in translation between cultures and between groups within our own culture if we are to understand the dynamics of our own imperialism. For our imperialism historically has functioned (and continues to function) by substituting for the difficult politics of translation another politics of translation that represses these difficulties. (xvi)

One way in which Gómara represses the difficulties of translation is by focusing less on the distance between languages than on the personal connections that allow the reader to imagine that the Spaniards bridge that distance. For, unlike Cortés in his Cartas de relación, where the translators are merely lenguas, Gómara gives them compelling stories that render Aguilar and Marina (Malinali) trustworthy to a European audience, as if the main problem with translation were the personal loyalties of the translators themselves. On this personal level, Gómara makes a show of treating the issue of translation as a serious problem. Aguilar makes a grand entrance on Cozumel and is taken in as “faraute cierto y verdadero” (26; ch. 12). Faraute means not only interpreter, but also the one who carries the first word, like the farsante. Both terms apply to the one who gives the prologue to a play, according to Covarrubias, who records another etymology besides the normal derivation from far, faris (“to speak”): “Algunos dizen que faraute se dixo a ferendo, porque trae las 119

Chapter Four nuevas de lo que se ha de representar, narrando el argumento” (585). By way of a prologue, Aguilar tells of his shipwreck, captivity, escape, and rescue, a story that prepares the men for their own odyssey and introduces them to the strangeness and horrors of the new land: “Gran temor y admiración puso en los oyentes este cuento de Jerónimo de Aguilar con decir que en aquella tierra comían y sacrificaban hombres, y por la desventura que él y sus compañeros habían pasado” (26; ch. 12). More horrifying still is the tale he tells of Gonzalo Guerrero, who has “turned Indian,” and who shows the spiritual dangers and other lures of the New World that Aguilar has resisted. But Guerrero’s case disappears, not to be mentioned again, whereas Aguilar, besides informing Cortés and his men about the continent, also confirms their mission on that continent by surviving his ordeal both physically and spiritually. Whereas Gerónimo de Aguilar’s story makes him seem trustworthy as a Spaniard who has taken religious orders and resisted the lure of “barbarism” for eight years, proving stronger than his companion and counterexample, Gonzalo Guerrero, Marina’s story does not by itself lift her above suspicion. Gómara, unlike Bernal Díaz, does not say that she was betrayed by her own mother and sold into slavery (Díaz 1: 158– 59; ch. 37), but rather that as a young girl born into nobility she was kidnapped by merchants (46; ch. 26). While we can easily associate these mercaderes with Cortés’s rivals as depicted in the Historia de la conquista de México, there is no early betrayal in Gómara that would bind her to the newcomers. Instead there is Cortés, who supposedly wins her over with promises: “Cortés la tomó aparte con Aguilar, y le prometió más que libertad si le trataba verdad entre él y aquellos de su tierra, pues los entendía, y él la quería tener por su faraute y secretaria” (46; ch. 26). With this offer Cortés almost treats “truth” like a commodity, as in “he promised her more than freedom if she dealt him the truth” or “if for him she would traffic in truth.” Covarrubias emphasizes the physical meaning of tratar (from tractare) as “handling,” and then by extension “doing business with something” (975–76). But the phrase “tratar verdad” can also mean “to profess or love the truth,” and even, more generally, “to be truthful.” Marina is supposed to “profess the truth” in at least two ways: by giving faithful

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Quoting Cortés translations and by helping the Spaniards bring their Christian truth to her land. One of Marina’s qualifications for this position is that she is among the first in Mexico to be baptized as a Christian. Conversion carries with it its own form of translation, or rather linguistic transfer, because the convert takes on a new name. In Marina’s case, however, Gómara never gives her original, preChristian name. It may have been “Malinali;” or “Malinali,” as Lockhart believes, may derive from “Marina.”8 In either case, as soon as she makes an appearance in the narrative, she is translated, baptized, and given a Castilian identity. Her former identity allows her to translate from and into Nahuatl, but like a traumatic memory it has been repressed and replaced. As a “go-between,” Gómara’s Marina is not “in between” at all, but rather fully incorporated into the other side. What Marina gets out of the deal remains unclear. Cortés promises her “more than freedom,” which can mean, among other things, power over others; but we could also take it to mean another type of slavery. In her new role she both serves and wields power as Cortés’s “faraute y secretaria,” the second position being no less important than the first, since it is an “oficio de mucha confianza” (Covarrubias 931) that Gómara himself will occupy one day. She is, then, the historian’s predecessor, which could be one reason Gómara does not mention her third role as mistress to Cortés.9

3. Gómara’s Cortés Defines Himself Most historians do not recount any speech by Cortés at the outset of the expedition, probably because Cortés himself never mentions such a speech in his Cartas de relación. But López de Gómara and Cervantes de Salazar use the occasion to open more dramatically a new chapter in the life of the conquistador and in the Spanish conquest of the New World. Likewise, these are the only sixteenth-century humanist historians to delve into the life of Cortés before he, at the age of 34, led the expedition to Mexico. In spite of Cervantes de Salazar’s quibbles with Gómara about Cortés’s life in Cuba and his relations with Diego Velázquez, he and Gómara both portray Cortés up to this point as more of a rebel than a leader. Gómara has Cortés

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Chapter Four transform himself from adventurer into leader by redefining for his men, and for the reading public, Spain’s mission in the New World. The purpose of the conquest is ostensibly the same as it has always been, but under Gómara’s Cortés the enterprise takes on a new form as well as a new magnitude. Whereas Gómara’s version of this speech was adapted by Herrera and Torquemada, Cervantes de Salazar’s combination of speeches, first to a group of about eighty captains, then to all of his troops, did not make it to print till his history was published in the twentieth century. Herrera had access to Cervantes de Salazar’s manuscript from the Council of the Indies, but here he followed Gómara, as he usually did, for his own account.10 Like Gómara, Cervantes de Salazar has Cortés move his men with the language of adventure, but he also has Cortés strike some notes that contrast sharply with the speech in the Historia de la conquista de México. He speaks directly of death and redemption, as if his audience would not be put off by the prospect of dying for the faith. He also, unlike Gómara’s Cortés, refers to himself and his men as God’s instruments: “‘Ofensas hemos hecho todos a Dios tan grandes, que por la menor dellas, según su justicia, merescemos muy bien el infierno; y pues, según su misericordia, nos ha hecho tanta merced de tomarnos por instrumento para alcanzar al demonio destas tierras” (Crónica de la Nueva España 1: 184; bk. 2, ch. 22). More in line with Cortés’s Cartas de relación, Gómara never describes Cortés’s service to God in any terms that deny Cortés’s own initiative and agency. And even before the Spaniards set sail from Cuba, Gómara has Cortés take decisive actions with this very speech. Never as grim as in Cervantes de Salazar, Gómara’s Cortés gains his men’s trust and bolsters their morale by claiming to foresee much of what lies ahead, by linking his fortunes with theirs, and by defining their mission in such a way that the material gains of conquest seem to flow naturally from service to a higher purpose. Cortés’s first word is one that he uses often in Gómara: “Cierto” (20; ch. 9). Although most readers would no longer associate cierto with cerno (“to separate, distinguish, discern”), the Latin verb from which it derives, Cortés’s ability to certify is related to his ability to distinguish. He will be the only one to see through the allies and be able to certify their loyalty to

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Quoting Cortés his suspicious troops. And here he begins his address with maxims, certainties that establish the solid beginnings in his speech and enable him to distinguish and perceive the future: “Cierto está, amigos y compañeros míos, que todo hombre de bien y animoso quiere y procura igualarse por sus propias obras con los excelentes varones de su tiempo y aun de los pasados. Así es que yo acometo una grande y hermosa hazaña, que será después muy famosa; porque el corazón me da que tenemos de ganar grandes y ricas tierras, muchas gentes nunca vistas, y mayores reinos que los de nuestros reyes. Y cierto, más se extiende el deseo de gloria, que alcanza la vida mortal; al cual apenas basta el mundo todo, cuanto menos uno ni pocos reinos.” (20; ch. 9)

Speaking at a time when the world seemed to grow before Europe’s eyes, Gómara’s Cortés feels constrained by its limits and the limits of mortal life. This hyperbole comes from a man who has yet to prove himself and gain the trust of his troops, many of whom have accompanied previous expeditions and know more than he does about what awaits them. He addresses them all as “friends and comrades,” but establishes his role as leader immediately afterward, by focusing on the actions that he himself has taken and is about to take: “Grandes gastos he yo hecho, en que tengo puesta mi hacienda y la de mis amigos. Mas paréceme que cuanto de ella tengo menos, he acrecentado en honra. Hanse de dejar las cosas chicas cuando las grandes se ofrecen. Mucho mayor provecho, según en Dios espero, vendrá a nuestro rey y nación de esta nuestra armada que de todas las de otros. Callo cuán agradable será a Dios nuestro Señor, por cuyo amor he de muy buena gana puesto el trabajo y los dineros. Dejaré aparte el peligro de vida y honra que he pasado haciendo esta flota; porque no creáis que pretendo de ella tanto la ganancia cuanto el honor; que los buenos más quieren honra que riqueza.” (20; ch. 9)

Just as Cortés mentions his personal sacrifice and investment in the fleet by claiming not to mention these and other factors (a rhetorical figure known by various names: occupatio, occultatio, praeteritio, negatio, or, in Greek, paralepsis), he promises his men great wealth while claiming to transcend 123

Chapter Four mere business terms. Paradoxically, only by occupying himself with honor rather than wealth can Cortés attain the greatest financial rewards, because, as he says, his debts do him honor. Since the critiques of the conquest focus on the greed of conquistadors, Cortés must be able to promise great riches but also take greed out of the crusader’s contract, which must also be balanced. The language of debts and credits allows him to balance out his financial outlay with his personal honor as a form of credit to his name. The expenditures ironically bring him credit, that is, convert his debts into credits. His personal sacrifice presumably proves that he has the vision to see beyond the petty trading and looting that have driven other conquerors. Cortés’s opening words, with reference to measuring one’s own works against those of the past, reflect the protagonist’s preoccupation with his place in history. Since the readers already know the end result of Cortés’s beginnings, they can confirm his foresight and the sense of mission that he shares with his men in order to inspire them to carry out that mission. This foresight instills confidence in his troops and makes them feel as though they are going not to war “sino a victoria y presa cierta” (21; ch. 10). By having Cortés open the speech with the same adjective that closes the men’s reaction to the speech, Gómara shows how thoroughly the captain has persuaded his audience of its certain future. Cortés’s certainty about his future, about the endeavor he undertakes, which he already categorizes as a heroic deed that “will later be very famous,” recalls a narrative tradition of other heroes who are fulfilling their destinies by following stories that prescribe actions as much as describe them. The example of this tradition closest at hand to Gómara and his audience was the romance of chivalry, which has so often been mentioned as a model and inspiration for the conquistadors. At the outset of this study I draw attention to the parallel between Cortés’s certainty of his future fame—as Gómara expresses it here—and Don Quijote’s certainty about the future narrative of his own initial sortie. What separates the two protagonists is not only one’s (Cortés’s) apparent success at controlling the writing of his own history, but also their relation to the chivalric model. Whereas Don Quijote’s fails time and again to follow the path that the romances of chivalry prescribe for him, Cortés 124

Quoting Cortés succeeds in rivaling those stories precisely because he does not follow a prescribed path. His future may be written, so to speak, within the pages of history, but he distinguishes himself by not following instructions. To serve God and country, according to Gómara, Cortés will need to stop serving Diego Velázquez, whose orders to explore and trade are too limiting (53; ch. 30). And here, even before he embarks on his expedition, he stresses the need to improvise. The beginning and end of the story may be certain, just as the principles and ends supposedly are, but the means, the story itself, has to remain a mystery for both the textual audience and the reading public. Improvisation is the means to success as well as an invitation to read on, a narrative promise of novelty: “Comenzamos guerra justa y buena y de gran fama. Dios poderoso, en cuyo nombre y fe se hace, nos dará victoria; y el tiempo traerá al fin que de continuo sigue a todo lo que se hace y guía con razón y consejo. Por tanto, otra forma, otro discurso, otra maña hemos de tener que Córdoba y Grijalba; de la cual no quiero disputar por la estrechura del tiempo, que nos da priesa. Empero allá haremos así como viéremos.” (20; ch. 9)

Cortés’s strategy sets him apart from his predecessors as much as his higher, and thus more lucrative, purpose. The means, however, remain a mystery, not so much because time is short, as he claims, as because there is nothing to discuss. The key to his strategy is improvisation. Grijalba’s great fault was that he did not have the flexibility to disregard, or at least to stretch, Diego Velázquez’s orders and set up a permanent outpost on the mainland. For this narrow-mindedness he loses the governor’s confidence. Cortés’s different forma, discurso, and maña define the conquest along new lines. They hint at a new line of reasoning and a new way of speaking, and so also at the importance of discourse itself, even speeches. Maña implies both cunning and underhanded methods. Since these means must correspond with his principles and his ends, he is defining his ideological challenge at the outset. Although the prospect of underhanded conduct in the conquest may trouble some of the readers of the Historia de la conquista de México, it is not likely to trouble Cortés’s audience in the text. The soldiers are more worried about the 125

Chapter Four hardships that await them. Cortés’s most consistent challenge in his speeches to his men in the Historia de la conquista de México will be to overcome their often justified fears. Here he spurs his men on by luring them with the hopes of great riches and by making this material, worldly hope consistent with a righteous, otherworldly faith. He crosses the concepts of hope and virtue in chiasmus. “y aquí os propongo grandes premios, mas envueltos en grandes trabajos. Pero la virtud no quiere ociosidad; por tanto, si quisiéredes llevar la esperanza por virtud o la virtud por esperanza; y si no me dejáis, como no dejaré yo a vosotros ni a la ocasión, yo os haré en muy breve espacio de tiempo los más ricos hombres de cuantos jamás acá pasaron, ni cuantos en estas partes siguieron la guerra.” (20–21; ch. 9)

“Virtue does not love idleness,” he says, capturing the paradox of a virile quality given feminine gender and feminine personification. They want to possess virtue, but she is demanding. We can read the next clause in various ways: “So if you are willing to take hope for virtue, or virtue for hope,” or “if you will use virtue to give you hope, or hope to give you virtue.” In the first reading Cortés invites his men to confuse hope and virtue; in the second he shows how the quality and the emotion can strengthen each other. If you have virtue, then you have reason to hope for success, and if you have hope, then you can be brave. Gómara has him continue to stress interdependence, only now among people, with another chiasmus in the second condition: “and if you do not abandon me, as I shall not abandon you . . .” He is drawing up the contract. With his certain vision into the future, he can guarantee a return in both riches and glory. Part of Cortés’s power in the Historia de la conquista de México is his ability to link men’s self-interest with their desire to serve higher interests. He takes the cynicism out of their greed and the business out of the crusader’s contract. There is still a contract, of course, but only so long as it is not expressed as such. This contract is more than financial. Its participants can expect returns in glory, which is to say, in history. Gómara has Cortés clarify the narrative terms of the contract at the close of

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Quoting Cortés this first speech, when he is winning his audience over with praise and confidence: “Pocos sois, ya lo veo; mas tales de ánimo, que ningún esfuerzo ni fuerza de indios podrá ofenderos; que experiencia tenemos cómo siempre Dios ha favorecido en estas tierras a la nación española; y nunca le faltó ni faltará virtud y esfuerzo. Así que id contentos y alegres, y haced igual el suceso que el comienzo.” (21; ch. 9)

When he bids them to accomplish their deed in the same way they have undertaken it, once again he is matching beginnings and ends, urging his men to make the story hold together the way it should. But what is the beginning of the story, if not this speech? Cortés more than anyone else carries out the conquest in the same manner in which he has undertaken it, since he has undertaken it by defining it in rhetorical terms.

4. Quelling a Mutiny in Tlaxcala Gómara’s version of the Tlaxcalan campaign presents us with two images of Cortés, the first forthright, at times even credulous, and the second more devious, suspicious, and brutal. Although Gómara has his protagonist prove his bravery on the battlefield, the real lesson he learns from his dealings with the enemy, his allies, and his men is that bravery alone does not bring victory. In fact, his exceptional boldness makes him dangerous to his troops, who compare him to Pedro Carbonero, a legendary hero who in the fifteenth century supposedly “faced an army of Moors with twelve knights and defended his honor to the death” (Simpson 112). Rather than accompany their captain in his insanity, the men resolve to return to the coast. Up to this point Cortés has only faced uprisings from followers of Velázquez. Here, however, mass punishment is out of the question: “acordó [Cortés] de llevarlos por bien, y hablóles a todos juntos” (89; ch. 51). Gómara says that this speech not only averts disaster; it makes the troops undergo a complete transformation: Todos quedaron contentos del razonamiento de Cortés. Los que flaqueaban, esforzaron; los esforzados cobraron doble

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Chapter Four ánimo; los que algún mal le querían, comenzaron a honrarlo; y en conclusión, él fue de allí adelante muy amado de todos aquellos españoles de su compañía. No fue poco necesario tantas palabras en este caso; porque, según algunos andaban ganosos de dar la vuelta, movieran un motín que le forzara tornar a la mar; y fuera tanto como nada cuanto habían hecho hasta entonces. (90; ch. 52)

This almost magical effect of Cortés’s words extends beyond his audience. For immediately after the speech Xicotencatl, a Tlaxcalan captain, arrives at the Spanish camp to sue for peace. Cortés’s words do not bring about the surrender, but Gómara emplots the speech in such a way that he makes it the final act necessary before the Spanish victory. As with most deliberative oratory, pragmatics prevail. Cortés will bring out several standard themes in his discourse, such as the relationship between him and his men, their opportunities for personal gain, and their duty to God and king; but sooner or later he must address their fear. Gómara does not allow his hero merely to brush aside death as the least of his worries, the way Peter Martyr allows him to do, because in the Historia de la conquista de México death is obviously his men’s greatest worry.11 Instead he fights fear with more fear, giving an argument as practical as any other: they must go forward because there is nowhere else to go. Flight, he will say, is more dangerous than pressing on. There is no mention either in the soldiers’ complaints or in Cortés’s speech of the scuttling of the fleet, something that is more explicit in Bernal Díaz’s account of this exchange, where the men who want to return to the coast fault Cortés for this rash move (1: 248–49; ch. 69). But the lack of ships is crucial to Cortés’s argument in the Historia de la conquista de México. The arrangement of the arguments, however, prevents the audience from dwelling on their grim prospects. Gómara has Cortés place all the difficulties into the heart of the speech, easing into them and out of them with more optimistic and emotional appeals. He frames his speech with references to the relationship between captain and men, and the obligations that such a relationship entails: “Señores y amigos: Yo os escogí por mis compañeros, y vosotros a mí por vuestro capitán, y todo para en servicio de

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Quoting Cortés Dios y acrecentamiento de su santa fe, y para servir también a nuestro rey, y aun pensando hacer de nuestro provecho. Yo, como habéis visto, no os he faltado ni enojado, ni por cierto vosotros a mí hasta aquí.” (89; ch. 52; emphasis added)

The first sentences repeat the chiasmus that in the first speech proposed a contract between Cortés and his followers. Since that early moment back in Cuba, however, the men have entered into this contract more formally by severing ties with Diego Velázquez and selecting Cortés as their captain-general. He bases their relationship on a common sense of religious and patriotic duty, as well as on personal trust between partners. And yet, no matter how many times Gómara has Cortés address his men as friends, companions, and lords (señores), this bond and privilege depend on a hierarchy. They are leaders among men because they follow. “[V]enceréis,” Cortés promises them at the end of the speech, “si me seguís” (90; ch. 52). The body of the speech consists of appeals to common sense on the one hand and to faith, pride, and honor on the other. This mixture of pragmatics and ideals could appear to be contradictory, but Cortés appeals to his men on different levels, emotional and intellectual, that need not conflict, at least as he lays them out. Part of this alternating strategy shows through in his way of dealing with and overcoming their fear, especially their fear of death. At first he says he senses “flaqueza,” a weakness, and thus offends their honor; then he argues that the war is over, or at least mostly over, and so alleviates their fear and spurs them on with the promise of rewards whose greatness exceeds understanding and words. Yet in almost the same breath he appeals to their honor again, telling them not to fear because Spaniards are never afraid: “No temáis, mis compañeros, de ir y estar conmigo, pues ni españoles jamás temieron en estas nuevas tierras, que por su propia virtud, esfuerzo e industria han conquistado y descubierto, ni tal concepto de vosotros tengo. Nunca Dios quiera que ni yo piense, ni nadie diga que miedo caiga en mis españoles, ni desobedencia a su capitán.” (89; ch. 52)

The force of the negative command and the emphasis on what people will say (el qué dirán) are meant to shame the men. 129

Chapter Four Their cowardice would implicate their captain and country. But Cortés never accuses them of cowardice. He, in his attempt to keep them from abandoning him, cannot abandon them. Instead he makes them feel that they belong both to him and to the Spanish nation. Only later, after he gives them the security of the larger group, will he single them out as extraordinary members of that group. Finally, Gómara has Cortés approach the problem of fear by taking advantage of it. If his men fear death, he will portray death as the worst of the possible evils that a retreat would cause: “No hay que volver la cara al enemigo que no parezca huída; no hay huída, o si la queréis colorar, retirada, que no cause a quien la hace infinitos males: vergüenza, hambre, pérdida de amigos, de hacienda y armas, y la muerte, que es lo peor, aunque no lo postrero, porque para siempre queda la infamia.” (89; ch. 52)

He defines the action that they want to take by expanding on its meaning and consequences. This expansion, or amplificatio, takes the form of an incrementum, in which the elements in a defining series become stronger toward the end. And at the end he offers death, because flight ends with death, on top of or as the result of its other evils. But after fixing their attention on this end, he pushes them to think beyond it, to fear what transcends death without asking that they transcend their fear of death. In Peter Martyr’s version of this speech Cortés says that one gains glory by not valuing one’s life; but in Gómara Cortés paradoxically spurs his men on to glory and fame by playing on all of their fears in life and beyond. From amplificationes Cortés shifts to a string of popular sayings:12 “Si dejamos esta tierra, esta guerra, este camino comenzado, y nos tornamos, como alguno desea, ¿hemos por ventura de estar jugando ociosos y perdidos? No por cierto, diréis; que nuestra nación española no es de esa condición cuando hay guerra y va la honra. Pues ¿adónde irá el buey que no are? ¿Pensáis quizá que habéis de hallar en otra parte menos gente, peor armada, no tan lejos del mar? Yo os certifico que andáis buscando cinco pies al gato, y que no vamos a

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Quoting Cortés cabo ninguno, que no hallemos tres leguas de mal camino, como dicen, peor mucho que éste que llevamos.” (89–90; ch. 52; emphasis added)

Popular sayings lend to Cortés’s argument an air of authority that is related to the nebulous notion of national character. Precisely when Cortés is endeavoring to make his men identify themselves with a particularly Spanish feeling of duty and honor, he appeals to peculiarly Spanish expressions of common sense. They fight because that is what Spaniards do, just as oxen always pull the plow. Later in the same speech, Gómara has Cortés spout another saying when he points out that their glory is greater the more enemies they face: “‘¿no habéis oído decir que cuanto más moros, más ganancia?’” (90; ch. 52). No need to respond to this rhetorical question. Of course they have heard the expression. That is what makes them who they are. Further, the reference to the reconquest brings them home as much as the fact that it comes wrapped in a popular saying. They may be in the middle of a strange land, but their captain makes retreat more foreign to them than attack. The distance that separates the Spaniards from the coast is perhaps their greatest argument for retreat. They also complain that the Tlaxcalans are countless and well armed. Once again Gómara has Cortés turn the apparent disadvantages into arguments in his favor. Here he demonstrates his mastery of the rhetorical strategy of concession (concessio), when the speaker recognizes an opponent’s argument in part, but then develops that argument into a counterargument (Lausberg, Manual 2: 261). If these enemies are so numerous and well armed, says Cortés, then the reason that they have not been able to kill any of the Spaniards must be that God is favoring the Spanish side. As for their isolation from the coast, he admits it, but as a sign of progress: “La mar aparte está, yo lo confieso, y ningún español hasta nosotros se alejó de ella tanto en Indias; porque la dejamos atrás cincuenta leguas; pero tampoco ninguno ha hecho ni merecido tanto como vosotros. Hasta México, donde reside Moteczuma, de quien tantas riquezas y mensajerías habéis oído, no hay más de veinte leguas; lo más andado está, como veis, para llegar allá.” (90; ch. 52)

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Chapter Four As always, he wins his audience’s favor with praise, and here he turns their predicament into proof of their ability to overcome that predicament. Cortés’s speech reaches its crescendo first by enumerating the great gains to be had, and then by focusing his audience’s attention on the religious justification for their war. He echoes Sepúlveda’s argument that the Indians have transgressed natural law (Democrates secundus 10, 28; see also Pagden, Spanish Imperialism 29). But it is not legalities that concern him here; it is moral outrage. As he foments his men’s anger, he plays once more on their fears: “somos obligados a ensalzar y ensanchar nuestra santa fe católica, como comenzamos y como buenos cristianos, desarraigando la idolatría, blasfemia tan grande de nuestro Dios; quitando los sacrificios y comida de carne de hombres, tan contra natura y tan usada, excusando otros pecados, que por su torpedad no los nombro.” (90; ch. 52)

In a later speech Cortés clarifies the “sin” that he does not deign to mention here. He is referring to sodomy (189; ch. 120). His audience in the text, as well as most of his reading audience outside of the text, has as of yet little contact with idolatry (as Cortés defines it), human sacrifice, or cannibalism. Sodomy, however, is not so foreign to either audience. Precisely for that reason Cortés separates it into a more distant, nefarious realm. By not naming sodomy, an “offense” that is not supposed to be named (the crimen nefandum or peccatum mutum), he refuses to acknowledge Spanish familiarity with it and also uses his men’s sexual anxiety to drive them to negate it. Here the negatio, the rhetorical figure that emphasizes something by forcing the reader to supply it, also harnesses the energy of denial. Cortés’s conclusion recapitulates his main argument and then retells the story of the conquest, which comes down to two key words: “Vencisteis” and “venceréis” (90; ch. 52). There is his argument in a nutshell: they will prevail because they already have: “Así que pues, ni temáis ni dudéis de la victoria; que lo más hecho está ya. Vencisteis los de Tabasco y ciento y cincuenta

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Quoting Cortés mil el otro día de aquestos de Tlaxcallan, que tienen fama de descarrilla-leones; venceréis también, con ayuda de Dios y con vuestro esfuerzo, los que de éstos más quedan, que no pueden ser muchos, y los de Culúa, que no son mejores, si no desmayáis y si me seguís.” (90; ch. 52)

The prospect that such warriors would faint is ridiculous enough to make them dismiss any thought of not following Cortés to victory. Gómara sets up the speech so that Cortés has to prove his sanity to his frightened men. Within the speech he has Cortés enumerate the qualities necessary for conquest: “virtud, esfuerzo e industria” (89; ch. 90). The captain had already demonstrated his courage and strength. Now with his speech to his troops and his more cunning strategy against the Tlaxcalans, he has demonstrated the third quality. The very artfulness of the address convinces the men that their leader can do more than just fight.

5. From Idols to Icons When in Gómara’s history Hernán Cortés visits the main temple in Tenochtitlan, his religious zeal gets the best of him. He starts to cast down the Aztecs’ sacred idols, just as he has cast down other idols from other temples during his long march from the coast. Here, however, Aztec priests and nobles will kill him for his sacrilege, if his prudence does not prevail. But Cortés does not give up; he merely changes tactics and, through his interpreters, attacks the idols verbally rather than physically. This sermon against idolatry, in Gómara as well as in various other sixteenth-century versions, stands out as a defining moment of the conquest. Cortés defends Spain’s evangelical mission in the New World at the same time as he supposedly carries out that mission. His defense of conquest is itself an act of conquest. Since Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México appears so recently after Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda debate the legality and morality of Spain’s wars of conquest in the Indies, his version of Cortés’s sermon on idolatry naturally invites comparison, especially with Sepúlveda’s theories on man and natural law based on his reading of Aristotle. Benjamin Keen claims that Gómara’s “artistry put 133

Chapter Four flesh and bones on Sepúlveda’s debater’s points” (82). But if Gómara brings Sepúlveda’s arguments to life with his history, he also adds to them a measure of complexity that they lack within the safe confines of philosophic dialogue. For when Gómara has Cortés give his sermon on idolatry, his protagonist speaks to at least two audiences at once: (1) the Aztec nobles and priests who in the Historia de la conquista de México surround Cortés and hear his words as they are spoken, and (2) the Europeans who read his words and who approach the Historia de la conquista de México after thirty years of controversy over the conquest and the conqueror. The same words attempt to justify the conquest in different ways to different audiences: the society of the conqueror and the society of the conquered, or at least Gómara’s idealized image of those societies. Sepúlveda, by contrast, defends the conquest only to a European audience. And, strangely enough, when (around 1562)13 Sepúlveda writes his own account of the conquest, he does not provide a set speech of Cortés’s sermon on idolatry. Instead he briefly summarizes Cortés’s arguments (De orbe novo 139; 5.24). Understandably, Gómara has Cortés refrain from following strictly the Aristotelian categories that Sepúlveda uses in his dialogue. Sepúlveda’s Democrates considers the American Indians to be irrational beings and equates them with natural slaves and even beasts (19, 22, 36, 38). This identification would not win Cortés many supporters among the Aztecs, whom he treats instead as rational beings capable of appreciating a quasi-logical sermon on Christian doctrine. In fact, Gómara has Cortés begin this sermon by appealing to a Christian, egalitarian ideal that joins Aztec and Spaniard as brothers who have a common beginning and end in life, all under one god: “Todos los hombres del mundo, muy soberano rey, y nobles caballeros y religiosos, ora vosotros aquí, ora nosotros allá en España, ora en cualquier parte, que vivan de él, tienen un mismo principio y fin de vida, y traen su comienzo y linaje de Dios, casi con el mismo Dios.” (137; ch. 86)

The strange qualifier that Gómara has Cortés add to this assertion (“casi con el mismo Dios”) could make the speaker con134

Quoting Cortés tradict himself by saying that they draw their lineage “almost from the same God.” And yet the weight of the rest of his speech, not to mention of the Christian doctrine he is defending, invites alternate readings, even though they may be forced. He could be saying, for example, that they draw their “lineage from God, practically with God himself.”14 Nevertheless, the most obvious but also least “acceptable” reading of the phrase adds to the tension between the common and distinct heritage of the two peoples in confrontation. Cortés can recognize the Aztecs as brothers on many levels, but even before he introduces the idea of hierarchy into his speech, he leaves the notso-faint suggestion that the notion that binds the common heritages is precisely what pulls them apart. Indeed, Gómara cannot allow his protagonist to embrace universal equality fully in the manner of Las Casas, because the conquest presupposes a hierarchy, a system that allows one people to dominate another. Consequently, even as Cortés draws all humanity together with a common heritage, he alludes to divisions that define relations of power. The immediate audience of the Aztec leader, nobles, and priests has a stake in the class structure of Aztec society, and therefore would not be inclined to carry egalitarian ideals any farther than Cortés. Gómara lets Cortés use his audience’s privileged position to help incorporate it into a foreign hierarchy, authorizing both Aztec and Spanish systems of power with the same Aristotelian principle that Sepúlveda uses to justify all types of rule: “ut perfecta imperfectis, fortia debilibus, virtute praestantia dissimilibus imperent, ac dominentur” (“that perfect things should rule and dominate over imperfect, strong over weak and those outstanding in virtue over those that are different”; Democrates secundus 20). Cortés delineates an order that allows his listening audience to situate itself on the side of the rational beings, though somewhere below the “enlightened” vantage point of the Spaniards: “Todos somos hechos de una manera de cuerpo, de una igualdad de ánima y de sentidos; y así, todos somos, no sólo semejantes en el cuerpo y alma, mas aun también parientes en sangre; empero acontece, por la providencia de aquel mismo Dios, que unos nazcan hermosos y otros feos; unos sean sabios y discretos, otros necios, sin entendimiento, sin

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Chapter Four juicio ni virtud; por donde es justo, santo y muy conforme a razón y a voluntad de Dios, que los prudentes y virtuosos enseñen y doctrinen a los ignorantes, y guíen a los ciegos y que andan errados, y los metan en el camino de salvación por la vereda de la verdadera religión.” (137–38; ch. 86)

For the Aztecs to accept religious guidance according to these terms, they must be willing to identify themselves as the ignorant, blind, and lost. Although Cortés presumably expects them to take this first difficult step toward the path of salvation, he does not preach to them as inferiors. Instead, he continues to appeal alternately to the egalitarian ideal and to the Aztecs’ own social hierarchy. When Gómara has Cortés argue against human sacrifice, the idea of a common origin for all people allows him to associate the authority to take life with the power to give life, that is, with the “author” or creator. Those who kill without such authority, as he believes the Aztecs do, not only attack their brothers; they upset the balance of nature: “‘Hay hombre de vosotros que querría le matasen? No por cierto. Pues ¿por qué matáis a otros tan cruelmente? Donde no podéis meter alma, ¿para qué la sacáis?’” (138; ch. 86). The Christians, we are to believe, only kill in retribution, as if fulfilling the law that Cortés brings from the Christian king: “que el que matare lo maten” (Cortés 239; letter 2). This notion of equilibrium contrasts with the Aztecs’ rites of human sacrifice, a manner of dealing with death that appears in Gómara to be completely arbitrary. Where the egalitarian ideal is not convenient, however, Gómara has Cortés reverse strategies. On the subject of idolatry, Gómara, following Peter Martyr, equates the Aztec gods with the physical objects that represent them and has Cortés argue that their worship inverts the hierarchy of Aztec society: “‘Adoráis lo que hacen manos que no comeréis lo que guisan o tocan’” (138; ch. 86). The contrast could not be greater. Whereas Cortés places the Christian god as the author of all creation, he maintains that the Aztec gods are the creations of the same slaves that the Aztec nobles hold in contempt. The double strategy of appealing to the Aztec audience as part of a universal brotherhood on the one hand and as members of an elite class on the other only reflects contradictions in the conqueror’s own society, and so is compatible at least in 136

Quoting Cortés theory with that society’s own hierarchies.15 Other contradictions within Gómara’s version of this speech, however, are due not to the arguments themselves, but to the different readings to which these arguments are susceptible. The imagery of the path, reinforced with wordplay (“la vereda de la verdadera religión”), is a biblical commonplace that here defines the conversion to Christianity as a return to natural origins, personified by the Christian god in the figure of the father: “si queremos tornar al Padre, es menester que seamos buenos, humanos, piadosos, inocentes y corregibles” (138; ch. 86).16 But not all audiences will find “the true religion” by the same path. For the Spaniards the metaphor corresponds with a return to a natural order and coincides with the Christian narrative of common beginnings and blood relation: “somos parientes y hechura de Dios; y aun hijos” (138; ch. 86). But for the Aztec audience this kinship will recall a different story that, although primarily a Spanish invention in the form it has come down to us (starting with Cortés’s Segunda relación), arises in Gómara’s text as a purely Aztec legend, and one that does not accord with Spanish history as anyone except perhaps Oviedo knows it, that is, the identification of the Spaniards as descendents of a lord who originally brought the Aztecs’ ancestors to Mexico.17 Gómara has Cortés make use of another convenient fiction when he defines the conquest in purely religious terms: “En tres cosas, como ya sabréis, consiste el hombre y su vida; en cuerpo, alma y bienes. De vuestra hacienda, que es lo menos, ni queremos nada, ni hemos tomado sino lo que nos habéis dado. A vuestras personas ni a las de vuestros hijos ni mujeres, no habemos tocado, ni aun queremos; el alma solamente buscamos para su salvación; a la cual ahora pretendemos aquí mostrar y dar noticia entera del verdadero Dios.” (138; ch. 86)

When Cortés says that all he wants is their souls, he has recently taken Moctezuma captive and managed to secure a large portion of the Aztecs’ hidden treasure. Further, on other occasions, when he speaks to his own men, he consistently appeals to their worldly concerns and desires as well as to their sense of Christian duty. But if Cortés’s definition of the conquest in

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Chapter Four the Historia de la conquista de México takes on different forms for different audiences, the underlying principle is consistent: all other facets of the conquest serve the spiritual goal of the defense and diffusion of the “truth.” The coherence of the hierarchy allows the spiritual conquest to include something for everyone, without contradiction. A more difficult coherence for Gómara to maintain is that of Cortés’s ends and means within his speech on idolatry. All rhetoric accommodates itself to fit the audience it addresses, but here Cortés tailors his arguments to his listeners in the text so thoroughly that they are often not valid for his listeners outside of the text. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca would classify these arguments therefore as ad hominem, not in the more common sense of that term (arguments based on personal attack), but rather in the sense of arguments “which the speaker knows would be without weight for the universal audience, as he conceives it” (111). This is not to say that the Historia de la conquista de México’s readers, for example, would not accept Cortés’s attack on idolatry and his defense of Christianity, of course, but that they would recognize his arguments to be especially suited to the Aztec emperor, priests, and nobility.18 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca maintain that all arguments are ad hominem in a wider sense, because “[t]he possibilities for argumentation depend on what each participant is ready to concede, on the values he recognizes, on the facts on which he indicates his agreement” (110), and that consequently even an argument given as valid for everyone, an argument ad humanitatem, would also be a case of argument ad hominem, although a special one. In the narrower sense, the argument that concerns us here is recognizably valid only for particular groups. A reader of the Historia de la conquista de México in sixteenth-century Spain could recognize Cortés’s speech on idolatry to be valid only for the Aztec nobility because: (1) it appeals to them as nobles who would feel disdain for the work of slaves; (2) it reduces the conquest to purely religious terms so that it does not seem to threaten the Aztecs or their effects (when we can see from the other speeches within the Historia de la conquista de México that wealth and power are integral parts of this Christian crusade); and (3) the narratio within the speech, the story Cortés tells of creation and of common kin138

Quoting Cortés ship, is ambiguous enough to include a completely different history that the Aztecs supposedly use to make sense of the Spaniards’ arrival and authority. Cortés bases his speech in part on terms that the Aztec nobility supposedly accepts, but at the same time he is endeavoring to change precisely those terms. In effect, he is using a system of beliefs to dismantle and replace that same system. Can Gómara’s Cortés reconcile such a patently deceptive rhetoric in the name of the divine truth, or do his ends also fall victim to his means? Cortés circumvented this problem in his Cartas de relación by showing how service to the truth requires, for him, an artful mastery of language. Gómara has him make much the same move in the Historia de la conquista de México by showing how an effective presentation of the Christian truth requires a knowledge of one’s audience and an ability to adapt to that audience. Even Augustine, who categorically forbids all lying in the teaching of religion, considers lies that are uttered for the good of the audience to be more easily pardoned (Bok 35). And he advocates rhetorical flexibility in sermons, especially for those who must move rather than teach their listeners (Augustine 121; bk. 4). In light of the higher truth that Cortés claims to serve, and given the overall subtlety of his deceptions, it is easy to see him following in the steps of Paul, who accommodates his own rhetoric to suit every audience: “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (I Cor. 9.19–23). The “truth” as it is conceived in Gómara, just as it is conceived in Cortés’s Cartas de relación, does not prevail on its own. It needs a resourceful advocate such as Cortés to lend it force. Other visions of the conquest and other images of Cortés, however, were competing for the reading public’s imagination in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cervantes de Salazar’s version of Cortés’s speech on idolatry (copied verbatim by Herrera and Torquemada), while obviously accommodating its arguments to an imagined Aztec audience, strives to make those arguments valid for a universal audience. There are no operative fictions that deceive the listeners but not the readers, and even the effect of the speech on the Aztecs is far less problematic: Cortés leaves most of his immediate audience “convencidos con la fuerza de la eterna verdad” (Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica 1: 361; bk. 4, ch. 32). Nevertheless, Cervantes 139

Chapter Four de Salazar does not necessarily provide a more convincing defense of the Spanish Empire just because his protagonist is able to extend that empire with arguments ad humanitatem rather than ad hominem. For in Gómara, Cortés not only assures the Europeans a privileged place in the hierarchy that he presents to the Aztecs (as the virtuous, beautiful, and enlightened people destined to rule over their inferiors); he also “demonstrates” their supposed superiority by letting them see the strategy behind his speech. Far from detracting from the speech’s “truth appeal,” the convenient fictions and distortions are part of its attraction to the Spanish audience, part of the hierarchy they have a stake in. Unlike the heavy-handed argumentation of Cervantes de Salazar’s Cortés (“‘¿quién no se reirá viendo que tengáis un dios para el agua, otro para el fuego, otro para las batallas y otros así para muchas cosas . . .’” [Crónica 1: 360; bk. 4, ch. 32]), the conquistador’s artful rhetoric in the Historia de la conquista de México allows its readers to find fresh “evidence” of their intellectual superiority, which in turn affirms the political and spiritual hierarchies that the conquest presupposes. If in Gómara the conquest is predicated on intellectual superiority, then it should come as no surprise that the conversion takes the form of an intellectual as well as a spiritual transformation. For Gómara’s Cortés, the distinction between a wooden replica of the Virgin Mary and a stone statue of Huitzilopochtli comes not only from their dramatically different appearance and meaning, but also from the different ways by which they create meaning. When Gómara calls the statue of the Aztec war god an “ídolo,” he already casts it into the realm of the false deities: [Ídolo] está contrahido a sinificar alguna figura o estat[u]a, la qual se venera por semejança de algún dios falso, como Júpiter, Mercurio, y los demás que reverenciavan los gentiles, o otro demonio o criatura de las que los indios y los demás bárbaros reverencian, induzidos los unos y los otros por el demonio. (Covarrubias 726)

But Gómara’s Cortés goes farther than Covarrubias. He equates the “false” god with the idol, the physical object, and thus deprives that object of its status as a sign: “‘¿Creéis que son 140

Quoting Cortés dioses lo que se pudre, carcome, envejece y sentido ninguno tiene?’” (138–39; ch. 86). These idols not only “have no sense”; they “make no sense,” since Cortés only points to the sum of the materials that comprise them. For him they signify nothing. When Gómara has Cortés oppose the Aztecs’ physical objects of worship to the Christian god, who transcends physical boundaries, he clears the way for further oppositions that define the conversion as a step out of the immediate, literal world up to a higher, figurative level of understanding: “‘Alzad los ojos al cielo, y luego entenderéis que está allá arriba alguna deidad . . . A este Dios pues, que ahora imagináis allá dentro en vuestros corazones, a ése servid y adorad, no con muerte de hombres, sino con sola devoción y palabras’” (139; ch. 86). Both “allá arriba” and “allá dentro” Cortés urges the Aztecs to discover a god that they cannot touch, one that they can grasp only intellectually and spiritually. Pérez de Oliva, in his version of this speech by Cortés, establishes a pivotal term in this move from literal to figurative: “‘El verdadero Dios que con su lumbre los cristianos conoscen no demanda la sangre de los coraçones sino la limpieza dellos’” (“Algunas cosas de Hernán Cortés y México” 464–65). It is as if the Aztecs had missed the metaphor of spiritual purity. Their hearts are not in the right place because they cannot transcend the literal reading of the heart as a physical organ. For Sepúlveda this misreading is deadly, and it condemns the Aztecs as well as the victims of their sacrificial rites: I have spoken about the nature and customs of the Barbarians, but what can I say about their unholy religion, when they worshipped the devil as God? They thought no sacrifices were enough to appease him, and offered him human hearts. Although this is perfectly correct if you understand by it (intellegas) the healthy and pious souls of men, they did not take it in the life-giving spirit (to use the words of Paul), but rather by the letter that kills (ad occidentem literam referentes). Most stupidly understanding it in barbarous fashion, they thought that they had to make an offering with human victims and rip out hearts from opened chests. When they had taken these hearts to their horrid altars, they thought they had made their offering and appeased the gods. (Democrates secundus 37–38)

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Chapter Four The Aztecs do not understand how to “offer their hearts to God” in the figurative sense, in the life-giving spirit of the expression, but rather give it a deadly literal reading.19 In fact, they give it no “reading” at all because, for Sepúlveda, they cannot read or write (35). The problem is one of understanding (intellegere > inter-legere), of “reading in” and interpreting one thing for another. The lack of a system of writing emerges in the Democrates secundus as a symptom of the Aztecs’ inability to transcend their immediate world of idolatry and human sacrifice. Walter Mignolo has explored a corresponding inability among Europeans of the early modern period to transcend a view of the world that cannot conceive, or at least cannot give equal legitimacy to, other forms of record keeping besides writing. His reading of Spanish and American Indian record keeping: attempts to circumvent the universality of “history” and to conceive of “historiography” as a regional Western invention (particularly in its post-Renaissance version). . . . The fact that this regional record-keeping maintains a complicity with empire and imperial expansion gave it its universal value and allowed imperial agencies to inscribe the idea that people without writing were people without history and that people without history were inferior human beings. (The Darker Side of the Renaissance 127)

No better example of this sense of superiority could be found than that of Sepúlveda, who characterizes the Aztecs as stuck in a primitive stage of development, in which the step from literal to figurative is also a step to writing, law, civilization, and a better understanding of the world—in short, a step to full humanity. But not everyone is so sure that the Aztecs have no writing system. Their characters pose a problem for Gómara if not for Sepúlveda: No se han hallado letras hasta hoy en las Indias, que no es pequeña consideración; solamente hay en la Nueva España unas ciertas figuras que sirven por letras, con las cuales notan y entienden toda cualquier cosa, y conservan la memoria y antigüedades. Semejan mucho a los geroglifos de

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Quoting Cortés Egipto, mas no encubren tanto el sentido, a lo que oigo, aunque ni debe ni puede ser menos. (Historia de la conquista de México 312; ch. 200)

Gómara contradicts himself here in a way that shows he cannot decide whether the Aztecs have a real writing system or not. He was not alone in this confusion. Fox Morcillo, in his discussion of the evolution of written history, also assigns the Aztecs’ figures the same representational capacity as hieroglyphs. But both he and Gómara seem to underscore the Aztecs’ oral tradition when they say (actually Gómara has Moctezuma say) that the legend of the returning lord from the East was passed down by word of mouth (Historia de la conquista de México 111; ch. 66; Fox Morcillo 11–11v). By contrast, in Cortés’s second letter Moctezuma begins the same speech by referring to written documents that the Aztecs possess informing them that they are not native to that country (210). The historian who first compares the Aztec letters to Egyptian hieroglyphs is Peter Martyr of Angleria (61; dec. 4, ch. 8), who saw the hieroglyphs when he went on a diplomatic mission to Cairo in 1502.20 Both Gómara and Peter Martyr say others deny that the characters are to be read, but then they both disagree with this assessment: “Quid credam in hac varietate non intellego. Libros esse puto, characteresque illos ac imagines aliud aliquid significare” (“I cannot make out [or “read in”] what to think about the variety [in these books]. I think that they are books and that the characters and images in them mean something else”; Angleria 86; dec. 5, ch. 10). The verb intellegere again underlines the problem of reading, only here the European is struggling to “read into” the other’s signs; and Martyr does treat the Aztec letters as signs, saying that they “mean something else” or “other” (“aliud aliquid significare”). Gómara makes a similar claim when he says that the Aztec letters “conceal meaning,” in the sense that they contain it, that they have meaning hidden beneath them. The figures that both writers use to explain the phenomenon of writing equate writing with thinking figuratively, and thus imply that the Aztecs already take that step. What then happens to the Aztec figures, that is, their idols? Might they not also be open to a figurative reading? Gómara may focus on the 143

Chapter Four idols as physical objects in the Historia de la conquista de México, but he never denies their status as signs in the same way that his protagonist does. Moreover, Cortés’s reading of the idols depends on his reading of the Aztecs, since they decide whether for them their idols represent something else or are to be taken as deities in themselves; and Cortés does not always read the Aztecs correctly in Gómara. For example, Gómara, like Oviedo (4: 48; bk. 33, ch. 10), speaks of a hidden resentment among the Aztecs after the speech on idolatry, and implies that Cortés’s actions, if not his words, have perhaps been counterproductive: “quedóles un odio y rencor mortal con ellos por esto, que no pudieron disimular mucho tiempo” (139; ch. 86). This dissimulation turns the tables on Cortés; now, even if only for a moment, he is the one who is misled. But if his affront has been so great, why do the Aztecs hold their anger inside? Although Cortés may have placated them with his words, as Gómara says (“Con este razonamiento aplacó Cortés la ira de los sacerdotes y ciudadanos” [139; ch. 86]), it is also possible that the nobles are not free to react openly because their emperor is not free. Their dissimulation reminds us that Moctezuma is still the honored “guest” of the Spaniards. If Gómara’s Cortés leaves the Aztec nobles and priests only partially or superficially converted, their temple undergoes a similarly ambiguous transformation: Moteczuma y los suyos prometieron de no matar a nadie en sacrificio, y de tener la cruz e imagen de nuestra Señora, si les dejaban los ídolos de sus dioses que aún estaban en pie; y así lo hizo él, y lo cumplieron ellos, porque nunca después sacrificaron hombre, a lo menos en público ni de manera que españoles lo supiesen; y pusieron cruces e imágenes de nuestra Señora y de otros sus santos entre sus ídolos. (139; ch. 86)

Besides suggesting that the sacrifices may well have continued behind the Spaniards’ backs, Gómara has the Aztecs treat idols and icons as if they were comparable. When the Aztecs put “images of . . . their saints among their idols,” only the context tells us that the saints belong to the Spaniards and the idols to the Aztecs; but, like the possessive adjectives governing the various objects of worship, the jumbled context in the temple

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Quoting Cortés has become an unreliable point of reference. The leap from “their” to “their” is only possible because the reader knows beforehand whose images are whose. Gómara makes replacing idols with icons almost as difficult for the literate Spaniards as for their image of the supposedly literal-minded Aztecs.

In Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México, Hernán Cortés succeeds as a conqueror in part because he knows how to define the conquest in different ways to different people. His mastery of rhetoric defines his role as leader and asserts his power over those he must either conquer or convince. Even as Cortés ostensibly tailors his speeches to his dispirited troops or to an Aztec audience of nobles and priests, he also speaks across time and space to a European audience that will pass judgment on his words and actions. Such a rhetorical split inevitably exposes the speaker’s duplicity, but in Gómara such duplicity is useful, provided it does not undermine the Christian principles that the conqueror uses to justify the conquest. For when Cortés demonstrates his conquering artifice to his European readers, he confirms their privileged position in the intellectual hierarchy that the conquest presupposes. Unlike his protagonist and unlike Sepúlveda’s Democrates, however, Gómara does not base that hierarchy on a rigid opposition between literal and figurative interpretations of the world, perhaps because he remembers that Europeans are subject to misreadings of their own.

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Chapter Five

Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii

1. Renaissance Ventriloquism The initial face-to-face encounter between Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma is the culmination of the Spaniards’ long march inland; and for many historians it marks the end of the first stage of European exploration in the Americas, as if all other meetings between Europeans and American Indians, except Columbus’s landfall twenty-seven years earlier, served as prelude. At last a foreign sovereign provides a suitable counterpart to the Spanish monarch. Charles V can see himself reflected in Moctezuma as a fellow emperor, and then confirmed as the Aztec’s superior, when, according to early Spanish accounts of this meeting, Moctezuma recognizes Charles’s authority. The act of placing this famous and, for us, unlikely abdication in the mouth of Moctezuma suggests a form of historiographical ventriloquism, because the Aztec emperor only speaks to readers through the voices that European narrators impose on him. Of course, any narrator who puts words into the mouths of characters practices a type of ventriloquism, and so one could conceivably analyze all set speeches as “thrown voices” that seem to emanate from the mouths of puppets. But some characters are more puppetlike than others. Here the contrast with the figure of Cortés is illuminating. Unlike Moctezuma, and unlike other protagonists of the conquest, his image takes on an extratextual autonomy that derives not only from its reference to a historical man of flesh and bone and from the independence that any character, fictional or historical, attains from the author who created or helped to develop that character; it also derives from Cortés’s double conquest, in

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Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii which he prevails as both protagonist and historian. Variations on that character’s history will therefore remain “true” to the original creation of the Cartas de relación only if they afford him an apparent autonomy, the illusion of controlling his own words. Even if these words come from the imagination of a later historian, they only offer convincing representations of Cortés’s speech acts if they reflect that speaker’s pervasive influence. By contrast, the initial illusion in the case of Moctezuma’s character is that Cortés influences his speech, and that he does so both as writer and as protagonist. Starting with the Segunda relación, Cortés creates the setting for Moctezuma’s two speeches of concession and re-creates the speeches themselves almost a year after the event, after Moctezuma has died and the Spaniards have been driven out of Tenochtitlan. Since Cortés has supposedly lost any documents that can provide notarized “proof” of the formal act of donation, he must rely on his own accounts of the two speeches to show that in the second stage of the conquest he is suppressing the rebellion of a nation whose leader has sworn fealty to the Spanish Crown, or perhaps better yet, that he is reconquering lost territory. Cortés reinforces the potent image of the Spanish Reconquest within Moctezuma’s speeches when he has the Aztec monarch receive the Spaniards as descendents of the former conquerors (see Gaylord, “Spain’s Renaissance Conquests and the Retroping of Identity” 133). Moctezuma’s second speech, in which he tells his vassals to recognize Charles as their sovereign, is not usually as long as his initial reception speech to the Spaniards. In most accounts it merely condenses the essential information of this first speech, but in the presence of a notary and witnesses, so that the Spanish can claim to formalize their right to the conquest. Moctezuma’s donation, then, marks both the end of the Spaniards’ efforts to gain a title to the new land and the beginning of their “rightful” or “legal” seizing of that land. Both Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas accepted the Spanish right to rule in theory if the Indians freely recognized the emperor as their leader.1 So if Moctezuma appeared to act with the consent of his subjects and actually concede authority, then the translatio imperii would be credible, and Spanish rule in Mexico could appear justified.

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Chapter Five Translatio imperii is the technical term for a transfer of power.2 It also suggests, however, both a translation of power, significant in this case because the concession, as is often the case, must be translated, and a metaphor of power, or perhaps even a metaphor of empire. Moctezuma’s speech represents Spanish power on various levels. It is of course a key moment of the conquest, a part that represents the whole. Here the synecdoche relies on synecdoches of political representation: Moctezuma represents and speaks for the Aztecs, just as Cortés as subject speaks for the Spaniards and for his sovereign, Charles, who in turn represents the Hapsburg empire. Also, the nature of the transfer represents through analogy an idealized vision of conquest, according to which Moctezuma’s speeches portray him submitting to the Spaniards peacefully and in a way that reinforces European claims of superiority. Finally, the transfer represents the textual and extratextual manipulation of Moctezuma by Cortés, a manipulation that includes and combines the acts of translating, transporting, and transforming Moctezuma’s words. Within the Segunda relación Hernán Cortés participates as the last link in the interpretative chain that extends from Moctezuma through Malinali and Aguilar to Cortés, and then finally to Charles V. If Malinali and Aguilar make the Aztec emperor’s speeches intelligible to Cortés, he in turn renders them intelligible and acceptable to the Spanish monarch and to the rest of his European audience. The extent of his own “translation,” like so much of his verbal manipulation, lies beyond our view. One can only speculate. Guzmán, Elliott, and Pagden, for example, are inclined to believe that both the welcome speech to the Spaniards and Moctezuma’s formal submission to Charles V are more fiction than fact.3 Thomas, however, on reviewing how many other sixteenth-century sources corroborate the essential elements of Cortés’s version of each speech, concludes that with the first speech Cortés “probably did not depart so far from the reality of the Emperor’s remarks as has been supposed” (285), and with the second speech he “probably neither lied, nor told the whole truth” (325). The likelihood of a conspiracy among competing Spanish accounts seems small to Thomas, although he acknowledges that the corroboration need not have been planned in order to be suspect:

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Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii “It is certainly possible that, by the 1560s, the myth of Montezuma’s submission was so established that it was unquestioningly accepted, even by people who had been present, and who might have been expected to have known a different story. But Bernal Díaz was nobody’s man. He wrote among other things in order to bring the figure of Cortés down to size” (284). Bernal Díaz may have been nobody’s man, but he, like the other conquistadors who wrote or testified about this event, had a stake in Moctezuma’s donation. On this point least of all would they be inclined to dispute Cortés’s Segunda relación. Although Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s synopsis of the initial dialogue between Moctezuma and Cortés (316–17; ch. 89) differs substantially from the version in the Segunda relación, his account of Moctezuma’s later speech to his nobles (372–74; ch. 101) predictably contains the concession that would seem to legitimate the conquest and so also the old conquistador’s landholdings in Guatemala (although neither speech in Díaz’s account identifies the Spanish sovereign as a descendent of a former ruler of the Aztecs). Thomas gives a plausible explanation of how Moctezuma’s obsequious politeness could have been misconstrued as a sign of actual submission: These statements of Montezuma, given the slowness of the translation, might have appeared to Cortés to show that the Emperor was willing to accept not only the friendship but the suzerainty of Charles; or more probably, that the expression of friendship could be so twisted as to make it seem, without overt mendacity, that Montezuma had made such concessions. . . . There is less than might at first seem between a statement which might say “Tell your king I am his most obedient and humble servant”—a phrase which means nothing formal—and “Tell your king that I am his loyal vassal”—a statement which could mean a cession of authority. (281)

The Spaniards, therefore, could have merely misinterpreted Moctezuma’s speech, just as Europeans from Columbus onward continually and self-servingly misinterpreted American geography and American “Indians.” But as Cortés’s version of the speech took hold, there is no reason to suppose that his readers did not also entertain the possibility that he twisted Moctezuma’s words. That is to say, the act of translating or 149

Chapter Five transforming “obedient and humble servant” into “loyal vassal” need not have been surreptitious for Cortés’s readers. The European audience could very well have appreciated Cortés’s textual and extratextual manipulation of Moctezuma’s words. Clearly the twisting of words does not stop with Cortés. Of the sixteenth-century historians of the conquest, only Oviedo copies Cortés’s version of Moctezuma’s speeches. Martyr, Pérez de Oliva, Gómara, Sepúlveda, and Cervantes de Salazar follow Cortés, often quite closely, but always with their own variations, because they are not reading Cortés for any wordfor-word correspondence. By adapting the speech to fit their own narratives, these humanist historians implicitly acknowledge that Cortés was equally if not more creative when he gave Moctezuma’s words the form they required so that they might make sense within Cortés’s narrative, which is after all the story of Europeans manipulating American Indians. Gómara certainly understood the conquistador to be the hand holding the strings in the textual representation of Moctezuma’s concession. One finds in Gómara, as Delgado Gómez points out, the explanation of how Cortés knew what Moctezuma said to his nobles in the second speech: Según él [Gómara], Motecuhzoma convocó a los señores “y de su albedrío, o por el de Cortés, les hizo delante los españoles el infrascripto razonamiento” (p. 356a). No se le escapaba al clérigo historiador quién era el autor en la sombra del discurso. (Cortés, Cartas de relación 228n249; emphasis added)

Cortés could have ghostwritten this second speech given by Moctezuma, because at this point he seemed to control much of what the Aztec emperor said and did; or he could have merely presented a version of the speech that he would have liked Moctezuma to give. As is often the case with Cortés, his power derives largely from fusing these two levels of control. Whether textual or extratextual, this control over Moctezuma’s words complicates the manner in which the Aztec’s speeches seem to legitimate the conquest. But his concession is already problematic, because it stems from the famous misunderstanding that Charles V is a descendant of a former ruler

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Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii of the Aztecs. How can Moctezuma convincingly recognize Charles V’s sovereignty when he misrecognizes Charles V? Another way to pose the problem is to ask how Moctezuma’s welcome speech establishes Moctezuma’s authority and at the same time strips him of that authority in such a way that Europeans might acknowledge and accept. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo makes sense of Moctezuma’s abdication in terms that would doubtlessly seem reasonable to many sixteenth-century Europeans: he ascribes it to the sins of the Aztecs and the merits of Charles V, in short, to God’s will. Even if this providentialist explanation merely relies on rather than explains the hierarchies of conquest, it provides a useful point of departure for understanding how Spaniards might approach the problem of the speech. Oviedo is also illuminating because he comments directly on how the Spaniards take advantage of the famous misunderstanding. After recounting almost verbatim Cortés’s version of Moctezuma’s second speech, Oviedo remarks on Moctezuma’s tears and how they betray his unwillingness. He also comments on what his contemporaries often prefer to ignore or, like Gómara, allude to more subtly: Moctezuma’s status as a hostage during the second speech of donation. At this point Oviedo seems to condemn the entire charade, quoting Marcus Varro: “‘lo que por fuerza se da, no es servicio, sino robo’” (4: 42; bk. 14, ch 9). This robbery, however, is ultimately justified in Oviedo’s opinion: Y no sin causa tengo ya dicho que [Moctezuma] era pusilánimo e hombre de poco ser, e que aquella su consciencia, con que parescía que él daba lo suyo a su dueño, no resultó de su limpieza de ánima, sino de la voluntad de Dios, por los delictos e vicios de esta gente. E por los sanos deseos e méritos de César, se encaminaron las cosas a otro mayor derecho e origen del que Moctezuma decía; porque si allí habían ido sus progenitores, no se sabe ni está escrito quién fueron ésos, ni Cortés sabía en este caso lo que le decía, mas de novelar e traer a su propósito confabulaciones de mañoso e sagaz e diestro capitán; excepto si, como se dijo en la primera parte de estas historias, en el libro II e capítulo III, estas gentes tenían alguna noticia, de lo que allí se tractó del rey XII de España, llamado Hespero. (4: 42; bk. 14, ch. 9; emphasis added)

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Chapter Five Oviedo is the only prominent historian of the conquest to entertain the idea that Spain’s rights to the Indies date back to earlier “Spanish” voyages to the Americas (1: 17–20), but even he considers Moctezuma to be mistaken about the identity of the Spaniards. For Oviedo, the possibility that Moctezuma knew of such a connection seems as remote as the connection itself. A more likely source for the link, according to Oviedo, is Cortés’s own imagination, for the historian accuses Cortés of telling tales and plotting for his own purpose. He makes this accusation, however, in vague and ultimately admiring terms. The infinitives “novelar” and “traer a su propósito confabulaciones” leave undefined the exact relation between the actions and the contents of the speech. Moreover, just as “novelar” suggests both the invention of new, that is, fictitious material and the narrativizing of news, that is, real events, so “confabulaciones” brings together the fiction of fable and a plot of a different kind, namely, a conspiracy. The scope of Cortés’s mediation remains open. He may have made up the speech, just taken advantage of what Moctezuma said, or done a little of both. Finally Oviedo combines the craftiness of “mañoso” with the less underhanded perspicacity of “sagaz” in his description of Cortés. Quite in keeping with Cortés’s persona from the Cartas, Oviedo, in spite of his skepticism regarding Moctezuma’s speech, lets his audience see how Cortés’s mysterious reworking of that speech reveals that the conquest is in good hands. Even more skeptical than Oviedo is, of course, Las Casas, who discusses Moctezuma’s supposed donation at length in his late work De thesauris (1563). Here the Dominican does not address the questionable premise of the donation—the identification of the Spaniards with former inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico—but rather the circumstances that cast doubt either on the donation’s authenticity or its legitimacy. His arguments reveal the centrality of the episode within the debate over the wars of conquest and support his claim that no king, lord, people, or person ever recognized or freely and truly accepted the Spanish kings as their sovereigns, with the exception of those whom he and his followers had peacefully converted in Vera Paz (352–55; ch. 32). This sweeping statement has farreaching consequences given the revised interpretation of the

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Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii papal bulls of 1493 that Las Casas proposes after the Valladolid encounter. At this stage in his life the Dominican considers the validity of the title granted in the bulls to depend on the Indians’ voluntary acceptance of dominion. His conclusion is that the papal donation has never been in force, and in the Doce dudas and De thesauris he even proposes the solution of restoring native rule to the Inca and other rulers.4 In his De thesauris Las Casas starts his discussion of Moctezuma’s supposed donation by appealing to a general precept from Roman civil law: it is not assumed that anyone gives away gladly what is theirs. Although not compelling in itself, this rule nevertheless places the burden of proof in the opposing camp and allows Las Casas to emphasize the power that Moctezuma held before Cortés put him in chains. Las Casas maintains that Cortés took Moctezuma prisoner upon arriving in Tenochtitlan, an accusation that provides him with his second argument: Moctezuma could not transfer power freely because he was not free.5 Certainly such a charge was widely applied to the later act of donation, but Las Casas applies it to Moctezuma’s initial welcome speech as well. His third argument is that Moctezuma did not understand the terms of the donation because he did not understand the Castilian language. Here Las Casas brings up the problems of a transfer of power that must be translated, but he does not discuss the complicated process of translation. Whereas in Cortés’s Cartas de relación the translators fade into the background so as to give the impression of unmediated communication, in Las Casas’s discussion of this exchange, they are not mentioned at all, as if Moctezuma had to learn Spanish in order to understand the terms of his own cession. In his fourth argument Las Casas maintains that Moctezuma’s behavior before the encounter proves his unwillingness to yield to the Spaniards. Had not Moctezuma sent Cortés many gifts and asked him to return to his own country? The strength of this argument lies not so much in its logic as in the anecdote that Las Casas recounts in its support, because he uses Cortés’s own words against him. Las Casas recalls an encounter in Mexico City with “that oppressor of men” during which they spoke in friendly terms, for they “were once friends” (“eramus enim quondam amici” [De thesauris 344; ch.

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Chapter Five 32]). The conversation turned to Cortés’s invasion of those realms: He [Cortés] asserted that the king Moctezuma had ceded the whole kingdom to him, in the name of the King of Spain. I contradicted him and assured him that he had done it (if he in fact did do it, which I hardly believe) for fear and terror of the horses and firearms. Moreover, someone else who was there with us asked him, “Did not Moctezuma send you messengers with gifts, imploring you and your men to leave his kingdom?” He responded with a smile and a roar of laughter, “Most definitely, more than thirty times.” You see how in public from his own mouth I showed him to be a liar. (344–46; ch. 32) (Affirmabat nanque ille regem Motençuma totum regnum cessisse illi, nomine Regis Hispaniarum. Et mihi neganti illud atque asserenti metu et terrore equorum, machinarum nitrariarum factum fuisse, (si tamen factum fuit, quod minime credo), necnon et querenti cuidam qui nobiscum tunc erat: “Num rex ille Motençuma misit ad te nuntios cum donis, rogans ut exires tu et socii tui regnum suum?” Respondit ridens cum cachinis: “Hoc certe plusquam triginta vicibus.” Ecce qualiter ex ore proprio suo palam eum esse mendacem conuici. [344–46; ch. 32])

Las Casas quotes Cortés in order to discredit Cortés’s quoting of Moctezuma. But how is it that Las Casas proves Cortés to be a liar? The admission that Moctezuma repeatedly tried to dissuade Cortés and his men from proceeding inland does not prove the point, because one could still argue that Moctezuma changed his mind and yielded to Cortés once the two finally met in Tenochtitlan. If anything condemns Cortés here, it is his laughter, the way he speaks more than what he says. The meaning of the laughter is, naturally, open to interpretation. Cortés might be amused at how he defied the Aztec emperor’s wishes only before their encounter. Las Casas seems to infer from the response, however, a more general disregard for Moctezuma’s will, a pattern of behavior that sets the tone for other exchanges between the two men, and probably an indication that Cortés is hiding something behind his smile. The proof comes “from his own mouth” (“ex ore proprio suo”), which is, along with Cortés’s pen, the source for the primary account of what supposedly comes from Moctezuma’s mouth. 154

Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii As Las Casas mentions in his anecdote, another argument that undermines the legitimacy of the donation is the fear that the Aztecs felt, especially after the Cholulan massacre. His conclusion at this point, however, does not rest on his characterization of Moctezuma but rather of Cortés: Therefore, whatever the king Moctezuma did in the cession of his empire to or in the benefit of that tyrant meant absolutely nothing, even if it had been true that he made such a cession, in the way that that devious tyrant contrived. (348; ch. 32) (ergo nihil ualuit profecto quidquid rex Motençuma fecit in cessione imperii sui ad illum uel in illum tyrannum, etiam si uerum fuisset quod talem cessionem fecisset, prout fixit tyrannus ille uafer. [348; ch. 32])

The real Moctezuma at this point remains unknown. All we have access to is the figure that Cortés has made up. The phrase “in the way that that devious tyrant contrived” (“prout fixit tyrannus ille uafer”) portrays Cortés in the familiar image of a creator of fictions that have come to be accepted as truths. He has shaped (“fixit”) the textual Moctezuma, but, as in the Cartas de relación, it is difficult to separate completely this textual fashioning from an extratextual or “real” fashioning of Moctezuma. Las Casas bases his claim that Moctezuma could not have made the donation willingly on his argument that the Aztec emperor would have been acting out of fear. Whether he made the donation or not is not the point. In either case Las Casas is telling the story of Cortés’s manipulation of Moctezuma. Las Casas finally makes his most important legal point, that the Aztec ruler did not have the right to transfer his kingdom to another ruler because he did not have the consent of his subjects (350; ch. 32). The will of the people, however, like the will of the ruler, remained open to debate. Moreover, the legality of the donation, though obviously important, does not entirely determine its narrative force, especially if one considers the questionable premise on which it is based and which Cortés never attempts to conceal.

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Chapter Five

2. Rendering Moctezuma Harmless in Cortés’s Segunda relación The events that lead up to Moctezuma’s first speech to the Spaniards in Cortés’s Segunda relación present the Aztec emperor in a contradictory light. His gifts and offers of tribute make it difficult for Cortés to accept the Aztec emperor’s claim to reside in a barren region that could not provide for them. While Moctezuma insists through his embassies that he wants friendly relations with the Spaniards, he also insists that the foreigners should turn back, and he even attempts to thwart their progress through ambush. And, of course, Cortés has heard from his new allies that the Aztecs are not to be trusted. The splendor and riches of the Valley of Mexico, which Cortés describes in detail in the passages immediately preceding the encounter, belie Moctezuma’s earlier messages. The Aztec emperor has a lot of explaining to do. He knows that his audience is curious, but he has also been led to believe that this curiosity stems from previous knowledge, for Cortés has sent word to him that Charles has long known of him and his capital: Y a su embajada le respondí que si en mi mano fuera volverme que yo lo hiciera por facer placer a Muteeçuma, pero que yo había venido en esta tierra por mandado de Vuestra Majestad y que de la prencipal cosa della me mandó le hiciese relación fue del dicho Muteeçuma y de aquella su grand ciudad, de la cual y dél había mucho tiempo que Vuestra Alteza tenía noticia. (202)

As is always the case in the Cartas de relación, Cortés makes his own account a primary purpose of the conquest and includes his ideal reader, Charles, in his quest for truth. Here especially he portrays Charles as the source of that quest and places him in the role of someone who already knows of these lands and wants to know more. Although Charles is obviously unaware of the entire enterprise, except to the extent that he may have been informed by Cortés’s first letter, Cortés makes it easy for him to participate in what is amounting to a competition of who knows more. Cortés will also portray Moctezuma as a participant in this competition, but the Aztec emperor’s

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Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii claim to possess previous knowledge of Charles’s ancestors will ultimately reveal his ignorance. The first time that Moctezuma speaks to the Spaniards in Cortés’s Segunda relación, he begins immediately with the first of three stories that he will recount in almost every early version of this speech: one story that explains the origins of his own people, another that links the Spaniards to his people, and a third that he dismisses as a lie told about him by his enemies. Cortés himself needs to allude to as many documents as possible in his letters, and so it is not surprising that he has Moctezuma refer to the writings of his ancestors: “Muchos días ha que por nuestras escripturas tenemos de nuestros antepasados noticia que yo ni todos los que en esta parte habitamos no somos naturales della, sino estranjeros y venidos a ella de partes muy extrañas” (210). This reference to Aztec writing would quickly disappear in later accounts, and Sepúlveda, who had so much invested in his claim that the Aztecs had no writing system, would change “our writings” to “paintings on our monuments” (“nostris . . . depictis monumentis”; De orbe novo 110). Regardless of how this Aztec history was documented, it could not be better calculated to provide the Spaniards with a right to usurp Aztec power, for it identifies the Aztecs themselves as strangers in the land. José Rabasa points out that in legal terms, this first sentence “amounts to a self-denial of a natural right to power; hence the conquest of a conqueror under the banner of Christianity is more than justifiable” (Inventing America 108). Questions of “natural right” weigh heavily throughout Moctezuma’s speech, as he uses the term natural or nature repeatedly. He concludes the first half of the speech by saying: “pues estáis en vuestra naturaleza y en vuestra casa” (Cortés 211), which goes well beyond the hospitality of “make yourself at home” in the Spanish expression “estáis en vuestra casa.” He even repeats the statement with slight rearrangement at the end of his address: “pues estáis en vuestra casa y naturaleza” (211). And yet, if we are to go by what Moctezuma says in the first two stories he tells, neither the Aztecs nor the Spaniards are in their “naturaleza.” Intermarriage with the “native” women is apparently not sufficient as a tie to the land, especially for Peter Martyr’s Moctezuma, who identifies any “false” beliefs that the

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Chapter Five Aztecs may have with their wives and fathers-in-law, who are still apparently considered as separate, at least when a scapegoat is required (72v; dec. 5, ch. 4). Martyr is alone in developing this parallel with Roman history, according to which the roots of civil strife lie not in the brother-versus-brother tale of Remus and Romulus, but in the son-in-law-versus-father-inlaw story of the rape of the Sabine women.6 Nevertheless, in all accounts Moctezuma is telling a familiar tale of male conqueror and female native. Not surprisingly, he traces his bloodline to the intruder rather than to the original inhabitants of the land. If the stories make the link to the land tenuous for both Spaniard and Aztec, they are at least supposed to relink the two peoples. This linking of the two stories depends on the viability of Cortés’s story, which is of course patently false to the audience of the letters, especially the posited ideal reader Charles V. Moctezuma accepts Charles as his natural lord because of what Cortés has told him about Charles, namely, that he has long known of the Aztecs and sent Cortés on a mission to their lands: “Y siempre hemos tenido que los que dél descendiesen habían de venir a sojuzgar esta tierra y a nosotros como a sus vasallos, y segund de la parte que vos decís que venís, que es hacia a do sale el sol, y las cosas que decís dese grand señor o rey que acá os invió, creemos y tenemos por cierto él ser nuestro señor natural, en especial que nos decís que él ha muchos días que tenía noticia de nosotros. Y por tanto, vos sed cierto que os obedeceremos y ternemos por señor en lugar dese gran señor que decís, y que en ello no habrá falta ni engaño alguno.” (211)

The last phrase only underscores the deception on Cortés’s part. But when Moctezuma recognizes Charles as his natural lord, it is important to keep in mind the different meanings present in the term natural, such as “native” and also “all that is in accordance with nature,” nature being both “origin” and also “the divine order of all things” (“divinus omnium rerum ordo” [Covarrubias 824]). According to one notion of the natural order of the world, Charles V can consider himself Moctezuma’s natural lord, even if Moctezuma is unaware of the European

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Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii monarch’s “true” nature, that is, his ancestral origin, which, besides having nothing to do with the Aztecs, actually has so little to do with Spain that it causes Charles considerable political difficulty. The fiction that in the Segunda relación induces Moctezuma to swear allegiance to Charles V is for the Spanish reader both “natural” and “unnaturally” artful (“Natural se opone a artificial” [Covarrubias 824]).7 Finally, Cortés has Moctezuma attempt to undeceive the Spaniards by addressing the lies that others have told about the Aztecs. “Don’t believe more than what you see with your own eyes,” he tells Cortés, and then he appeals to the Spaniards to believe what they do see. If “seeing is believing,” then Moctezuma calls on the Spaniards to see the truth behind the lies: “You see my houses . . . you see me here, and how I am a man of flesh and bone like you and any other . . . See how they have lied to you” (211). The Aztec emperor even lifts his clothes to reveal his body, in a gesture that Elliott has shown to recall an appeal by Jesus to his disciples.8 The Spaniards, however, are never under the mistaken impression that Moctezuma is anything but a man of flesh and bone. He cannot undeceive the Spaniards, because he himself is deceived. By exposing himself, Cortés’s Moctezuma only emphasizes his vulnerability, a vulnerability that stems from his inability to control the exchange of information in the encounter. He does not fully comprehend the significance of his own speech, and so he cannot grasp how this speech determines the meaning of his famous gesture. Moctezuma’s verbal and physical disclosure underscores how fully closed (and clothed) the Spaniards remain and how blind he is to their designs on him. Within Cortés’s text, he unwittingly reveals his own rhetorical inferiority.9 Cortés’s description of his response to this speech is brief, though the response itself, he suggests, might not be: “Yo le respondí a todo lo que me dijo satisfaciendo a aquello que me paresció que convenía, en especial en hacerle creer que Vuestra Majestad era a quien ellos esperaban” (212). He stresses his adaptability to his audience and makes a point of encouraging the illusion that has led Moctezuma to submit to Charles V.10 The abdication depends on this specific illusion, and indeed Cortés depicts Moctezuma as still mistaken about his relation

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Chapter Five to the Spaniards when he makes the second and more formal donation a few months later (227–28). But if the illusion undermines the legal justification of the conquest, the ideological justification of the conquest can gain strength from it, as it can from the other illusions under which Cortés allows Moctezuma to remain.

3. Gómara and the Humanist Revisions of Surrender The history of the sixteenth-century accounts of Moctezuma’s first speech to the Spaniards reveals the great extent to which Cortés seems to have succeeded at controlling the writing of his own history. Although the first-hand accounts of other conquistadors—Andrés de Tapia, Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia, Francisco de Aguilar, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo—relate the episode briefly or not at all,11 humanist historians from Martyr to Cervantes de Salazar consistently reproduce the essential elements of the speech from Cortés’s own account, and, as already mentioned, Oviedo reproduces it word for word. Among the humanist historians, Martyr and Pérez de Oliva condense in different ways the version from the Segunda relación. Sepúlveda and Gómara follow it more closely, but both polish it and elaborate on it significantly. Gómara even reproduces much of the wording from Cortés, something Sepúlveda could not do because he was writing in Latin. Cervantes de Salazar follows Gómara and expands on his account. Herrera in turn takes from Cervantes de Salazar but condenses his version slightly. Torquemada, as usual in his account of the conquest of Mexico, copies Herrera verbatim. In the chain from Cortés to Gómara, Cervantes de Salazar, Herrera, and Torquemada it is always clear who is working from whom. In other words, each of the last three looks to his predecessor and not, at least ostensibly, to his predecessor’s sources. And yet, in spite of the various revisions, one can still recognize Cortés’s own wording in much of the early seventeenth-century narratives of Herrera and Torquemada, and to a certain extent even in the later accounts of Antonio Solís (1684) and Francisco Javier Clavijero (1780). Although below I focus on the significant changes that Gómara makes to the speech, the consistency of the humanist accounts—the extent to which Cortés’s own ver-

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Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii sion prevails after Gómara and to a great degree because of Gómara—is the more remarkable story. One way to define that story is as a supreme example of Renaissance self-fashioning. Indeed, Cortés meets most of the conditions that Greenblatt observes in his analysis of such instances of self-fashioning in sixteenth-century England (Renaissance Self-Fashioning 9). And if, as Greenblatt says, “self fashioning occurs at the point of encounter between an authority and an alien” (9), in this case the opportunity to mediate between Moctezuma and Charles V allows Cortés to shape his own role in a spectacular manner. Yet, even as this episode offers a supreme moment in the process of Cortés’s self-fashioning, it is perhaps more revealing as a point of contrast for the figure of Moctezuma, because the Aztec emperor has no opportunity to fashion himself in the texts that I analyze here. His autonomy is not merely limited by a social and ideological system, as would be the case for even the most impressive examples of self-fashioning (Greenblatt, Renaissance SelfFashioning 256); it is, rather, non-existent. Within most of the prevailing historiography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Moctezuma remains under the textual and extratextual control of Cortés. In the humanist versions of Moctezuma’s welcome speech to the Spaniards, the Aztec emperor never does seem to grasp the terms with which, for a European audience, he defines his abdication. As in Cortés’s Segunda relación, his submission not only derives from his misunderstanding of who the Europeans are; it is also defined as a lack of understanding. But whereas the nature of the concession remains the same, Moctezuma’s initial response to it does not. In Cortés, as in Pérez de Oliva and Sepúlveda, the Aztec emperor speaks without any visible sign of regret. Only later, after undergoing weeks of humiliating captivity, will he seem to come to realize all that he has lost, as he ends his second speech of concession in tears. Peter Martyr of Angleria condenses this process by combining the two speeches and thereby converting the welcome address into a more complete surrender. Moctezuma puts a brave face on the turn of events, but he can barely keep from crying as he finishes his speech: “semilacrimans” (69; dec. 5, ch. 3). Although Gómara does not follow Martyr’s chronology, he and

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Chapter Five along with him Cervantes de Salazar, Herrera, and Torquemada also reflect this more sudden transformation. No matter how tactical or tentative this concession may be for Moctezuma, it nevertheless marks an end to “the world as he knows it.” He makes a great effort to incorporate the intruders into that world, but even according to the story that links the two peoples in a distant shared past, the return of the lost brothers, as it develops in the humanist accounts starting with Martyr, is a threatened return, full of wrathful revenge. And what greater demonstration of this wrath than the Cholulan massacre? The Cholulan massacre is not only the last major episode to color the meeting between Cortés and Moctezuma; in Gómara the encounter itself between these protagonists is largely a consequence of Cortés’s “preemptive strike” followed by threats and remonstrations, as if Cortés were speaking to a child who has disappointed his father (104; ch. 63). He scares the Aztecs into opening the doors of the empire to him: Ya cuando Cortés llegó a Chololla iba grande y poderoso; pero allí se hizo mucho más, porque luego voló la nueva fama por toda aquella tierra y señorío del rey Moteczuma, y de como hasta entonces se maravillaban comenzaron de allí en adelante a temerle; y así, de miedo, más que por amor, le abrían las puertas a do quiera que llegase. (105; ch. 63)

That Gómara should mention fear and love together shows the extent to which he envisions the conquest in paternalistic terms. These terms are also Machiavellian, especially since it is fear rather than love that opens the gates for Cortés. When a prince must choose, says Machiavelli, “e molto più sicuro essere temuto che amato” (“it is far safer to be feared than loved”), primarily because a prince can control the fear that others have of him but cannot control their love (Il principe ch. 17). And yet Moctezuma is still receiving crossed signals. Although he takes the killing in Cholula as a sign that the Spaniards are the lords that he is awaiting (“Moteczuma hubo temor cuando supo la matanza y quema de Chololla, y dijo: ‘Esta es la gente que nuestro dios me dijo que había de venir y señorear esta tierra’” [105; ch. 63]), the devil speaks to him in his temple and tells him not to fear the Spaniards. So Moctezuma lets them 162

Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii in, “creyendo poder hacer de los españoles, que tan pocos eran, lo que quisiese, y almorzárselos una mañana, si lo enojasen” (105; ch. 63). The image of Moctezuma eating the Spaniards for lunch calls to mind a host of man-eating monsters from folklore and myth, among them Polyphemus. The island city of Tenochitlan, like the cave from the eleventh book of The Odyssey, is a trap for the intruders. Furthermore, the reader suspects that many of Cortés’s men, like a good number of Odysseus’s band in the cave, will not escape their predicament. Moctezuma may be afraid of the Spaniards after Cholula, but he is not yet conquered by fear. At this point he is still something of an ogre, monstrous because he represents the unknown. Gómara sets the stage for Moctezuma’s welcome speech by describing the elaborate reception in Tenochtitlan, in which Spaniards and Aztecs each make a show to impress the other. The speech continues this show. As in the Segunda relación, Moctezuma must both explain his past behavior, when he tried to keep the Spaniards at a distance, and draw them away from their present alliance with the Tlaxcalans and others. But Gómara has Moctezuma address these points more directly by beginning with something that was missing from previous versions: an introduction. As always, gifts precede his words. He will attempt to smother his audience in hospitality, or in his “own” words, courtesy. “Todo esto hizo con mucha gravedad, y con la misma dijo, según Marina y Aguilar declaraban: ‘Señor y caballeros míos, mucho huelgo de tener tales hombres como vosotros en mi casa y reino, para les poder hacer alguna cortesía y bien’” (110; ch. 66). The mention of the two interpreters along with the familiar pun on Cortés’s name can remind us of how variously translated and thoroughly transformed Moctezuma’s translatio imperii is. The emperor cannot realize the implications of his own words once they are interpreted by Marina and Aguilar; and here his offer of courtesy implies, among other things, this lack of awareness, his own complete transformation into the language of the conquistador, which is here the language that matters. This unwitting transformation on Moctezuma’s part undermines his primary strategy in Gómara, which is to assert power through knowledge. He claims to know who the Spaniards are,

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Chapter Five what they have done, what they have been told, and what they want. Further, he proposes to dispel any mistaken notions they have about him. Although Moctezuma plays the obsequious host, he clearly means to disarm his audience by exposing it for what it is. He begins with this demythification: “y si hasta aquí os rogaba que no entrásedes acá, era porque los míos tenían grandísimo miedo de veros; porque espantabais a la gente con estas vuestras barbas fieras, y que traíais unos animales que tragaban los hombres, y que como veníais del cielo, abajabais de allá rayos, relámpagos y truenos, con que hacíais temblar la tierra, y heríais al que os enojaba o al que os antojaba; mas como ya ahora conozco que sois hombres mortales, honrados, y no hacéis daño alguno, y he visto los caballos, que son como ciervos, y los tiros, que parecen cerbatanas, tengo por burla y mentira lo que me decían, y aun a vosotros por parientes.” (110–11; ch. 66)

From wrathful gods Moctezuma makes the Spaniards into harmless relatives, comparing their horses to deer and their cannon to blowguns. Both of these images probably bring a smile to the faces of his audience. To hear that they caused such fright among Moctezuma’s subjects, and that they were taken for gods can only bolster their confidence. If the first image was dangerous, the second is more so. Moctezuma has gone from one extreme of credulity to another. Instead of disarming the Spaniards, he has disarmed himself, and will continue to do so throughout his speech. Gómara has Moctezuma tell the story of his ancestors in much the same terms as in the Segunda relación, the key term being “natural” or “naturaleza.” The difference is the way in which Cortés then exploits the ambiguity of the word in his response to the speech. Gómara says that Cortés encourages Moctezuma to believe that Charles is the man he has been waiting for: “que tuviese por certísimo que el emperador, rey de España, era aquel su natural señor a quien esperaba, cabeza del mundo y mayorazgo del linaje y tierra de sus antepasados” (111; ch. 66). Moctezuma may take natural to mean “native,” while Cortés and Gómara’s readers may take it to mean “in accordance with nature,” where nature means “the divine order.” For the Spaniards this divine order makes Charles head of the 164

Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii world, if not strictly speaking heir (mayorazgo) from the line of Moctezuma’s ancestors. Cervantes de Salazar expands on Gómara’s version of Cortés’s response to Moctezuma, quoting Cortés in direct discourse. But he does not have him use the term “natural señor,” with the effect that “mayorazgo del linaje y tierra de tus antepasados” (309; bk. 4, ch. 2) rings even more hollow. It is not that Cervantes de Salazar has Cortés lie and Gómara does not. They both represent him as deceptive. It is rather that the various meanings of the word natural allow Gómara’s Cortés to show how the lie serves (what for him is) an underlying truth. As is often the case, what Cervantes de Salazar’s Cortés gains in prolixity he loses in subtlety. As if to underscore the deception at hand, Gómara changes what was an assertion in the Segunda relación into a condition in the Historia de la conquista de México. Where Cortés has Moctezuma say: “‘sed cierto que os obedeceremos y ternemos por señor en lugar dese gran señor que decís, y que en ello no habrá falta ni engaño alguno’” (211), Gómara has him say: “‘sed cierto que os obedeceremos, si ya no traéis algún engaño o cautela’” (111; ch. 66). It would seem that the terms of the concession are null and void, especially given the appropriateness of the word cautela, which Covarrubias defines as “[e]l engaño que uno haze a otro ingeniosamente, usando de términos ambiguos y de palabras dudosas y equívocas” (321).12 Gómara’s Cortés uses precisely this type of wordplay, but then Moctezuma goes on to express a second condition that takes the teeth out of the earlier one: “‘Y ya que esto que digo no fuese, por sola vuestra virtud, fama y obras de esforzados caballeros, lo haría muy de buena gana; que bien sé lo que hicisteis en Tabasco, Teoacacinco y Chololla y otras partes, venciendo tan pocos a tantos’” (111; ch. 66). He does not go so far as to retract his caveat that his recognition of Spanish authority depends on there being an honest exchange, but he does recognize that the Spanish can gain, and have gained through their knightly deeds and valor, a right to rule in the land. In two consecutive sentences, Gómara’s Moctezuma undermines and then reinforces the legitimacy if not the legality of his concession. Moctezuma’s attempt to discredit the stories that his enemies have told about him follows the general lines of his speech in the Segunda relación. But instead of warning the Spaniards to

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Chapter Five believe only what they see with their own eyes, he says simply that he wants to disabuse them: “os quiero desengañar” (111; ch. 66). Although Gómara does not have Moctezuma reveal everything in his welcome address to the Spaniards (we know, according to Gómara, for example, that he has plans to kill and even eat his guests if they bother him), his speech does make an attempt at straightforward exposure. As with the Segunda relación, however, he cannot undeceive the Spaniards because he himself is mistaken about what they believe. He thinks that they have been told that he is a god, but nobody has said anything of the sort. Cortés’s informants, now his allies, have described him rather as a tyrant (58; ch. 33). This failed desengaño stands in contrast to the desengaño that Cortés has in store for Moctezuma, because Gómara portrays the Aztec emperor as truly misinformed about who is and who is not a god. Moctezuma, he says, consults not only a false god, but the devil himself (105; ch. 63). Each side in this exchange would like to reveal the truth to the other, but only one side knows the “truth.” Ironically, Cortés’s various engaños only reinforce his role as the master of that truth. “I also want to undeceive you,” we can imagine him to be thinking at this point, “but first I must draw you in with deception.” Whereas in Cortés’s Segunda relación Moctezuma lifts his clothes to expose his body, in Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México he goes a step further and tells the Spaniards to touch his body: “‘Tocad pues mi cuerpo, que carne y hueso es’” (111; ch. 66). If it is a novel gesture to invite the intruders to look upon him, since his own subjects always avert their eyes in his presence, it is even more remarkable that he should want them to touch him, for when Cortés tries to embrace him when they meet on the causeway, Moctezuma’s men hold the Spaniard back: “que no llegase a él, que era pecado tocarle” (109; ch. 65). By the end of his speech, Moctezuma has placed the Spaniards in a privileged position that no one has enjoyed up to that point. Within a week they will in fact lay their hands on the Aztec emperor when they take him prisoner. Here Gómara has Moctezuma foreshadow this turn of events and even begin the process that will allow Cortés to gain access to his palace and his person. Cortés’s response after the speech is preceded by a gesture that defines his triumph: “Cortés le hizo una gran mesura, y 166

Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii con alegre semblante, porque le saltaban lágrimas, le respondió” (111; ch. 66). With his bow that is also a measuring (mesura) of his opponent, and his expression that is also a façade (semblante), Cortés does anything but reveal himself to Moctezuma. He smiles while Moctezuma is in tears, and we do not know whether he is comforting the emperor or savoring the advantage that he has gained.

Within the European historiography of the sixteenth century, what makes Moctezuma’s first speech to the Spaniards a convincing transfer of power (translatio imperii)? On the face of it, very little. From Cortés’s own account of the speech to the most influential reworking of it, the foreign sovereign only recognizes the authority of Charles V by not recognizing who the European monarch really is. And even before Moctezuma is physically under the control of the Spanish conquistadors (the circumstances of his second speech of concession), he is visibly manipulated by them, especially by Cortés. Moreover, it would be presumptuous to assume that European readers of the sixteenth century did not suspect a less visible manipulation on the part of Cortés, a manipulation at the textual level, with the result that the Moctezuma who speaks in the Segunda relación, and indeed in many subsequent accounts, might be considered partly a creation of the conquistador. As is often the case with Cortés, the crux of the matter lies in our inability to separate completely one level of manipulation from the other. If in Renaissance historiography Moctezuma only speaks through Malinali, Aguilar, and ultimately through Cortés, that linguistic and rhetorical control not only mirrors the physical conquest; it also defines the physical conquest in the same rhetorical terms that allow Europe to make sense of and accept its imperialism. In the early versions of Moctezuma’s first speech to the Spaniards, the Aztec emperor’s inability to control the truth through speech undermines his right to power within the European narrative. His abdication may not be compelling in legal terms, but it nevertheless reinforces rhetorically the hierarchies on which the conquest relies for its justification.

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Conclusion

Written history does not speak to us until we give it a voice, that is, until we at least implicitly acknowledge its rhetorical nature as an instance of persuasion within a concrete or implied discourse. This voice might aspire to objectivity, as Fox Morcillo feels it should, but an impartial tone will itself inevitably form part of a persuasive strategy, even if the first to be persuaded by that strategy is the one who uses it. In his Cartas de relación Cortés exploits such a distancing strategy when he employs a legalistic style, when he mentions corroborating accounts, and especially when in the first letter he resorts to the third person. But Cortés also authorizes his voice by engaging it fully in the conquest to the extent that the acts of discovering, conquering, and narrating all seem to serve as merely different aspects of the same enterprise. His conflation of the conquest and the historiography of the conquest extends beyond the text of his own account to influence other versions of the event. López de Gómara’s voice is also alternately engaged and distant. He embellishes on a heroic image of Cortés, but at the same time he criticizes his hero outright, takes pains to distinguish his protagonist’s voice from his own, and allows irony to open up the text, if not to the point of undermining its capacity to justify the conquest, at least to the point of placing the debate about the conquest within the conquest narrative itself. The rhetoric of conquest in these accounts does not end with the authorization of the narrator’s voice (at the stage of ethos, or character). Cortés’s Cartas de relación and Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México both take this rhetoric to a second level by defining the conquest in rhetorical terms. In other words, they insist on the role that artifice plays in bring-

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Conclusion ing the Christian “truth” to the New World. This openly rhetorical defense of the truth, however, not only runs contrary to the Latin adage ars est celare artem (“the art lies in concealing the art”), it also runs the risk of destabilizing the very notion of truth. When in his Cartas de relación Cortés says that his own capacity and his own immediate needs determine what he says and how he says it, he subordinates one idea of truth (a full account) to another (an account that suits and serves a higher Truth). The conquest itself expands on yet other figures of truth, as it expands the boundaries of the known world along with the boundaries of the world that knows the “truth” about the Christian God. Cortés may not be able to overcome the contradiction between the ideal of a fixed, Christian truth on the one hand, and his patently rhetorical construction and defense of that truth on the other, but he can and does reconcile the various figures of the truth that emerge from his narrative by making the physical, political, and spiritual ends of empire appear to coincide. The circumstances of the composition of Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México differ greatly from those that impinge on Cortés’s letters. The conquest is long over and the conqueror is dead and buried, but a sense of urgency still prevails. Even if Gómara’s narrator denies that urgency, other voices within his text contradict him. For example, Gómara’s ironic distance from his patron’s actions does not separate him from the events he narrates. Instead it involves him in the conquest and in the debate over its suitability for a Christian society. Readers will inevitably take Gómara’s history as a potential narratio for Sepúlveda’s arguments, that is, as an account of the means of the conquest under question. But Sepúlveda and Las Casas are arguing over means as well as principles and ends, since each in his own way tries to make all three elements cohere. Moreover, the political consistency that concerns them mirrors the narrative consistency (beginnings, middles, and ends) on which they depend. To a large extent the narrative is the argument. In Gómara the narrative is also full of arguments. His plurivocal history grounds the conquest in rhetoric, in the exchanges of many voices in day-to-day living, rather than in an abstract notion of the truth. The oratorical skill that Cortés

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Conclusion claims to have in his letters to the emperor comes to life in the sermocinationes of the Historia de la conquista de México, the set speeches that characterize his protagonist. In the Historia de la conquista de México as in the Cartas de relación, Cortés’s artifice puts him in control over his men, his allies, his rivals, and his enemies. Nowhere is this control more evident than in the case of Moctezuma, whom Cortés not only persuades with his speeches but also seems to manipulate so thoroughly that the Aztec leader does not even have the opportunity to make a legitimate speech of concession. As a consequence, the supposed legitimacy of the conquest in these accounts rests more on the intellectual and spiritual hierarchies that the texts represent and reinforce than on any legal recognition of the sovereignty of Charles V. In other words, the textual translatio imperii effects a transfer of power through a metaphor of the power relationship between Spaniard and American Indian rather than through a free and formal handing over of authority. Cortés’s Cartas de relación and López de Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México do not justify the wars of conquest by simply declaring that the Spanish Empire possesses a “truth” over which falsehoods cannot prevail. Instead they show an understanding of the “truth” very similar to that of Aristotle, who acknowledges that falsehoods can and often do prevail. In these accounts Cortés’s greatest accomplishment is to serve as an effective advocate of the “truth,” even, or perhaps especially, when he feels he must reshape that “truth” to meet the needs of the moment. In the end, the Odyssean hero provides a more compelling defense of empire, first because his ability to adapt, persuade, and even manipulate Spaniards and Mesoamericans alike adds to the psychological drama and re-creates in stylized form the improvisation that readers would expect from a leader of a small band of adventurers in an alien land; and second, because he demonstrates an artfulness that in itself gives his audience outside of the text a sense of sharing in the control that he wields within the text. By allowing the reader to see through Cortés’s rhetorical manipulation of others, especially of others who are so alien to the reader, these histories reinforce the moral and intellectual hierarchies that are necessary for a society to believe that it has the right or even the obligation to impose its will on others.

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Conclusion By unveiling the rhetorical nature of any language, do we not in some way elevate ourselves above those who are controlled by that rhetoric? Do we not, when reading sixteenthcentury historiography, for example, feel a sense of privilege, if not superiority, at being able to see through its tricks and rhetorical devices, even if on many other levels we recognize that the sixteenth-century reader was undoubtedly better informed and more perspicacious than we are? Any analysis of the rhetoric of conquest runs the risk of carrying out its own rhetorical conquest. Ironically, the critical distance that we seek stands as evidence of our own inclination to control through language, although we may try not to use this impression of linguistic control to justify other types of domination. Our very desire to expose and learn from the rhetoric of conquest reveals that in one form or another we still operate under its sway.

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Appendix Texts and Translations of Two Key Speeches

While I must take full responsibility for the translations that accompany the following speeches, I cannot take full credit for them, except in the accounts of Pérez de Oliva and Cervantes de Salazar, which to my knowledge have not been translated before. For Cortés’s Cartas de relación, I have followed Anthony Pagden’s translation fairly closely, and the same is true for Lesley Byrd Simpson’s translation of Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México. In both cases I have made some minor changes in accordance with my own reading of the texts. The few major differences are indicated in the notes. For Peter Martyr of Angleria’s De orbe novo, I have consulted but not followed Francis A. MacNutt’s version. I have also consulted Joaquín Torres Asensio’s Spanish translation of Peter Martyr and Antonio Ramírez de Verger’s Spanish translation of Sepúlveda.

1. Moctezuma Welcomes the Spaniards Hernán Cortés, Segunda relación (Cartas 210–12) “Muchos días ha que por nuestras escripturas tenemos de nuestros antepasados noticia que yo ni todos los que en esta tierra habitamos no somos naturales della, sino estranjeros y venidos a ella de partes muy estrañas. Y tenemos ansimesmo que a estas partes trajo nuestra generación un señor cuyos vasallos todos eran, el cual se volvió a su naturaleza. Y después tornó a venir dende en mucho tiempo, y tanto que ya estaban casados los que habían quedado con las mujeres naturales de la tierra y tenían mucha generación y fechos pueblos donde vivían. Y 173

Appendix queriéndolos llevar consigo, no quisieron ir ni menos rescebirle por señor, y así se volvió. Y siempre hemos tenido que los que dél desciendiesen habían de venir a sojuzgar esta tierra y a nosotros como a sus vasallos, y segund de la parte que vos decís que venís, que es hacia a do sale el sol, y las cosas que decís dese grand señor o rey que acá os invió, creemos y tenemos por cierto él ser nuestro señor natural, en especial que nos decís que él ha muchos días que tenía noticia de nosotros. Y por tanto, vos sed cierto que os obedeceremos y ternemos por señor en lugar dese gran señor que decís, y que en ello no habrá falta ni engaño alguno. Y bien podéis en toda la tierra, digo que en la que yo en mi señorío poseo, mandar a vuestra voluntad, porque será obedescido y fecho. Y todo lo que nosotros tenemos es para lo que vos dellos quisiéredes disponer. Y pues estáis en vuestra naturaleza y en vuestra casa, holgad y descansad del trabajo del camino y guerras que habéis tenido, que muy bien sé todos los que se os han ofrecido de Puntunchan acá. Y bien sé que los de Cempoal y de Tascaltecal os han dicho muchos males de mí. No creáis más de lo que por vuestros ojos viéredes, en especial de aquéllos que son mis enemigos. Y algunos dellos eran mis vasallos y hánseme rebellado con vuestra venida y por se favorescer con vos lo dicen, los cuales sé también os han dicho que yo tenía las casas con las paredes de oro y que las esteras de mis estados y otras cosas de mi servicio eran ansimismo de oro y que yo que era y me facía Dios y otras muchas cosas. Las casas ya las veis que son de piedra y cal y tierra.” Entonces alzó las vestiduras y me mostró el cuerpo diciendo: “a mí veisme aquí que so de carne y hueso como vos y como cada uno, y que soy mortal y palpable—asiéndose él con sus manos de los brazos y del cuerpo—. Ved cómo os han mentido. Verdad es que yo tengo algunas cosas de oro que me han quedado de mis ahuelos. Todo lo que yo tuviere tenéis cada vez que vos lo quisiéredes. Yo me voy a otras casas donde vivo. Aquí seréis proveído de todas las cosas nescesarias para vos y para vuestra gente. Y no recibáis pena alguna, pues estáis en vuestra casa y naturaleza.” Yo le respondí a todo lo que me dijo satisfaciendo a aquello que me paresció que convenía, en especial en hacerle creer que Vuestra Majestad era a quien ellos esperaban, y con esto se dispidió.

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Moctezuma / Cortés Translation “For a long time we have known from the writings of our ancestors that neither I nor any of those who dwell in this land are natives of it, but foreigners who came from distant parts; and likewise we know that a lord,1 of whom they were all vassals, brought our people to this region. And he returned to his native land and after many years came again, by which time all those who had remained were married to native women and had built villages and raised children. And when he wished to lead them away again they would not go or even admit him as their lord; and so he departed. And we have always held that those who descended from him would come and conquer this land and take us as their vassals. So because of the places from which you claim to come, namely, from where the sun rises, and the things you tell us of the great lord or king who sent you here, we believe and are certain that he is our natural lord, especially as you say that he has known of us for some time. So be assured that we shall obey you and hold you as our lord in place of that great lord of whom you speak; and in this there shall be no offense or betrayal whatsoever. And in all the land that lies in my domain, you may command as you will, for you shall be obeyed; and all that we own is for you to use as you wish. Thus, as you are in your own country and your own house, rest now from the hardships of your journey and the battles which you have fought, for I know full well of all that has happened to you from Puntunchan to here, and I also know how those of Cempoal and Tascalteca have told you much evil of me; believe only what you see with your own eyes, for those are my enemies, and some were my vassals, and have rebelled against me at your coming and said those things to gain favor with you. I also know that they have told you the walls of my houses are made of gold, and that the floor mats in my rooms and other things in my household are likewise of gold, and that I was, and claimed to be, a god; and many other things besides. The houses as you see are of stone and lime and clay.” Then he raised his clothes and showed me his body, saying, as he grasped his arms and trunk with his hands, “See that I am of flesh and blood like you and all other men, and I am mortal and substantial. See how they have lied to you? It is true that I have some pieces of gold left to me by my ancestors; anything 175

Appendix I might have shall be given to you whenever you ask. Now I shall go to other houses where I live, but here you shall be provided with all that you and your people require. And have no worry,2 for you are in your own house and your own land.” I responded to everything that he had said satisfying him in those things that seemed suitable to me, especially in making him believe that Your Majesty was the one they were expecting. With this he took his leave.

*** Peter Martyr of Angleria, De orbe novo (68v–69; dec. 5, ch. 3) “Viri virtute bellica egregii, et in supplices benigni, felicem opto, speroque fore congressum vestrum. Faustus ad has terras sit vester adventus.” Dehinc ad proceres conversus suos, haec ait. “Ex relatu maiorum cognovimus nos esse advenas. Ad oras magnus quidam princeps post omnium viventium memoriam, classe vectus, maiores nostros perduxit, (an sponte sua, an tempestatibus actus, non liquet), comitibus relictis discessit: in patriam regressus demum voluisset adductos remeare. Domos iam sibi construxerant, provincialibusque feminis sociati filios procreaverant, ac fixa domicilia habebant pacatissima. Renuerunt de reditu maiores nostri, neque illius dicto ulterius auscultarunt. Elegerant namque iam sibi de seipsis et senatum et populi principes, quorum consiliis regerentur, feruntque abiisse minabundum. Nusquam apparuit ad haec usque tempora quisquam ius illius ductoris repetens. Vos hortor moneoque, meorum regnorum proceres, ut eadem observantia tanti Regis ducem hunc, qua me ipsum prosequamini, vectigaliaque mihi debita, illi ad sui libitum praebeatis.” Ad Cortesium deinde faciem vertens, haec addidit. “Arbitramur ergo ex his, quae dixi, Regem eum, quem vos misisse dicitis, originem ab illo traxisse: quare bonis avibus adsitis, quiescite animis a laboribus, quos immensos, ex quo has terras estis ingressi, fuisse passos intellexi, languentia iam corpora curate. Vestra sunt omnia quae possidemus regna. Tibi, primario, quicumque sis, duci ad hoc misso, regnis omnibus, quae mihi fuerunt obnoxia, liceat imperare. Quod autem ad zempo-

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Moctezuma / Peter Martyr of Angleria alensium, tascaltecanorum, et guazuzingorum relata, de me attinet, iure merito illa capi debent ut ea, quae de hostili animo processerunt: rerum experientia fuisse mentitos ostendet. Domos meas esse aureas, aureas et storeas, ac supellectilia aurea meque deum esse, non hominem, blatterarunt. Lapideas esse mihi aedes et fluvialibus herbis storeas, ex gosampio suppellectilia tu ipse vides. Aurea me habere monilia in thesauros congesta fateor. Ea sunt tua. Illius tanti Regis nostri nomine, utere pro libito. Quod autem me non esse hominem, ac immortalem tibi dixerint, en brachia, en crura mea, carneane sint atque ossea, tu videris.” Haec dicens, brachia, cruraque semilacrimans detegebat. Ubi dicendi finem fecit, solatus est eum Cortesius, et rei bene gerendae spem dedit. Discessit, his actis, Muteczuma. Satis vultu letus, an stomacho sedatus, qui aliquando gustaverit imperium, ne patiatur collegam, iudicet; et an hospites per vim quis unquam libens susceperit, experti loquantur. In vocatorum principum facie, qui demissis in terram oculis id audiverant, quam placidus fuerit ille conventus, liquet intelligere. Lachrymabundi namque cum suspiriis ac singultibus quicquid actum est susceperunt, haesitaruntque diu silentes. Se tandem Muteczumae mandata sequuturos, sunt polliciti. Non potuisse tamen tanta tamque repentina rerum permutatione non perturbari animis. Dimisso concilio, ad natales quisque suos perrexit. De hoc iam satis.3 Translation “Men of exceptional courage in war, of natural kindness to your suppliants, I wish and hope that your entrance here is a happy one. May your arrival in these lands bode well for all of us.” At this point he turned to his nobles and said these words: “From the accounts of our elders we know that we are outsiders. At a time beyond living memory a great prince was carried to these shores in a fleet, and he brought to them our ancestors (whether of his own free will or driven by storms, we do not know); and leaving his companions behind, he departed. After he had returned to his own country, he wanted those he had brought here to go back as well. But they had already built their homes, married local women, and had children, and they had established a

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Appendix peaceful settlement. Our forefathers refused to go back, and they would not listen anymore to what that man said. For they had already elected from among themselves a senate and princes for the people, by whose council they were ruled, and people say that as he left he threatened them. Up till now no one has appeared claiming the rights of that ruler. I urge and advise you, noblemen of my kingdoms, to grant to this general, who is sent by such a great king, the same respect that you show toward me, and to offer to him, as he pleases, the tributes that you owe to me.” Then turning to face Cortés, he added: “Therefore, from the things I have said, we believe that the king you say has sent you traces his origin from that man. May your stay here then be a pleasant one. Rest easy from your labors, which I understand to have been very trying since you entered these lands, and restore your strength. All the kingdoms that we possess belong to you. And you, captain general, whoever you are, sent on this mission, may now rule in all the kingdoms that have been subjected to me. As for the stories that the Cempoalans, Tlaxcalans, and Huexotzincans have told about me, they should rightly be taken as those that originate from a hostile spirit; experience will show that they were lying. They have told tales about my houses made of gold, of my golden mats, my golden furniture, and how I am a god, not a man. You yourself see that my buildings are made of stone, my mats from river grass, and the furniture from cotton. I confess that I have golden jewelry gathered in treasures. They are all yours. Use them as you see fit in the name of that great king of ours. As for what they told you about me not being a man, but immortal, behold my arms and legs; you will see if they are of flesh and bone.” Saying these things, he uncovered his arms and legs as he held back his tears. When he finished speaking, Cortés comforted him, and gave him hope that all would turn out well. After this Moctezuma took his leave. The expression on his face was happy enough. Whether he was calm inside, let anyone who has ever enjoyed power be the judge if it allows partners. And if any have ever joyfully been forced to receive guests, let them say so. The princes, who had been called together and who had heard the proceedings with their eyes cast downward, showed by the expression on their faces how pleasant that meeting was for them. 178

Moctezuma / Pérez de Oliva Filled with tears, sighs, and moans they took in the proceedings, and they hesitated awhile in silence. Finally they promised to follow Moctezuma’s orders. Still they could not help being deeply disturbed by such a momentous and sudden change of affairs. Once the meeting was over, each man proceeded on home. Enough about this.

*** Hernán Pérez de Oliva, “Algunas cosas de Hernán Cortés y México” (459–60) “La inuidia de mis enemigos me ha hecho mala fama y peligrosa que aureis oido por la tierra do venis. Ellos dizen que mis casas son de oro, do me hago acatar commo dios. Las casas bien veis que son de piedra, y mi cuerpo palpable de carne mortal commo los vuestros. Mi estado es grande, sus riquezas me dan bastante poderio para defenderlo; pero no quiero tomar armas contra la amonestacion que conel me dexaron mis maiores por herencia: los quales asi nos informaron que de oriente vinieron munchas gentes en obediencia de un señor. Este los dexo aqui y lleuo su fe y prometimiento que siempre los hallaria aparejados asu voluntad; mas tornando ni lo obedescieron ni acataron como auian prometido. El los amenazo para todos los siglos venideros, y nosotros siempre auemos temido su vengança; la qual creo cierta mente que tu veniste a tomar, segun el camino que truxiste y el poderio que nos cuentas del señor que te embia, principal mente que tan apartado nadie podria de nosotros tener conoscimiento y memoria sino quien fuese ofendido. Asi que ni tu has menester armas ni yo defensa, porque no es ami graue ni vergonçoso restituir con justicia lo que tantos tiempos auemos ocupado con injuria. Agora pues repose tu coraçon sobre esta obediencia y tu cuerpo enesta casa, do seras bien seruido.” Translation “The envy of my enemies has given me an evil and even dangerous reputation, which you must have heard of in the land you have come through. They say that my houses are made of 179

Appendix gold, where I have men obey me as a god. The houses you can see are of stone and my body of mortal flesh like your own. My state is large, and its riches give me enough power to defend it; but I do not want to take up arms against the warning that with it my ancestors left me as inheritance; they informed us that from the east many people came in obedience to a lord. He left them here and took with him their faith and promise that he would always find them disposed to his will; but on return they neither obeyed him nor abided by his wishes as they had promised. He threatened them for all ages to come, and we have always feared his vengeance, which I fully believe that you have come to take, according to the way you have come and the power you say that the lord who sends you possesses, especially since at such a distance no one could have knowledge and memory of us except someone who has been offended. So you have no need of weapons, nor I of defense, because it is not hard or shameful for me to restore with justice that which we have for so long occupied with affront. So now rest assured in your heart about this obedience, and rest your body in this house, where you will be well served.” [This is the end of the section; there is no description of Cortés’s reaction.]

*** Francisco López de Gómara, Historia de la conquista de México (110–11; ch. 66) “Señor y caballeros míos, mucho huelgo de tener tales hombres como vosotros en mi casa y reino, para les poder hacer alguna cortesía y bien, según vuestro merecimiento y mi estado; y si hasta aquí os rogaba que no entrásedes acá, era porque los míos tenían grandísimo miedo de veros; porque espantabais a la gente con estas vuestras barbas fieras, y traíais unos animales que tragaban los hombres, y que como veníais del cielo, abajabais de allá rayos, relámpagos y truenos, con que hacíais temblar la tierra, y heríais al que os enojaba o al que os antojaba; mas como ya ahora conozco que sois hombres mortales, honrados, y no hacéis daño alguno, y he visto los caba-

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Moctezuma / Gómara llos, que son como ciervos, y los tiros, que parecen cerbatanas, tengo por burla y mentira lo que me decían, y aun a vosotros por parientes, porque según mi padre me dijo, que lo oyó también al suyo, nuestros pasados y reyes de quien yo desciendo no fueron naturales de esta tierra, sino advenedizos, los cuales vinieron con un gran señor, y que de allí a poco se fue a su naturaleza; y que al cabo de muchos años tornó por ellos; mas no quisieron ir, por haber poblado aquí, y tener ya hijos y mujeres y mucho mando en la tierra. El se volvió muy descontento de ellos, y les dijo a la partida que enviaría sus hijos a que los gobernasen y mantuviesen en paz y justicia, y en las antiguas leyes y religión de sus padres. A esta causa pues hemos siempre esperado y creído que algún día vendrían los de aquellas partes a nos sujetar y mandar, y pienso yo que sois vosotros, según de donde venís, y la noticia que decís que ese vuestro gran rey emperador que os envía, ya de nos tenía. Así que, señor capitán, sed cierto que os obedeceremos, si ya no traéis algun engaño o cautela, y partiremos con vos y los vuestros lo que tuviéremos. Y ya que esto que digo no fuese, por sola vuestra virtud, fama y obras de esforzados caballeros, lo haría muy de buena gana; que bien sé lo que hicisteis en Tabasco, Teoacacinco y Chololla y otras partes, venciendo tan pocos a tantos. Y si traéis creído que soy dios, y que las paredes y tejados de mi casa, con todo el demás servicio, son de oro fino, como sé que os han informado los de Cempoallan, Tlaxcallan y Huexocinco y otros, os quiero desengañar, aunque os tengo por gente que no lo creéis, y conocéis que con vuestra venida se me han rebelado, y de vasallos tornado enemigos mortales; pero esas alas yo se las quebraré. Tocad pues mi cuerpo, que carne y hueso es; hombre soy como los otros, mortal, no dios, no; bien que, como rey, me tengo en más por la dignidad y preeminencia. Las casas ya las veis, son de barro y palo, y cuando mucho de canto: ¿veis cómo os mintieron? En cuanto a lo demás, es verdad que tengo plata, oro, pluma, armas y otras joyas y riquezas en el tesoro de mis padres y abuelos, guardados de grandes tiempos a esta parte, como es costumbre de reyes. Lo cual todo vos y vuestros compañeros tendréis siempre que lo quisiereis; entre tanto holgad, que vendréis cansados.”

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Appendix Translation “My lord and gentlemen: I am greatly pleased to have men such as you in my house and kingdom, so that I might pay you the courtesy and favor that corresponds to your merits and my estate. If up till now I have begged you not to come here, it was because my people were terrified of you, because you frightened them with your wild beards, and brought animals that swallowed men, and, since you came from heaven, you called down thunder and lightning and made the earth tremble, and you struck down whoever angered you or whomever you pleased. But now that I know you to be mortal and honorable men, and that you do no harm whatsoever, and I have seen your horses, which are like deer, and your cannon, which seem like blowguns, I take for jests and lies what they told me about you, and even take you to be my kinsmen, because as my father told me, and his father told him, our ancestors and kings, from whom I am descended, were not native to this land, but newcomers, led by a great lord, who, a little while later, returned to his native land. And after many years he came to get them, but they refused to go, because they had settled here and had wives and children and much power in the land. He departed very upset with them, telling them that he would send his sons to govern them and keep them in peace and justice, and within the ancient laws and religion of their fathers. “For this reason then we have always expected and believed that some day men would come from those parts to subject and rule us, and I think that you are the ones, judging by the direction you come from, and what you tell of the great king and emperor who sent you and the knowledge he had of us. So, my lord captain, be assured that we shall obey you, if you are not deceiving or tricking us, and that we shall share what we have with you. And even if what I am saying were not true, for just your courage, fame and knightly deeds, I would willingly do the same. For I well know what you did in Tabasco, Teocacingo, Cholula, and elsewhere, vanquishing so many with so few. And if you come believing that I am a god, and that the walls and roof of my house, as well as my service, are all of fine gold, as I understand you were told by those of Cempoala, Tlaxcala, Huexotzinco, and elsewhere, I wish to disabuse you, even though I do not believe that you are the kind of men who 182

Moctezuma / Sepúlveda would believe such things, and you know that with your arrival they have rebelled against me and have turned from vassals into mortal enemies. But I shall clip their wings. Touch my body, then, which is of flesh and bone. I am a man like any other, mortal, and not a god, no, although as king I hold myself on high to maintain my dignity and preeminence. The houses you can now see are of sticks and mud, or at most of stone. Do you see how they lied to you? As for the rest, it is true that I have silver, gold, featherwork, arms, and other jewels and riches in the treasure of my father and grandfather, stored over the many years, as is the custom of kings. All of it you and your companions shall have whenever you like. Meanwhile, get some rest, for you must be tired.”

*** Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, De orbe novo (203–05; bk. 5, chs. 21–22) “Publica persuasio in his regionibus iam olim invaluit, quam nos a patribus, ipsi a maioribus per manus deinceps traditam acceperunt, idque in nostris quoque depictis monumentis continetur, nos, qui has terras incolimus, a prima origine non esse indigenas, sed ex advenis procreatos, qui ex longinquis terris duce rege, in cuius imperio erant, antiquitus advecti ad has regiones consederint. Illum autem regem necessariis causis ductum, ceteris remanere et se non multo post exspectare iussis, in patriam cum paucis redivisse, eundem in haec ipsa loca post multos annos revertisse, cum iam illi, ductis uxoribus indigenis, filios procreassent et alium sibi regem praefecissent; itaque ab eis non fuisse receptum. Qua repulsa et contemptu maestum illum et iratum discessisse, abeuntemque velut vaticinio pronuntiasse venturum aliquando ex sua progenie, qui ipsorum posteros in suam ditionem et imperium redigeret et ad iustitiam, quam in se tunc ipsi contemnerent, vel invitos compelleret. Ita cum ab eo tempore fuerimus in hac exspectatione, nunc ita nobis persuasimus magnum istum Hispaniae Regem, a quo te missum dicis, genus ab illo nostro ducere, atque eo magis quod eundem iam pridem nostri notitiam habuisse

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Appendix confirmas, et illum nostrum ab eisdem partibus, unde vos advecti estis, id est, ab ortu solis profectum in has mundi plagas devenisse, simul nobis est a maioribus traditum. Tu igitur puta in tuam te patriam et regnum illius magni Regis, cuius ipse praefectus es, pervenisse, nec dubites tuo iure nomine illius quidquid visum fuerit imperare. Polliceor enim me et quicumque mortales meae ditionis sunt imperata tua oboedienter esse facturos. Animos igitur uti domi vestrae relaxate et corpora ab itineris bellorumque laboribus reficite. Nam quanta bella et quanto animo quamque feliciter a vobis gesta sint, posteaquam has terras attigistis, exploratum habemus. Quamquam illud non ignoro quosdam, qui me male oderunt, apud te male de me fuisse locutos, praesertim eos qui vestro adventu et hospitio sublati a mea fide et imperio nequiter defecerunt. Erit autem prudentiae et gravitatis tuae, ut rebus ipsis magis quam iniquorum et perfidorum calumniis fidem adhibeas et quae videris veriora putes quam quae ex ficto sermone malevolorum acceperis, quos apud te iactasse scio me superbe, avare ac crudeliter imperare et eam ex opibus arrogantiam sumpsisse, ut me non dubitem diis immortalibus annumerare et pares ipsis honores et cultum postulare: hinc spiritibus sumptis, quod in magno imperio aedes inhabitem aureas et argenteas omnia deorum fana superbia et magnificentia superantes. Ego vero, quemadmodum ipse reperies, sic meis impero ut et ipsorum ingenium postulat et consuetudo fert harum mundi regionum. Nec sum tam barbarus et stupidus ut osseus et carneus homo, morbis et aegritudinibus multifariam obnoxius, quam procul absim a praestantia et immortalitate deorum, non intellegam. De tectorum autem aediumque materia, num auro et argento an caemento et lapidibus constent, ipse tuis oculis cernis. Quamquam auri et argenti caelati nonnihil a patre et maioribus mihi relictum est; non eo inficias, quo ipso tibi, cum libuerit, uti licebit ut tuo.” Ad haec Cortesius, quae visa sunt, respondit, sed ea maxime, quibus opinionem augeret Mutezumae: Regem Hispaniae progeniem esse illius vetusti regis, qui reversurus in posteritate publice credebatur, ut Mutezuma memoraverat. Talia collocuti cum fuissent, in alias aedes Mutezuma demigravit, unde copiis omnibus abunde omnia necessaria suppeditabat, sed Hispanos magnifice ac indulgenter habebat. Atque ad hunc quidem

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Moctezuma / Sepúlveda modum urbs maxima magnique regni caput sine proelio sine vulnere in Hispanorum, si habendi cupiditati temperare scirent, potestatem pervenerat. Translation “For a long time now in these regions there has prevailed a common belief, which we received from our fathers, who received it from their ancestors as it was handed down from generation to generation, and it is also contained in the paintings on our monuments. It says that we who inhabit these lands are not originally native to them, but descended from outsiders, who long ago, having traveled from distant lands under the command of a king, settled in these parts. It is also said that that king, compelled by necessity, returned with a few men to the home country, with orders for the rest to remain and expect him back not long afterward. The same man did return after several years to this region, when the others had already taken native wives, had children, and made another man their king. And so he was not well received by them. Saddened and angered by this rejection and scorn, he departed, and as he was leaving he pronounced as if in prophecy that one day there would come from his offspring someone who would bring their descendents back into his dominion and rule, and he would compel them to abide, willingly or not, by the justice that they themselves then scorned. “Since from that time we have expected these things, now we are persuaded that that great king of Spain, from whom you say you are sent, comes from the same lineage as that man of ours, and even more so because you claim that for a long time now he has had news of us, and likewise the tradition says that our man comes from the same parts where you say that you have come from, that is, where the sun rises, to these regions of the world. Believe, therefore, that you have arrived in your own country and the kingdom of that great King, whose governor you are. And do not hesitate to order whatever seems fitting with your rule in the name of that man. For I promise that I and whoever is under my command will obediently carry out your orders. So relax and make yourselves at home, and revive your bodies from the ordeals of travel and war. For we have

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Appendix learned how many wars you have waged and how much courage you have shown, since you set foot in these lands. Likewise I am not ignorant of how certain men, who hate me bitterly, have spoken ill of me to you, especially those who with your arrival and friendship have risen up and unjustly forsaken my trust and power. But you are prudent and serious enough to put more faith in things themselves than in the unfounded charges of unjust and disloyal men, and to judge what you see to be truer than the fanciful stories of scoundrels. I know that they have boasted to you that my rule is overbearing, greedy, and cruel, and that with my wealth I have taken on such arrogance that I do not hesitate to count myself among the immortal gods and to lay claim to honors and devotion equal to theirs. Accordingly I am supposed to dwell with great power in palaces of gold and silver that surpass all the temples of the gods in splendor and glory. And yet I, as you can see for yourself, rule in my lands as their nature requires and the customs of these regions of the world allow. I am not so barbarous or stupid that I do not understand as a man of flesh and bones, subject to all type of ills and afflictions, how far I am from the preeminence and immortality of the gods. As for the material of the roofs and houses, you see with your own eyes whether they are made of gold and silver or cement and stone, although a not insignificant amount of gold and silverwork has been left to me by my father and ancestors. Do not hold back from something that you can use as your own whenever you like.” Cortés responded as seemed fitting, but especially in regard to those things with which he could further Moctezuma’s opinion that the King of Spain descended from that ancient king, and that he was destined to return someday, according to popular belief, as Moctezuma recollected. After conversing on such matters, Moctezuma moved on to other rooms, where with all his riches he generously supplied the Spaniards with all they needed. He treated them with splendor and kindness. And so in this manner the largest city, the capital of the great kingdom, would have passed into the power of the Spaniards without a fight, without any bloodshed, if they had only known how to moderate their greed.

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Moctezuma / Cervantes de Salazar Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica de la Nueva España (1: 307–09; bk. 4, ch. 1) “Señor Capitán valeroso, y vosotros, caballeros que con él venistes; Testigos hago a vosotros, mis caballeros y criados de mi casa y Corte, cómo huelgo mucho de tener tales hombres como vosotros en mi casa y reino para poder hacerles alguna cortesía y bien, según vuestro merescimiento y mi estado; e si como habéis visto hasta ahora, os rogaba y aun importunaba con muchos mensajes que no viniésedes a esta mi gran ciudad y casas, era por el gran miedo que los míos tenían de los vuestros, porque aliende que cada uno de vosotros es tan valiente que muchos de los nuestros puede vencer y rendir, los espantábades con esas vuestras barbas tan largas y tan fieras, y traéis unos animales muy mayores que venados, que tragaban los hombres, y que como veníades del cielo, abaxábades de allá rayos y relámpagos y truenos con que hacíades temblar la tierra y estremecer a los nuestros los corazones, y matábades, sin saber ellos cómo, al que os parescía o enojaba en cualquier manera. Decían también que con esas vuestras espadas de hierro dábades tan grandes heridas que partíades al hombre por medio, y punzábades de tal manera con ellas que en un punto matábades al que así heríades. Contábannos, asimismo, que érades muy amigos de lo ajeno, deseosos de señorearlo y mandarlo todo, que veníades con gran sed de oro y plata, e que por ello hacíades desafueros y agravios e que cada uno de vosotros comía e vestía por diez de los nuestros, y otras cosas muchas que nos amedrentaban y ponían en cuidado, para no dexaros entrar en estos mis reinos. Mas empero como ahora soy certificado, así de larga relación, como de alguna observación que los nuestros han tenido con los vuestros, que sois hombres mortales como nosotros, aunque más valientes y más diestros, bien acondiscionados, amigos de vuestros amigos, sufridores de trabajos, e que no habéis hecho daño sino con muy gran razón defendiendo vuestras personas, ampar[a]ndo los que con nescesidad vienen a vosotros, comedidos y bien criados, y he visto los caballos, que son como ciervos grandes, y los tiros, que parescen cebratanas, tengo por burla y mentira lo que de vosotros al principio me dixeron, tanto que aun los tascaltecas, vuestros amigos, estuvieron deste parescer. Ahora, como desengañado, no solamente os tengo por amigos, mas por muy 187

Appendix cercanos parientes, ca mi padre me dixo, que lo oyó también al suyo, que nuestros pasados y Reyes de quien yo desciendo no fueron naturales desta tierra, sino advenidizos, los cuales, viniendo con un gran señor que desde ha poco se volvió a su naturaleza, como más poderosos, señorearon esta tierra, que era de los otomíes, y al cabo de muchos años este señor tornó por ellos, pero no quisieron volver por haberse casado aquí y tener hijos y mando, el que querían en la tierra, y complacerles el asiento, que cierto es muy fuerte habiendo quien le defienda. Aquel señor se volvió muy descontento dellos y les dixo a la partida que inviaría sus hijos a que los gobernasen y mantuviesen en paz y justicia y en las antiguas leyes y religión de sus padres, e que si esto no acetasen de su voluntad, por fuerza de armas serían compelidos a ellos. Por esto hemos creído siempre y asperado que algún día vendrían los de aquellas partes a nos subjectar y mandar, y así creo yo que sois vosotros, según de dónde venís y la noticia que ese gran Emperador, señor vuestro, que os invía, tiene de nosotros. Por tanto, Capitán valentísimo, sed cierto que os obedesceremos, si ya no traéis engaño o cautela, y partiremos con vos y los vuestros lo que tuviéremos; e ya que lo que he dicho y nosotros esperábamos no fuese tan cierto, por sólo vuestra virtud, fama y obras que de esforzados caballeros tenéis, sois merescedores se os haga todo buen tratamiento en estos mis reinos y corte, ca bien sé lo que hecistes en Tabasco, Tecoacinco, Tlaxcala, Cholula y otras partes, venciendo tan pocos a tantos; y si tráeis creído que soy dios y que, como algunos falsamente dicen, me vuelvo cuando quiero en león, tigre o sierpe, es falsedad, porque hombre soy mortal como los otros.” Diciendo esto, se pelliscó en la mano, y dixo: “Tocad mi cuerpo que de carne y hueso es, bien que como Rey me tengo en más, por la dignidad y preeminencia en que los dioses me pusieron. También os habrán dicho que los tejados y paredes de mis casas, con todo el demás servicio son de oro, y esto lo han afirmado los de Cempoala, Tlaxcala y Guaxocingo, que con vuestra venida se me han rebelado, y de subjectos vasallos se han vuelto enemigos mortales, aunque su soberbia yo se la quebrantaré presto. Las casas, ya veis que son de barro y palo algunas, por mucha estima, de cantería. En lo demás, verdad es que tengo tesoros y riquezas, heredadas de mis padres y

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Moctezuma / Cervantes de Salazar agüelos, guardadas y conservadas de tiempo inmemorial a esta parte; hay en estos tesoros mucha plata, oro, perlas, piedras preciosas, joyas riquísimas, plumas y armas, como suelen tener los Reyes y Príncipes que son de antiguo principio, lo cual todo vos y vuestros compañeros tendréis y gozaréis cada y cuando que lo queráis, porque para vosotros lo tengo guardado.” Cuando acabó de decir esto ya no podía detener las lágrimas que de los ojos se le saltaban; pero, esforzándose cuanto pudo, concluyendo, dixo: “Entre tanto holgad, que vendréis cansados.” [There follows a speech by Cortés in response.] Translation “Brave Lord and Captain, and you knights who have come with him, my knights and servants of my house and Court, bear witness how greatly I am pleased to have such men as you in my house and kingdom so that I might pay you the courtesy and favor that corresponds to your merits and my estate. And if, as you have seen up till now, I have begged and even insisted with several messengers that you not come to this great city and these houses of mine, it was due to the fear that my men had of yours, because besides the fact that each of you is so brave that he can conquer and subdue many of our men, you frightened them with those long and wild beards of yours, and you bring animals much larger than deer, which swallowed men, and since you came from heaven, you called down thunder and lightning, and you made the earth tremble and our hearts shudder, and without them knowing how, you killed whomever you pleased or whoever angered you in any way. They also said that with those iron swords of yours you gave such blows that you split a man in two, and that you stabbed in such a way that you immediately killed anyone you struck. They told us, likewise, that you were very fond of what was not yours, eager to lord over it and rule everything, that you came with a great thirst for gold and silver, and that is why you committed outrages and offences and that each of you ate and dressed for ten of our men, and many other things that made us afraid and wary, so as not to let you enter my kingdoms. But now that I am assured both by extensive accounts and by some observations that our men have made of you, that you are mortal men, like

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Appendix us, although braver and more skilled, well conditioned, good to your friends, able to withstand trials, and that you have not done any harm except when quite rightly defending yourselves, aiding those who come to you in need, polite and well bred, and I have seen the horses, which are like large deer, and your cannons, which seem like blowguns, I take for jests and lies what they first told me about you, which was so much that even the Tlaxcalans, your friends, were of the same opinion. Now, disabused, not only do I take you for friends, but for close kinsmen, because my father told me, and his father told him, that our ancestors and kings from whom I am descended were not native to this land, but newcomers, who came with a great lord who shortly returned to his native land. Since they were more powerful they took over this land, which used to belong to the Otomí, and at the end of several years this lord came back for them, but they refused to return, because they had married here and had children and power, and what they wanted from the land, and they liked the site, which is certainly quite strong when well defended. That lord went back very annoyed with them and told them as he left that he would send his children to govern them and keep them in peace and justice, and within the ancient laws and the religion of their fathers, and that if they did not accept this willingly, they would be compelled to it by force of arms. That is why we have always believed and expected that some day they would come from those parts to subject and rule us. And so I believe that you are the ones, judging by the direction you come from and the news that that great Emperor and lord of yours who sends you has of us. Therefore, most valiant Captain, be assured that we shall obey you, if you are not deceiving or tricking us, and we shall share with you and your men all we have. And even if what I have said and what we have been expecting were not so certain, for just your courage, fame and knightly deeds you deserve to be well treated in my kingdoms and Court, for I well know what you did in Tabasco, Teocacinco, Tlaxcala, Cholula, and elsewhere, vanquishing so many with so few. And if you come believing that I am a god and that, as some falsely say, I turn into a lion, tiger or serpent at will, it is all false, because I am a mortal man like any other.”

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Cortés / Cortés Saying this, he pinched his hand and said: “Touch my body, which is of flesh and bone, although as King I hold myself on high because of the dignity and preeminence in which the gods have placed me. They also probably told you that the roofs and walls of my houses along with all the rest of my service are of gold, and those of Cempoala, Tlaxcala, and Guaxocingo have asserted this, they who have rebelled against me with your arrival, and from obedient vassals turned into mortal enemies, although I shall soon break that vanity of theirs. The houses, you can see that they are of mud and sticks, or at best built of stone. As for the rest, it is true that I have treasures and riches, inherited from my parents and grandparents, stored and preserved since time immemorial till now. Among these treasures there is much silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, rich jewels, featherwork, and weaponry, as Kings and Princes of ancient lines are accustomed to keep, all of which you and your companions may have and enjoy whenever you like, because I have kept it for you.” When he finished saying this he could no longer hold back the tears that sprang from his eyes; but making a great effort, he said in conclusion: “Meanwhile, get some rest, for you must be tired.”

2. Cortés on Idolatry Hernán Cortés, Segunda relación (Cartas 239) Yo les hice entender con las lenguas cuán engañados estaban en tener su esperanza en aquellos ídolos que eran hechos por sus manos de cosas no limpias, y que habían de saber que había un solo Dios, universal Señor de todos, el cual había criado el cielo y la tierra y todas las cosas y que hizo a ellos y a nosotros, y que éste era sin principio e inmortal y que a él habían de adorar y creer, y no a otra criatura ni cosa alguna. Y les dije todo lo demás que yo en este caso supe para los desviar de sus idolatrías y atraer al conoscimiento de Dios Nuestro Señor. Y todos, en especial el dicho Muteeçuma, me respondieron que ya me habían dicho que ellos no eran naturales desta tierra y

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Appendix que había muchos tiempos que sus predecesores habían venido a ella; y que bien creían que podían estar errados en algo de aquello que tenían por haber tanto tiempo que salieron de su naturaleza, que yo, como más nuevamente venido sabría las cosas que debían tener y creer mejor que no ellos, que se las dijese e hiciese entender, que ellos harían lo que yo les dijese que era lo mejor. Y el dicho Muteeçuma y muchos de los prencipales de la dicha cibdad estuvieron conmigo hasta quitar los ídolos y limpiar las capillas y poner las imágenes, y todo con alegre semblante. Y les defendí que no matasen criaturas a los ídolos como acostumbraban, porque demás de ser aborrecible a Dios, Vuestra Sacra Majestad por sus leyes lo prohibe y manda que el que matare lo maten. Y de ahí adelante se apartaron dell, y en todo el tiempo que estuve en la dicha cibdad, nunca se vio matar ni sacrificar alguna criatura. Translation I made them understand through the interpreters how deceived they were in placing their trust in those idols, which they had made with their hands from unclean things. They must know that there was only one God, Lord of all things, who had created heaven and earth and all else and who made all of us; and He was without beginning or end, and they must adore and worship only Him, not any other creature or thing. And I told them all I knew about this to dissuade them from their idolatry and bring them to the knowledge of God Our Lord. All of them, especially Mutezuma, replied that they had already told me how they were not natives of this land, and that as it was many years since their forefathers had come here, they well knew that they might have erred somewhat in what they believed, for they had left their native land so long ago; and as I had more recently arrived from there, I would better know the things they should believe, and should explain to them and make them understand, for they would do as I said was best. Mutezuma and many of the lords of the city were with me until the idols were removed, the chapel cleaned and the images set up, and all with a pleasant appearance, and I urged them not to sacrifice living creatures to the idols, as they were accustomed, for, as well as being most abhorrent to God, Your Sacred Majesty’s laws for-

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Cortés / Peter Martyr of Angleria bade it and ordered that he who kills shall be killed. And from then on they ceased to do it, and in all the time I stayed in that city I did not see a living creature killed or sacrificed.

*** Peter Martyr of Angleria, De orbe novo (72–72v; dec. 5, ch. 4) Cortesius ad haec: En quid facinorosius? en quid ineptius? deos vos esse arbitramini eos qui vestrorum deditiorum manibus sunt formati? ministeria igitur vestrorum hominum digniora sunt ipsis hominibus? Quod tuus opifex, o Muteczuma, et forte sordidum mancipium suis manibus confingit, tua dignius est maiestate? quae caecitas vestra haec est? aut quae insana crudelitas? ut horum simulacrorum insensibilium causa, tot humana corpora quotannis interficiatis? quid haec sentiunt, quae neque vident neque audiunt? Illum, illum qui coelum fecit ac terram, illum colere oportet. Is est a quo bona cuncta procedunt, cui sunt haec vestra sacrificia molestissima. Lege praeterea sancitum est a nostro Rege, quem ab illo trahere originem fatemini, qui maiores vestros ad has terras perduxit, ut quicunque marem aut feminam gladio ferierit, gladio moriatur. Haec ubi Cortesius disseruit per suos interpretes, cum palore vultus et corde trementi Muteczuma repetiit: Attende, Cortesi, quae nobis a maioribus relictae sunt sacrorum cerimoniae has observavimus et exercuimus: quod vero tu nos dicis tantopere errasse, idque nostro Regi minime placiturum inquis, delectamur audire, modo populis id persuadere queamus. Hos forte ritus nostri maiores derelecti ab incolis eorum temporum servari repererunt, socerorum et uxorum secuti sumus consuetudinem, neque mirari debes in hos errores, si errores sunt, nos incidisse: legem praebeto, eam totis viribus amplecti nitemur. His auditis, Cortesius repetiit, unum esse Deum, trinum in personis, unum in essentia, qui coelos creavit ac terras, solemque ac lunam, cum stellarum ornamentis universis terram circuentibus ad usum hominum: hinc necare homines odiosum illi est, qui ex eadem materia mancipium formavit

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Appendix et quoscumque faciem humanam habentes, qua me, qua te, qua istos. Ex Virgine muliere is natus inter nos, passusque fuit ad humani generis salutem, quod aliquando latius tibi atque istis per venturos sapientes ostendetur. Eius Dei vexillum et victoriae signum est crucis huius simulacrum: crucem habere oportet rerum ducem; et matris illius virginis imaginem, quae sinu gestat infantem, haec dicens ex iureconsulto Cortesius theologus effectus, crucem et Virginis imaginem adorandam ostendit. Ita larvis diruptis monstrorum, operam dedit Muteczuma, ut ipso praesente templa ministri verrerent et confricatim detegerent, ne tantae labis sanguineae signa ulla remanerent. De sordida religione Tenustitana iam satis. Translation To these things Cortés said, “What could be more criminal? What could be more senseless? Do you judge to be gods what has been formed by the hands of your subordinates? Is therefore the work of your men more worthy than the men themselves? Oh Moctezuma, is what an artisan of yours or perhaps a filthy slave has shaped with his hands more worthy than your majesty? What blindness of yours is this? Or what mad cruelty? For the sake of these senseless images you kill so many humans each year? What do they feel? And what do they see or hear? Him, him you must worship, who made heaven and earth. From him all good things come, and he abhors these sacrifices of yours. Besides it is decreed by law by our King, who you confess traces his origins back to that man who led your ancestors to these lands, that whoever harms man or woman with a sword should die by the sword.” When Cortés said these things through his interpreters, Moctezuma, with a pale face and trembling heart, replied, “Consider, Cortés, that the ceremonies that our ancestors have left to us we have observed and carried out until now, but we are happy to hear you say that we have been greatly mistaken, and that our King does not like them at all—just as long as we can persuade the people of it. Perhaps our ancestors who were left here found these rites observed by the inhabitants in those times; we have followed the customs of our wives and fathers-

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Cortés / Pérez de Oliva in-law, and you should not wonder that we have fallen into these errors, if they are errors: Supply the law and we will strive to embrace it with all our power. Having heard these things, Cortés replied that there is one God, in three persons, in one essence, who created the heavens and earth, the sun and the moon, with the universal adornments of the stars that circle the earth for the benefit of man: hence the killing of men is hateful to him, who from the same material formed the slave and everyone with human countenance, “me, you, these men here. From a virgin woman he was born among us, and he suffered for the salvation of mankind, which at greater length will be shown to you and these people here by wise men who will come later. The standard of this God and His sign of victory is the likeness of this cross: You must hold this cross above all else, along with the image of his virgin mother, who holds the infant to her bosom.” Saying these things Cortés changed from a lawyer to a theologian and showed them the cross and the image of the Virgin for them to worship. Once the spectre of these monsters had been demolished, Moctezuma gave the order for the attendants to sweep and thoroughly clean the temples in his presence so that no sign remained of such a great stain of blood. Enough of the filthy religion of Tenochtitlan.

*** Hernán Pérez de Oliva, “Algunas cosas de Hernán Cortés y México” (464–65) “Si en seruicio destos idolos ouiesedes seguido la verdad conoscierades que vuestros enemigos son los que aman vuestra sangre. Mas commo quiera que andais en las tinieblas do os han puesto munchos aduersarios secretos que tiene el genero humano, acatais aquellos de quien creis que en vuestra muerte se delectan. Considerad, yo os ruego, pues vosotros con vuestras manos mezclastes su materia, partiendo coraçones humanos sobre la harina de vuestras simientes, que estos vuestros dioses son hechos de poluo y crueldad, las cuales partes no

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Appendix merescen sino menosprecio y aborrescimiento. El verdadero Dios que con su lumbre los cristianos conoscen no demanda la sangre delos coraçones sino la limpieza dellos. Este es todopoderoso, uniuersal y perdurable, que ama la mansedumbre y aborresce la crueldad. Su pura substancia inuisible y incomprehensible nadie sela dio, antes el con sus manos fabrico el mundo y sobre las estrellas puso su trono, acompañado no de sangre vertida por manos de los que le siruen sino de angeles bien aventurados y animas de hombres buenos que en el tienen gloria para siempre. Este señor soberano nos amonesta siempre costumbres con que la natura humana sea tratada mansa mente. Su lei de seruirlo es mui pura y mui facil, su galardon muy grande, su castigo graue pena, su misericordia siempre aparejada, su justicia cierta. El es el que mueue el mar, el que los cielos rodea, el que rige los vientos. El embia los nublados, el declara los tiempos, el da salud aquien le plaze y victoria aquien la meresce. El tiene para todo bastante y siempre durable poderio. A este si vosotros amais no destruireis sus criaturas que para su seruicio el hizo; antes conseruareis en salud los otros hombres commo vuestra misma carne, y unos a otros os deseareis el bien que cada uno para si querria, y sentireis en vuestros pechos asentados otros espiritus mas claros y mas plazientes que os conseruen en limpieza y os recreen en esperança. Destas cosas os diran mas bastante mente los sacerdotes cristianos. De mi sabreis que en seruicio deste verdadero Dios andan mis armas y con su fauor son tan poderosas, y ellas siempre seguiran las vidas de sus enemigos.” Translation “If in the service of these idols you had followed the truth, you would know that your enemies are the ones who love your blood. But since you walk in darkness where you have been placed by the many secret adversaries that the human race has, you obey those who you believe delight in your death. Consider, I beg of you, for you with your hands mixed the material, splitting human hearts over the powder of your seeds, that these gods of yours are made of dust and cruelty, which deserve nothing but disdain and hatred. The true God who with his light Christians know does not demand the blood of hearts but the

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Cortés / Gómara purity of them. He is almighty, universal and everlasting, he loves gentleness and hates cruelty. No one gave him his pure, invisible and incomprehensible substance. Rather he with his hands made the world and over the stars he placed his throne, accompanied not by blood spilled by those who serve him but by blessed angels and the souls of good men who in him have glory forever. This sovereign lord always advises us of the customs by which the human race may be gently treated. His law for serving him is very pure and very easy, his reward very great, his punishment severe, his mercy always ready, his justice certain. He is the one who stirs the sea, the one who surrounds the heavens, directs the winds. He sends us clouds and clears the skies, he gives health to whomever he wants and victory to those who deserve it. For everything he has enough and always limitless power. If you love him you will not destroy his creatures, which he made for his service; instead you will maintain in good health other men as your own flesh, and for each other you will desire the good that everyone would like for himself, and you will feel in your hearts other clearer and more pleasing spirits taking hold, who will keep you in cleanliness and renew you in hope. Of these things Christian priests will tell you much more. From me you will know that in the service of this God I wield my arms, and with his favor they are so powerful, and they always pursue the lives of his enemies.”

*** Francisco López de Gómara, Historia de la conquista de México (137–39; ch. 86) “Todos los hombres del mundo, muy soberano rey, y nobles caballeros y religiosos, ora vosotros aquí, ora nosotros allá en España, ora en cualquier parte, que vivan de él, tienen un mismo principio y fin de vida, y traen su comienzo y linaje de Dios, casi con el mismo Dios. Todos somos hechos de una manera de cuerpo, de una igualdad de ánima y de sentidos; y así, todos somos, no sólo semejantes en el cuerpo y alma, mas aun también parientes en sangre; empero acontece, por la

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Appendix providencia de aquel mismo Dios, que unos nazcan hermosos y otros feos; unos sean sabios y discretos, otros necios, sin entendimiento, sin juicio ni virtud; por donde es justo, santo y muy conforme a razón y a voluntad de Dios, que los prudentes y virtuosos enseñen y doctrinen a los ignorantes, y guíen a los ciegos y que andan errados, y los metan en el camino de salvación por la vereda de la verdadera religión. Yo pues, y mis compañeros, vos deseamos y procuramos también tanto bien y mejoría, cuanto más el parentesco, amistad y el ser vuestros huéspedes; cosas que a quien quiera y donde quiera, obligan, nos fuerzan y constriñen. En tres cosas, como ya sabréis, consiste el hombre y su vida: en cuerpo, alma y bienes. De vuestra hacienda, que es lo menos, ni queremos nada, ni hemos tomado sino lo que nos habéis dado. A vuestras personas ni a las de vuestros hijos ni mujeres, no habemos tocado, ni aun queremos; el alma solamente buscamos para su salvación; a la cual ahora pretendemos aquí mostrar y dar noticia entera del verdadero Dios. Ninguno que natural juicio tenga, negará que hay Dios; mas empero por ignorancia dirá que hay muchos dioses, o no atinará al que verdaderamente es Dios. Mas yo digo y certifico que no hay otro Dios sino el nuestro de cristianos; el cual es uno, eterno, sin principio, sin fin, criador y gobernador de lo criado. El solo hizo el cielo, el sol, la luna y estrellas, que vosotros adoráis; él mismo crió la mar con los peces, y la tierra con los animales, aves, plantas, piedras, metales y cosas semejantes, que ciegamente vosotros tenéis por dioses. El asimismo, con sus propias manos, ya después de todas las cosas criadas, formó un hombre y una mujer; y formado, le puso el alma en el soplo, y le entregó el mundo, y le mostró el paraíso, la gloria, y a sí mismo. De aquel hombre pues y de aquella mujer venimos todos, como al principio dije; y así, somos parientes, y hechura de Dios; y aun hijos; y si queremos tornar al Padre, es menester que seamos buenos, humanos, piadosos, inocentes y corregibles; lo que no podéis vosotros ser si adoráis estatuas y matáis hombres. ¿Hay hombres de vosotros que querría le matasen? No por cierto. Pues ¿por qué matáis a otros tan cruelmente? Donde no podéis meter alma, ¿para qué la sacáis? Nadie hay de vosotros que pueda hacer ánimas ni sepa forjar cuerpos de carne y hueso; que si pudiese, no estaría ninguno sin hijos, y todos tendrían cuantos quisiesen y como los

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Cortés / Gómara quisiesen, grandes, hermosos, buenos y virtuosos; empero como los da este nuestro Dios del cielo que digo, dalos como quiere y a quien quiere; que por eso es Dios, y por eso le habéis de tomar, tener y adorar por tal, y porque llueve, serena y hace sol, con que la tierra produzca pan, fruta, yerbas, aves y animales para vuestro mantenimiento. No os dan estas cosas, no las duras piedras, no los maderos secos, ni los fríos metales ni las menudas semillas de que vuestros mozos y esclavos hacen con sus manos sucias estas imágenes y estatuas feas y espantosas, que vanamente adoráis. ¡Oh qué gentiles dioses, y qué donosos religiosos! Adoráis lo que hacen manos que no comeréis lo que guisan o tocan. ¿Creéis que son dioses lo que se pudre, carcome, envejece y sentido ninguno tiene? ¿Lo que ni sana ni mata? Así que no hay para qué tener más aquí estos ídolos, ni se hagan más muertes ni oraciones delante de ellos, que son sordos, mudos y ciegos. ¿Queréis conocer quién es Dios, y saber dónde está? Alzad los ojos al cielo, y luego entenderéis que está allá arriba alguna deidad que mueve el cielo, que rige el curso del sol, que gobierna la tierra, que bastece la mar, que provee al hombre y aun a los animales de agua y pan. A este Dios pues, que ahora imagináis allá dentro en vuestros corazones, a ése servid y adorad, no con muerte de hombres ni con sangre de sacrificios abominables, sino con sola devoción y palabras, como los cristianos hacemos; y sabed que para enseñaros esto venimos acá.” Translation “All men of the world, most sovereign King, noble gentlemen, and priests, you here, we in Spain, and those who dwell in any part of it, have in life the same beginning and the same end, and derive our origin and lineage from God, almost with that same God.4 We were all made with the same kind of body, soul, and senses; and so we are not only similar in body and soul, but even kindred in blood. But it happens that, through the providence of that same God, that some are born beautiful and others ugly, some are wise and discreet, others foolish, without understanding, judgment, or virtue. It is therefore just, holy, and in accordance with the reason and will of God, that the prudent and virtuous teach and indoctrinate the ignorant, and

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Appendix that they guide the blind and erring, and place them on the way to salvation by the path of the true religion. I along with my companions desire and strive to aid and uplift you as much as we are forced and bound by our kinship, friendship, and the hospitality you show us, things that oblige everyone everywhere.5 Man and his life consist of three things, as you must already be aware: body, soul, and goods. Of your goods, which is the least of them, we wish nothing; nor have we taken anything except what you have given us. We have not touched your persons, or those of your wives and children, and have no wish to do so. It is only your souls that we seek for your salvation, which we shall now endeavor to explain to you and give you as well a full account of the true God. No one with natural judgment will deny that there is a God, although some through ignorance may say that there are many gods, or may fail to hit upon the true one. But I say and certify to you that there is no God other than our Christian God, who is one and eternal, without beginning or end, the Creator and Ruler of all things. He alone created the heavens, the sun, the moon, and the stars that you worship. He Himself created the sea with all its fishes, and the land with its animals, birds, plants, stones, metals, and other things, which you blindly hold to be gods. He likewise with His own hands, after creating all things, fashioned man and woman; and when they had been shaped, He breathed a soul into them, delivered the world into their hands, and gave them a glimpse of Paradise, glory, and Himself. From that man and that woman, then, we are all descended, as I said at the beginning, and so we are all kin and the work of God, and even his children. And if we wish to return to the Father,6 we must be good, humane, pious, and innocent, and capable of correction, which you cannot be so long as you worship stone images and kill men. Is there a man among you who wishes to be killed? Of course not. Well then, why do you put others to death so cruelly? If you cannot create a soul, why do you destroy it? No one among you can create souls or make bodies of flesh and bone, for if you could, none would be without children, of whom all would have as many as they wished and the kind they wished: big, beautiful, good, and virtuous. Since, however,

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Cortés / Sepúlveda children are given to us by our God in Heaven, of whom I spoke, He gives them as He pleases and to whom He pleases, for He is God; and that is why you must accept Him, and hold and worship Him as such, for it is He who brings the rain, clears the skies, and gives us sun, by which the earth yields bread, fruits, herbs, birds, and other creatures for your sustenance. These things are not given to you by the hard stones, the dry wood, the cold metals, and the tiny seeds with which your servants and slaves with their filthy hands make the ugly and frightful images and statues that you vainly worship. Oh what splendid gods are these, and what pretty priests! You worship things made by hands so filthy that you will not eat what they touch or cook. Do you really believe that things that decay, that are eaten by worms, that grow old, and that have no feeling whatever are gods? Things that cannot kill or heal? There is no reason, therefore, for you to keep these idols any longer, or to kill men before them, or pray to them, for they are deaf, dumb, and blind. Do you wish to know who God is and where he dwells? Lift up your eyes, then, and you will understand that there is a Deity above who causes the heavens to move, keeps the sun in its course, rules the earth, fills the sea, and provides men and creatures with water and bread. This is the God, whom you can now imagine deep in your hearts, whom you must serve and worship, not with the killing of men, or with the blood of abominable sacrifices, but only with devotion and words, as we Christians do. Know, finally, that the reason we have come here is to teach you this.”

*** Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, De orbe novo (209–10; bk. 6, ch. 25) Contra ea Cortesius resipiscere eos aliquando iubet et Deum verum agnoscere, in cuius magna ignoratione versarentur, qui unus esset, optimus, maximus, sempiternus, cunctorum bonorum auctor, unus caelum et terram ac omnia quae his continentur condidisset, unus omnia suo nutu regeret ac

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Appendix administraret.7 Quos autem ipsi colerent, opera esse hominum manufacta ex rebus immundis foetidisque conflata. Itaque stultum esse mutas imagines deos esse existimare et, qui sensus essent expertes, his bona vel mala accepta referre. Unum illum Deum esse colendum non victimarum sanguine praesertim humanarum, quod esset impium et nefarium, sed virtute et pietate ac innocentia, quibus rebus facile possent cuncta bona ab eodem impetrare. Hac oratione victus Mutezuma: “nos,” inquit, “ut ante dixi, non indigenae sumus harum regionum, sed advenae ex longinquis finibus advecti et fortasse veram religionem dedidicimus et in errorem versamur. Vos igitur, quos veram religionem retinere ac Deum prudentius colere probabile est, quid ei gratius et quid optimum factu sit considerabitis et statuetis; nos a vobis edocti sacrorum ritum et vestram colendi Deum consuetudinem aemulari non gravabimur.” Sacellis igitur, quae humano sanguine madebant, purgatis, Cortesius Christi ac Virginis Matris imagines reponere et per eas verum Deum Mutezumam, qui rebus his omnibus cum Cortesio interfuit, ceterosque Barbaros venerari iussit ac ne victimas humanas amplius immolarent ut impium et nefarium sacrificium vetuit interdixitque, cui praecepto Barbari non gravate obtemperarunt. Translation In response to [the Aztecs’ objection to the toppling of the idols], Cortés told them to return to their senses and recognize the true God, of Whom they had lived in great ignorance. He alone, supreme, almighty, eternal, source of all good, created heaven and earth and all that they contain; He alone rules and governs all according to His will. What they worshipped, however, was made by the hand of man and out of filthy and disgusting things. It was therefore idiotic to consider those silent and senseless images to be gods and to say that good or bad things came from them. The one and only God was to be worshipped not with the blood of victims, especially not human victims—an unspeakable and sacrilegious act—but with virtue, piety, and innocence. With these they could easily obtain from Him all good things. Convinced by this speech, Moctezuma replied: “We, as I said before, are not native to these lands, but

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Cortés / Cervantes de Salazar foreigners come from distant shores, and perhaps we have forgotten the true religion and now live in error. Since you probably have kept the true religion and know how to worship God, you will see clearly what pleases Him the most and will decide what is best for us to do. Following your instruction we shall have no compunction in imitating your sacred rites and manner of worshipping God.” Therefore, once they had cleaned the temples, which had been soaked in human blood, Cortés ordered the images of Christ and the Virgin Mary to be put into place and for Moctezuma, who along with Cortés had a hand in all these matters, and the other Barbarians to worship through these images the true God. And he absolutely forbade them to offer any more human victims in unspeakable and sacrilegious sacrifice, an order that the Barbarians obeyed without reluctance.

*** Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica de la Nueva España (1: 359–61; bk. 4, ch. 32) “Muchas veces, muy poderoso Rey y muy nobles caballeros y vosotros, religiosos varones, que según vuestras cerimonias y costumbres, después del Rey, estáis puestos en lugar supremo, he deseado que libres de toda afición a las cosas de vuestra religión, me oyésedes con gran cuidado lo que diversas veces, en suma, os he dicho, tocante a la verdadera religión de los cristianos y al engaño que con tanto daño de vuestras almas y cuerpos hasta ahora habéis vivido; y porque unas veces con su Alteza, otras con algunos de los caballeros y otras con algunos de los sacerdotes, que presentes estáis, en particular y como de paso he tratado este negocio, y ninguno me ha respondido descontentarle,8 parescióme que era razón suplicar a su alteza mandase que hoy os juntásedes todos para que alumbrándoos Dios, entendiendo lo que dixere, tengáis por muy acertado el haber yo derrocado los ídolos y puesto en lugar dellos las imágines de Jesucristo, Dios y Redemptor nuestro, y de la Virgen Sanctísima, madre suya, por cuya intercesión Dios ha hecho y hace cada día grandes mercedes al linaje humano; para

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Appendix lo cual lo habéis de saber que no hay nasción en todo el mundo que si en la ley natural está algo advertida, y con vicios y torpedades no tiene escurescida aquella lumbre que desde su creación Dios le dio y comunicó, tenga que hay más de un sumo principio, una suma causa de todas las cosas, ca sumo es aquello sobre lo cual no hay otra cosa que más sea; y pues lo que es sumo no sufre superior ni igual, como aun por vuestras casas veréis, que no hay ninguno de vosotros que en el gobierno dellas quiera ni sufra tener quien le vaya a la mano como igual, cuanto más quien le mande como superior, nescesario es y forzoso en buena razón, discurriendo de un saber en otro, de un poder en otro, de una bondad en otra, venir, para que no haya discurso en infinito, que no puede ser a un tan gran poder, tan gran saber, ni tan gran bondad, que no haya tan gran poder, tan gran saber y bondad9 como aquella en cuyo poder de nada se hayan hecho las cosas, porque principio tuvieron y no son eternas, en cuyo saber son y serán sin error para siempre gobernadas y regidas, cuya bondad sin faltar las sustenta, comunicándoles su ser y haciendo de las más dellas señor al hombre. No pudiendo, pues, haber dos poderes infinitos ni dos saberes, ni bondades tales, forzoso es confesemos un solo Dios, infinitamente poderosos, infinitamente bueno, infinitamente sabio; y pues no puede haber dos dioses ¿cuánto menos muchos, como vosotros confesáis infinitos? Y porque veáis bien el error en que estáis, ¿quién no se reirá viendo que tengáis un dios para el agua, otro para el fuego, otro para las batallas y otros así para muchas cosas, como si este nombre de dios no importase sumo poder para poderlo todo? De manera que si hay Dios, como ninguna nasción lo niega, y su significación importa tanto que no puede con ningún entendimiento ser comprendida, aun en buena razón es cosa superflua que lo que uno puede hagan muchos, porque en uno hay mayor unidad y menor discrepancia que en muchos, y más fuerte y poderoso es el que solo en batalla vence a muchos que el que es ayudado de muchos. “En prueba de que no haya más de un Dios, también hace mucho al caso ver que en este vuestro señorío no haya más de un hombre, que es el poderoso Rey Motezuma, sobre tantos que aquí estáis, el cual os rige y gobierna; y si hobiera otros

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Cortés / Cervantes de Salazar dos o tres tan poderosos como él, él no fuera tan poderoso sobre vosotros, y habiendo diversas voluntades y paresceres, no pudiera ser una la gobernación, y así todo lo que en sí tiene unidad es más fuerte que lo que consiente división, de donde entre los nuestros dice un sabio que la virtud unida es más fuerte que ella misma desparcida en diversas partes. Y esto paresce ser así por una comparación natural vuestra, que el vino que bebéis, recogido y cubierto en vasija tan grande cuanto fuere el vino contenido en ella, está más fuerte que si estuviese derramado o en la calle10 en una gran vasija, donde pierde su vigor. Desto paresce claro que, pues, como tengo dicho, hemos de confesar un poder tan grande que todo lo pueda y que ninguno pueda tanto que no puede ser sino uno y no muchos, y así veréis que a este poder potentísimo, único e inmenso, no le podemos llamar sino Dios, y no dioses; y que sea un Dios y no muchos dioses, paresce claro por sus obras, que todas y cada una por sí, como efectos de su causa, muestran unidad y no pluralidad. No crió muchos mundos, sino un mundo, y en éste, compuesto de diversas unidades, no crió muchas tierras, sino una tierra; muchos mares, sino una mar; muchos fuegos, sino un fuego; criando cuatro elementos y de cada uno no más de uno; una escencia de cielos, un hombre, una mujer, de quien descendimos; una ánima en cada uno, un sol, una luna en el cielo; una ley dio, una fee, un baptsimo; queriendo que como es uno, todo lo que hizo mostrase en su unidad ser uno su Auctor. “Y porque sé que no sabéis de adónde ha venido vuestro error de que creéis tan contra razón lo contrario desto, sabéis que cuando Dios crió el cielo y la tierra, crió dos maneras de criapturas excelentes sobre todas las otras; las unas eran espirituales, sin comixtión de cuerpo, que llamamos ángeles o espíritus celestiales; la otra fue el hombre y la mujer, compuestos de ánima espiritual y del cuerpo que con los ojos veis. De los ángeles hubo uno muy señalado que, no conosciendo haber rescibido de Dios el excelente ser que quería, se levantó y se rebeló contra Dios, su criador; siguióle la tercera parte de los ángeles; fueron por esta maldad echados del Cielo en este mundo, y como nunca se han arrepentido ni arrepentirán de su culpa, han desde estonces y hasta que el mundo se acabe procurado y procuran dos cosas: la una, perseverando en su

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Appendix malicia, siendo criapturas condenadas, querer ser adoradas por criadores y dioses, introduciendo, lo que la razón natural no consiente, cuanto más la fee, que haya muchos principios y causas eternas de una cosa. Con esta ceguera han procurado y procuran la segunda cosa, que es estorbar, creyendo en ellos, que los hombres no conoscan ni sirvan a un Dios, para que después de la muerte temporal gocen de aquel supremo lugar que ellos por su maldad perdieron. Y porque veáis que esto es así, mirad que entre vosotros, aunque sois malos, os paresce mal lo malo hecho y la crueldad; y que Dios quiere decir tanto como suma bondad y suma clemencia, si éstos fuesen verdaderos dioses, verdaderamente serían buenos; pero pues os han mentido tantas veces y se hacen adorar debaxo de tan feas figuras, y así de hombres como de fieros animales, y quieren y permiten haya sodomías robos, tiranías y muertes de inocentes, ¿qué podéis pensar que sean sino demonios, enemigos vuestros? Cuando los habláis, responden palabras dubdosas para que, siguiéndose forzosamente lo uno o lo otro, los creáis, y como son tan sabios y tan antiguos y permite Dios para mayor condenación suya, que hagan algunas cosas, como tronar, granizar y otras así, pensáis que son dioses, no entendiendo, como tengo dicho, que Dios no quiere mal, ni hace mal, ni tiene ayuda de otro para hacer las maravillas que quiere, como vistes la semana pasada, que estando el cielo tan sereno, os envió a nuestra suplicación tanta agua que nunca habéis tenido tan buen año como tendréis éste. Y pues veis que lo que he dicho, si estáis sin pasión, convencerá vuestros pentendimientos, y la prueba del milagro pasado ha mostrado claramente que es así lo que digo, suplícoos, oh altísimo Rey, caballeros, sacerdotes, que abráis los ojos; y pues del creerme o dexar de creerme os va el morir o el vivir para siempre, que con gran cuidado encomendéis a la memoria las palabras que os he dicho, ca os alumbrará para que más claramente entendáis la verdad que os predico.” Acabada esta tan sancta, tan prudente y sabia pláctica, todos estuvieron suspensos por un buen rato, hablándose muy quedo unos a otros, los más dellos convencidos con la fuerza de la eterna verdad, aunque estonces con más furia, como al que le iba tanto, los combatía el demonio, con la larga costumbre que tenían de seguirle y adorarle.

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Cortés / Cervantes de Salazar Translation “Several times, mighty king, noble knights, and you as well, religious men, who, according to your customs and ceremonies, are held in the highest regard, second only to the King, I have wanted you, free of all attachment to the things of your religion, to hear with great care what I have often started to tell you regarding the true religion of Christians and the deception under which you have lived your lives till now and which has caused so much harm to your bodies and souls. And since on occasion with your Highness, sometimes with some of the knights, and other times with some of the priests, who stand before me, in particular and hurriedly I have touched on this topic, and none of you has said it displeased him, it seemed right to me to ask your Highness to order all of you to gather here today so that God might show you the light, and you might understand what I say and consider that I had good reason to cast down the idols and replace them with images of Jesus Christ, our God and Redeemer, and of the Holy Virgin, his Mother, through whose intervention God has granted and grants each day great favors to the human race. To understand all of this you need to know that there is no nation in all the world that has some notion of natural law and is not blinded by vice and baseness to that light that since the Creation God has given and shown to it, that holds there to be more than one supreme beginning, one supreme cause of all causes, because supreme means that above which there is nothing greater. And since what is supreme suffers no superior or equal, as even in your own homes you can see, for there is none among you who in the management of his home desires or allows anyone to contradict him as an equal, much less take over as his superior, it is necessary and inevitable that in reasonable reflection on what is known, what is possible, and what is good, to come to the conclusion, so as not to go on reflecting infinitely, that there can be no equal to such great power, such great knowledge, and such great goodness, for there is no power so great, no knowledge so great, or goodness so great as that under whose power things have been made from nothing, for all other things have had their beginning and are not eternal, and according to his wisdom are and will forever be governed and determined

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Appendix without error, and his goodness sustains them unfailingly, giving them their being and making man lord over most of them. Since there cannot be two infinite powers, no two such forms of knowledge or goodness, we must confess that there is one God, infinitely powerful, infinitely good, infinitely wise; and since there cannot be two gods, much less can there be several, or as you confess an infinite number. And so that you may see the error of your ways, who will not laugh on seeing that you have one god for water, another for fire, another for battles, and likewise others for many things, as if this name of god did not entail the supreme power to do everything? So if there is a God, as no nation denies, and his meaning is so vast that no understanding can comprehend Him, even in good reason, then it is superfluous for many to do what one can, because in one there is greater unity and less discord than in many, and he who triumphs alone in battle is stronger and more powerful than he who is aided by several. For another relevant proof that there is not more than one God, see how in your own dominion there is no more than one man, the powerful King Moctezuma, who, above all of you here, rules and governs you. And if there were two or three as powerful as he, he would not be so powerful over you; and if there were various wills and opinions, the government could not be one, and so all that has unity is stronger than that which allows division. Hence among our sages one says that in union virtue is stronger than when it is scattered in various parts. And this even appears to be the case through a natural comparison of your own, according to which the wine you drink is much stronger when it is stored in a covered vessel just large enough to contain it than when it is poured out or stored on the street in a large vessel, in which it loses its potency. From this it seems clear that, as I have said, we must confess there to be a power so great that it can do everything and that nobody can do as much unless he is one and not several, and so you will see that we cannot but call this mightiest, unique, and immeasurable power God, and not gods; and that he is one god and not several seems clear from his works, for all of them and each singly, as effects of his cause, reveal unity not plurality. He did not create many worlds, but one world, and on this, composed of various unities, he did not create many earths, but one earth;

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Cortés / Cervantes de Salazar many seas, but one sea; many fires, but one fire; creating four elements and of each one and only one: one essence of the heavens, one man, one woman, from whom we descend; one soul in each, one sun, one moon in the sky, one law, and one faith did he give, one baptism, in a desire that, since he is one, all that he does might show in its unity to have but one Author. “And because I know that you do not know where this error of yours has come from, according to which you believe, against all reason, the opposite of this, you will learn that when God created heaven and earth, he created two kinds of creatures who excelled above all the others; one type was spiritual, with no bodily presence mixed in, and these we call angels and heavenly spirits; the other kind was man and woman, composed of spiritual soul and the body that you can see with your own eyes. Among the angels there was one who stood out but who, not recognizing that he had received his excellent being from God, rose up against God his creator. A third of the angels followed him; for this evil they were cast from heaven into this world, and because they have never repented their sin, nor will they ever, since that time they have tried and until the end of the world they continue to try to accomplish two things: one is that they, persevering in their evil, being condemned creatures, want to be adored as creators and gods, introducing an idea that cannot be allowed by natural reason, much less by faith, namely, that there are many beginnings and eternal causes of one thing. With this blindness they have attempted and continue to attempt to accomplish their second goal, which is to have men believe in them and to prevent men from knowing or serving one God, and thereby enjoying, after material death, that supreme place that they, the fallen angels, for their evil, have lost. And so that you can see that this is so, consider how, among yourselves, although you are evil, you do not like cruelty or evildoing, and how, given that god means as much as supreme goodness and clemency, if these were true gods, they would be truly good; but since they have lied to you so often and they make themselves adored under such hideous guises, both of men and of wild animals, and they want and permit there to be sodomy, robbery, tyranny and the death of innocents, what can you think except that they are demons and your enemies? When you speak to them, they respond with ambiguous

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Appendix words, so that, having to take them one way or another, you believe them, and since they are so wise and ancient, and God allows them, so they may increase their condemnation, to do certain things, such as make it thunder, hail, and other things, you think that they are gods, not understanding, as I have said, that God does not want evil, nor does he do evil, nor does he rely on the aid of another to perform whatever miracles he wants, as you witnessed last week, for when the sky was so clear, he sent to you in answer to our prayer so much water that you have never had such a good year as the one you are about to have. And since you see that what I have said, if taken calmly, will convince you to change your minds, and the proof of the past miracle demonstrates that what I say is so, I beseech you, lofty king, knights, and priests, to open your eyes; and since between believing me and not believing is for you the difference between living forever or dying, commit to memory the words that I have said, for I hope in God that in doing so, He will enlighten you so that you may more clearly see the truth that I preach to you.” At the end of such a holy, prudent, and wise speech, all remained still for a good while, some whispering among themselves, and most of them convinced by the force of the eternal truth, although from here on out the devil, since he stood so much to lose, pressed them with greater fury, and with the long custom that they had of following and worshipping him.

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Notes Introduction 1. Here I use Lesley Byrd Simpson’s translation (López de Gómara, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary 24). Except where indicated, other translations are my own. To make the Introduction accessible to a wider audience, I translate all quotations that are not in English. Starting with Chapter 1, however, I leave quotations in Spanish untranslated, as is customary for books in this series. 2. Garcilaso de la Vega (1: 78; bk. 2, ch. 8) and Bartolomé de Las Casas (Historia de las Indias 3: 1871; bk. 3, ch. 27). Garcilaso de la Vega often refers to Gómara by name in his Comentarios, but when he asserts Cortés’s authorship of the Historia de la conquista de México, he merely mentions a history of the conquest of Mexico, “la cual es fama cierta, aunque secreta, que la escribió el mismo que la conquistó y ganó dos veces, lo cual yo creo para mí, porque en mi tierra y en España lo he oído a caballeros fidedignos que lo han hablado con mucha certificación. Y la misma obra lo muestra a quien la mira con atención, y fue lástima que no se publicase en su nombre, para que la obra tuviera más autoridad y el autor imitara en todo al gran Julio César” (1: 78; bk. 2, ch. 8). 3. For the extent to which humanists accepted artistic mediation as inevitable in any approach to history, see Nancy S. Struever. 4. I thank Frederick Ahl for helping me analyze the concept of “truth” in these terms. 5. See, for example, Alvaro Félix Bolaños and Gustavo Verdesio. 6. Rolena Adorno has questioned the applicability of the term colonial discourse to the cultural production of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Latin America. See her “Reconsidering Colonial Discourse for Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spanish America.” Even those who might find the term useful for, say, the writings of sor Juana Inés de la Cruz would not be likely to apply it to Cortés’s letters, much less Gómara’s Historia. 7. Todorov’s discussion of the Aztecs’ use of flayed skins is a good example of his contention that the Aztecs did not think figuratively in the same way as the Europeans. By “getting into the skin” of the sacrificial victims who have impersonated the gods, certain Aztecs take on the identity of those same gods. Although the Aztecs themselves determine this identification, Todorov says: “they act as if they were confusing the representative with what he represents.” And later: “The object of representation remains present, in appearance at least (the skin); what symbolizes is not really separated from what it symbolizes” (158). I discuss Sepúlveda’s analogous arguments in Chapter 4. 8. Among the notable exceptions to the general lack of attention to Gómara’s works, I should at least mention here Jonathan Loesberg,

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Notes to Pages 7–14 Robert Lewis, and Cristián Andrés Roa-de-la-Carrera. Loesberg argues that Gómara’s generic history need not respond to its political context, a reading I discuss in some detail in Chapter 3. Lewis provides the first book-length study of Gómara’s life and works in his 1983 dissertation, The Humanistic Historiography of Francisco López de Gómara (1511– 1559), an informative and much needed contextualization that helps us understand Gómara’s writings as sources and as historical acts in themselves. Lewis demonstrates the influence of several prominent humanists on Gómara’s historical writings. Among recent criticism of Gómara, Roa-de-la-Carrera’s reading is the closest to my own inasmuch as it emphasizes the plurivocal and reflective nature of Gómara’s defense of empire. Although Roa-de-la-Carrera focuses on Gomara’s Historia general de las Indias, and specifically on the initial stages of discovery, he incorporates the Historia de la conquista de México into his analysis of the historian’s reinterpretation of the Indies. Gómara’s historiographic contribution, according to Roa-de-la-Carrera, was to present a complex picture of the relationships and exchanges that had not been taken completely into account by prevailing views of the Indies (299). While Gómara emphasizes the mutual benefits of the exchanges that for him give meaning and legitimacy to Spain’s imperial enterprise, he recognizes some of the tragedies and abuses that have tainted the conquest. His direct criticisms, deep irony, and willingness to incorporate varying perspectives into his account present the image of a historian who is constantly endeavoring to make sense of the conquest that he defends (289–90). 9. Ramón Iglesia, a Spaniard, was living in exile in Mexico when he wrote this essay. 10. “¿Es que no era [Cortés] un hombre que pudiera inspirar admiración y entusiasmo?” (“For was he not a man who could inspire admiration and enthusiasm?”; Iglesia 153). 11. Although Iglesia feels that he cannot affirm it, he believes that Gómara served as a model for Bernal Díaz: “creo que Gómara no sólo estimuló a Bernal, sino que le sirvió de pauta en su relato” (“I believe that Gómara not only stimulated Bernal, but also served as a model for him in his account”; 151). 12. For a study of the connections between Cervantes and the New World, see Diana de Armas Wilson and Mary Gaylord (“The True History of Early Modern Writing in Spanish: Some American Reflections”). 13. Similarly, in her own analysis of sixteenth-century pardon tales, Natalie Zemon Davis makes a point of asking “what relation truth telling had to the outcome of the stories,” as well as “what truth status they enjoyed in society at large” (5). 14. For a discussion of Las Casas’s revised position in his 1552 reply to Sepúlveda’s counterarguments, see Vidal Abril-Castelló. 15. Although De unico vocationis modo includes the papal bull Sublimis Deus, issued by Paul III in 1537, Las Casas may have completed

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Notes to Pages 14–21 most of the work ten years earlier. On the date of composition, see Barreda in Las Casas (De unico vocationis modo x–xii). 16. The episode comes from De inventione 1.2, which Las Casas calls Cicero’s “Retórica vieja” (Historia de las Indias 1: 340–41). Stanley Fish has discussed the key role that this passage from Cicero plays within the debate between rhetoric and philosophy (“Rhetoric” 481–82). 17. “[N]o hay nación alguna, ni la puede haber, por bárbara y fiera que sea, que no pueda ser atraída y reducida a toda virtud política y a toda humanidad de domésticos, políticos y razonables hombres” (“There is no nation, nor can there be any, regardless of how barbarous and wild it is, that cannot be drawn into and reduced to complete political virtue and the full humanity of domesticated, social, and reasonable men”; Las Casas, Historia de las Indias 1: 342). 18. A Latin translation of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric appeared in 1478, and an edition in Greek in 1508 (William Kennedy 10).

Chapter One Approaching the Conquest 1. The studies that have had the greatest influence on this sample narrative are: Inga Clendinnen, “‘Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty’: Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico”; Noble David Cook; Alfred W. Crosby; J. H. Elliott, “Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,” and “The Mental World of Hernán Cortés”; Eulalia Guzmán; Ross Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest; José Luis Martínez, Hernán Cortés; Hugh Thomas; Camilla Townsend; and Henry R. Wagner, The Rise of Fernando Cortés. 2. Clendinnen (“Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty” 17); Thomas (177, 195). Hassig feels that with these gifts Moctezuma was either “acknowledging that the Spaniards were gods” or “tacitly acknowledging Aztec subservience—both religious and political” (Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 54). 3. Clendinnen (“Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty” 27–29). 4. For a discussion of the varying figures given for the expedition see Martínez (Hernán Cortés 132–33) and Thomas (675n36). 5. Thomas (150–53), Hassig (Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 47), Martínez (Hernán Cortés 132–33). 6. Thomas (169), Hassig (Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 50). 7. According to Germán Vázquez, “Malinche” derives from “Malintzine,” which means “Lord of Lady Malinali.” “Malinche” was thus a title first applied to Cortés, and later, by extension and misunderstanding, to Malinali herself (164n10). See also Díaz del Castillo (1: 264; ch. 74). Regarding the confusion surrounding Malinali’s name, Sandra Messinger Cypess notes: “the records can only suggest the naming process; we should not think we know with certainty her original name” (33). Lockhart says that the name Malintzin “arises from the Spanish Marina by substituting l for r (which Nahuatl lacked), omitting the

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Notes to Pages 22–26 final a for reasons that are not clear, and adding the honorific ending -tzin” (33). 8. Clendinnen (“Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty” 17–18). 9. Clendinnen (“Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty” 21, 39); Thomas (253); Hassig (Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 73, 149). 10. Frankl (9, 58–73). See also Valero Silva (34) and Elliott (“Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V” xx). 11. On the tactic of using hostages in this manner, see Guzmán (106). 12. Clendinnen (“Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty” 25). Although the point of these foodbearing delegations was lost on most Spaniards, who suspected, perhaps correctly in some cases, that the food offerings were an excuse for spying, López de Gómara acknowledges honor as a motive in one instance (Historia de la conquista de México 82; ch. 47). 13. Clendinnen believes that “Cortés was probably the unwitting agent of Tlaxcalan interests” (“Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty” 21). Hassig says that the massacre “was probably a deliberate act by Cortés to destroy Cholollan” and that it was “intended as a warning to other hostile cities” (Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 79). For discussions of the conflicting accounts of the episode see Martínez (Hernán Cortés 230–35), Pagden (Letters 465–66n27), and Thomas (259–64). 14. See Townsend, who argues that, politically, the Aztecs could not risk a bloodbath so close to their own capital (683). 15. Sanders, Parsons, and Santley estimate the population of Tenochtitlan to be at least 200,000 (154). See also Clendinnen (Aztecs 305n9) and Thomas (609–14). Naples and Constantinople, each with populations of around 200,000, might have rivaled the Aztec capital, and among Cortés’s men a few of the Greeks and veterans of the Italian wars could have seen these cities (Thomas 277). 16. Although one encounters repeated references to the use of an obsidian knife for these sacrifices, it seems that in practice obsidian was too brittle and was used rather “as a metaphor” (Thomas 27). 17. Cortés insists that Cuauhpopoca, lord of Nauhtla, invited and then ambushed messengers from Juan de Escalante’s garrison, and that Escalante then led a force against Cuauhpopoca (212–13; letter 2). Angleria (69; dec. 5, ch. 3) and Cervantes de Salazar (Crónica de la Nueva España 340–41; 4.26) follow this version, but Gómara (Historia de la conquista de México 83; ch. 133) and Díaz del Castillo (94; ch. 345) do not speak of an ambush. See Thomas (305). 18. See Francis Brooks (164–83). 19. See Wagner (The Rise of Fernando Cortés 267–68). 20. Prescott says that it was his left eye (2: 260; bk. 4, ch. 7). Thomas says that it was his right eye (379). 21. See Cook (60–94). 22. As in Cholula, the Tlaxcalans could have fomented the Spaniards’ fears and encouraged what they might have considered to be a preemptive strike. But almost no one defends Alvarado’s actions; and, as

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Notes to Pages 26–31 Delgado Gómez comments, Cortés’s silence on the matter is especially damning, given his customary indulgence of Alvarado (Cortés, Cartas 267n389). See also Pagden (Letters 473–74n78) and Thomas (383–93). 23. Early Spanish sources usually follow Cortés (Cartas 272; letter 2) in claiming that Moctezuma was mortally wounded by stones thrown by his own people when he tried to speak to them from the roof of the besieged temple. Aztec sources say that the Spaniards stabbed him to death. See Orozco y Berra (377–81n36), Guzmán (434–40), Pagden (Letters 477–78n89), Hassig (Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 94), and Thomas (401–05). 24. Cortés (Cartas 227–29; letter 2). 25. Hassig puts their numbers at 200,000 (Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 143). For Martínez, Cortés’s figure of 150,000 seems the most probable among the many high estimates (Hernán Cortés 318n1). In my view, Thomas is right to suspect all such calculations, because “[n]either the Mexica nor the Castilians had any method of accurate counting of hordes of men” (490). 26. Early Spanish sources typically depict this action as an attempted escape. Hassig observes, however: “Aztec accounts claim that Cuauhtemoc and his advisors had already decided to surrender and were en route to do so when Holguin seized their canoe, which seems a likelier sequence of events” (Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 142). 27. Davíd Carrasco’s Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition, originally published in 1982, was revised and republished in 2000. The revised edition includes a new chapter, “When Strangers Come to Town: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and Millennial Discourse,” which responds to current skepticism about the role that Quetzalcoatl’s prophesied return played in the conquest. The most succinct summary of Carrasco’s position is perhaps still to be found in the preface to the 1992 reprinting of the first edition: “In my view the version of Quetzalcoatl’s return in Cortés’s letter and in the Florentine Codex is not purely a ‘post eventum fabrication’ or invention but a ‘post eventum elaboration’ of indigenous beliefs and applications interacting with European beliefs and applications” (xv). 28. In Chapter 4 I discuss Walter Mignolo’s analysis of European attitudes toward the American Indian’s general lack of letters. At this point, however, I merely recognize the limits of Mexica amoxtli (which, as Mignolo argues, can only imprecisely be translated as “books” [The Darker Side of the Renaissance 118–19]) for the purpose of reconstructing precontact histories. 29. Lockhart considers the Annals to be from the 1540s (39–42). 30. For an example of a view that stresses the continuity of conquest, see John Ross. 31. “Aztec” derives from “Aztlan,” one of the names for the Mexicas’ homeland in northwest Mexico. Diego Durán uses the term in the sixteenth century (21; ch. 3), but it was not widely adopted until the

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Notes to Pages 33–45 nineteenth century. Today, “Aztec” usually refers to the city-states in the Valley of Mexico that came to control most of Nahuatl-speaking Mesoamerica through a tribute-paying empire. The inhabitants of Tenochtitlan, the largest and most powerful of these city-states, called themselves “Mexica” or “Tenochca.” The name of the Mexica leader who met Cortés has been rendered numerous ways. “Motecuhzoma” is at least close. Scholars writing in English have usually preferred “Montezuma” or “Moctezuma.” 32. The distinction between truth in historical discourse and in fictional discourse has generated great discussion. See, for example, Geoffrey Roberts, Roger Chartier (28–38), and White (Figural Realism). 33. See John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey. 34. Dominick LaCapra explores how the documentary model of historiography can benefit from a renewed attention to the role of rhetoric in historical discourse (35–44). 35. For example, when Tacitus argues that Tiberius and Livia rather than Augustus probably ordered the murder of Agrippa Postumus, he says that his version is “propius vero” (“closer to the truth” [Annals 1.6]). 36. I am using the first edition of Fox Morcillo’s De historiae institutione, dialogus (Paris, 1557). It was also published in Antwerp (1557 and 1564) and in Jean Bodin’s Methodus historica (Basel 1579) and in Johannes Wolf’s Artis historicae (Basel 1579). A summary in Spanish is available in González de la Calle (359–72). Menéndez Pelayo dedicates three pages to the treatise in his Historia de las ideas estéticas en España (2: 196–99). 37. Elvira Vilches examines in greater depth how Columbus constructs the monetary value of the Indies through a combination of promises, tokens, and wonders. 38. The common soldier whose graffiti mars the narrative for Fox Morcillo must be “el sin ventura de Juan Yuste” (Gómara, Historia de la conquista de México 196; ch. 124), not exactly a common soldier but rather an hidalgo. The message written in charcoal is first mentioned by Cortés in his Tercera relación: “Hallaron en una pared blanca escritas estas palabras: ‘Aquí estuvo preso el sin ventura de Juan Yuste,’ que era un hidalgo de los cinco de caballo; que sin duda fue cosa para quebrar el corazón a los que lo vieron” (117). Modern readers usually appreciate the inclusion of this doomed soldier’s words. See Carman (“Conquest and Decorum”).

Chapter Two The Means and Ends of Empire in Hernán Cortés’s Cartas de relación 1. All quotations of Cortés’s Cartas de relación are from Angel Delgado Gómez’s 1993 edition, which is based on the Vienna Codex. Historians from Francisco López de Gómara (Historia de la conquista

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Notes to Pages 46–52 de México 148–51; chs. 94–95) to Hugh Thomas (332–33) would later point out how precarious Cortés’s position was in the spring of 1520. 2. See esp. V. Frankl. Also helpful for putting the conquest in its legal and political context are: Eulalia Guzmán; José Valero Silva; Mario Hernández Sánchez-Barba; J. H. Elliott (“Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V” and “The Mental World of Hernán Cortés”); Adrián BlázquezGarbajosa; Kathryn D. Kruger-Hickman; and Inga Clendinnen (“Fear and Unnatural Cruelty”). 3. Blázquez-Garbajosa, Kruger-Hickman, and Clendinnen fit into this category as well. See also Jonathan Loesberg; Stephanie Merrim (“Ariadne’s Thread”); José Rabasa (“Dialogue as Conquest” and Inventing America); Beatriz Pastor; Viviana Díaz Balsera; Margo Glantz (“Ciudad y escritura”); María Guadalupe Marín; Celia Allen Fryer; Jorge Checa, Gesa Mackenthum (79–92); and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel. 4. For related critiques of Todorov’s reading of the conquest see David Boruchoff (345–48), Inga Clendinnen (“‘Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty’”), and José Piedra. 5. Jonathan Loesberg has developed this reading most fully (246–50). See also Delgado Gómez (57). 6. Kathryn Kruger-Hickman speaks of “his creative misrepresentation of facts” being “carried over into a kind of guerrilla theater” (68). Stephanie Merrim emphasizes the role of froda, or cunning, in Cortés’s second letter, and suggests: “The intricate cat and mouse game of deceptions and dissimulations which the Letter reveals Cortés to have played with Moctezuma no doubt fueled Tzvetan Todorov’s portrait of the Spaniards’ greater capacity to manipulate ‘signs’ than their adversaries” (“Ariadne’s Thread” 78). 7. Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (New York: Vintage, 1951), 2: 118–20. Whether the common notion of “Machiavellian” corresponds to Machiavelli’s own political philosophy any more than “Orwellian” corresponds to Orwell’s is not the question here. 8. Mizrahi argues for a more consistent parallel between Cortés’s worldview in the Cartas de relación and Machiavelli’s Prince, and feels that one can infer from Cortés’s Segunda relación that for Cortés as well as for Machiavelli, “el fin justifica los medios” (111). 9. As Ramón Menéndez Pidal (13–35) and, more recently, Anthony Pagden (Spanish Imperialism 5–6) have shown, the empire under Charles V consistently defends its foreign policy by portraying itself as the guardian of Christendom, even when that policy is at odds with the Pope (Menéndez Pidal 21–22). 10. The embellishments of the John Carter Brown Manuscript of the Quinta relación can now receive closer attention thanks to Delgado Gómez’s critical edition of the Cartas de relación. He dates this manuscript from the mid-sixteenth century and says that the scribe’s intention was to elevate the language of the fifth letter to the level of a historiographic text (70–71).

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Notes to Pages 57–72 11. I am indebted to Mary Gaylord for pointing out this parallel to me. 12. Elliott (“Mental World” 51–53) and Pagden (Letters 467–68n42) have explored some of the European myths that could account at least in part for Cortés’s inclusion of this story of the returning leader. Díaz del Castillo (1: 274–75; ch. 78) and Cervantes de Salazar (Crónica de la Nueva España 1: 279; bk. 3, ch. 49) say that Cortés heard from the Tlaxcalans of a legend that prophesied the arrival of the conquerors. León-Portilla (“Quetzalcoatl”) makes the best case for taking Cortés’s story as historical, or at least as indirect evidence of some QuetzalcoatlCortés identification. He bases his argument on Cortés’s second letter, Motolinía (who says that the Spaniards were always called teules, “gods”), Gómara (who, in his Historia de la conquista de México, gives the first printed mention of Quetzalcoatl), The Annals of Tlatelolco (extract in Lockhart 256–73), Book Twelve of The Florentine Codex (in Lockhart 48–255), and The Annals of Quauhtitlan (fragments in Lockhart 280–81). 13. Walter Mignolo maintains that Cortés did not write to publish (“Cartas” 66), and Delgado Gómez concurs, stressing that “Cortés no persigue el juicio favorable de la historia, sino la aprobación de sus actos y decisiones por parte del emperador” (54). 14. Gómara says that the Aztecs could not hide their resentment for long, and that they hated the Spaniards for what they had done (Historia de la conquista de México 139; ch. 86). See below, Chapter 4. 15. Díaz del Castillo says that when Malinali was a small girl her mother and stepfather sold her to traveling merchants, who then sold her as a slave to the Maya-speaking peoples of Tabasco, who in turn gave her up to the Spaniards after the battle of Cintla (1: 158–59; ch. 37). 16. For related discussions of Cortés’s rhetorical displacement of his interpreters, see Glantz (“La Malinche: La lengua en la mano”) and David E. Johnson (408–12). For Malinali’s place in Mexican historiography and fiction, see Cypess.

Chapter Three Convincing Likeness: Gómara’s Cortés 1. Gómara says that both Charles V and Pope Adrian fault the Bishop of Burgos, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, for, among other things, suppressing Cortés’s letters: “encubría sus relaciones” (Historia de la conquista de México 255; ch. 165). 2. During the sixteenth century alone, the second letter was published in Italian six times, the third letter four times, and the fourth three. The second and third also saw four printings in Latin, one in German, one in Dutch, two editions of extracts in French and one such edition in Flemish (Valle 57–59). For a discussion of Niccolo Liburnio’s Italian translation of the second letter, see Binotti (773–78).

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Notes to Pages 74–82 3. Ramos Pérez dates the first decade from 1494 (Las variaciones 15– 18). On Martyr’s initial impression of Columbus’s claim to have reached Asia, see O’Gorman, Cuatro historiadores (19–35) and The Invention of America (83–85, 158n26). 4. For Martyr’s biographical information, see MacNutt (1–48) and Eatough (3–13). 5. For a discussion of the hybrid form of history and letter writing in Martyr’s De orbe novo, see Mignolo (The Darker Side of the Renaissance 171–87): “If Leonardo Bruni has the distinction of marking the beginning of humanist historiography, Peter Martyr, a humanist himself, has the distinction of inaugurating the kind of writing that will be a distinctive feature of the darker side of European Renaissance and humanist historiography: the hybrid cultural products generated by and in colonial situations” (187). 6. Thomas says that the committee appointed by Charles V in 1522 to look into the dispute between Cortés and Velázquez was “surely influenced by Peter Martyr’s arguments in favour of Cortés” (573). 7. For the meaning of seducere as “seduce” in Ecclesiastical Latin, see Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 1660. Cf. the following example from the Vulgate: “si seduxerit quis virginem necdum desponsatam et dormierit cum ea dotabit eam et habebit uxorem” (“if a man should seduce and sleep with a maiden who is not yet married, he will provide for her and take her as his wife”; Exod. 22.16). The term also appears in reference to Christ and the Apostles (John 7.12 and 2 Cor. 6.8). For a discussion of how Augustine and Aquinas understand seducere in both a positive and negative light, see Antonio García del Moral in Las Casas (De unico vocationis modo lxx–lxxi). 8. See Pérez de Oliva, “Algunas cosas de Hernán Cortés” (364) and Cerrón Puga’s introduction to Pérez de Oliva’s Diálogo. 9. For a good example of Oviedo’s emphasis on the role of divine providence, see his comments regarding Moctezuma’s captivity: “un príncipe tan grande como Montezuma no se había de dejar incurrir en tales términos, ni consentir ser detenido de tan poco número de españoles ni de otra generación alguna. Mas como Dios tiene ordenado lo que ha de ser, ninguno puede huir de su juicio. No se podrá negar a la ventura de nuestro César tanto e tan poderoso acrescentamiento de Estado a su monarquía, por la liberalidad e clemencia divina” (4: 36; bk. 33, ch. 7). 10. These miracles were probably included in a lost work by Motolinía, since Cervantes de Salazar (Crónica de la Nueva España 1: 357–59; bk. 4, ch. 31) attributes them to the Franciscan, who in matters of Aztec culture was Gómara’s primary source. 11. “Potuitne maiore, aut apertiore documento, quid homines hominibus, ingenio, industria Robore animi, ac virtute praestarent declarari et quam illi sint natura serui demonstrari” (“Can there be a

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Notes to Pages 83–112 greater or clearer example of how some men outshine others in natural talent, diligence, strength of spirit, and manly virtue, and of how those [Indians] are proved to be natural slaves?”; Sepúlveda, Democrates Secundus 36). 12. On Cravaliz’s Italian translation of Gómara, see Binotti (779–83). 13. Robert Lewis provides the best account to date of Gómara’s life, and it is primarily from his study (21–67) that I draw the following brief sketch. 14. Gómara calls it Las batallas de mar de nuestros tiempos (Annals 182). 15. Joaquín Ramírez Cabañas’s critical edition of the Historia de la conquista de México, published in 1943, shows the revisions of 1554. 16. The fragment was first published in 1858 as anonymous in Volume 1 of Joaquín García Icazbalceta’s Colección de documentos para la historia de México (309–57). Juan Bautista de Muñoz discovered the manuscript in the Archive of Simancas (356–57). 17. We can see an example of the differences between the Historia de la conquista de México and the De rebus gestis in their explanations of why the ship that took Cortés to the New World ran off course and its crew and passengers nearly perished. In the Historia de la conquista de México, Quintero, the captain, was eager to arrive ahead of the rest of the fleet and sell his cargo at a better price; so he set out ahead but then lost his way (9; ch. 2). In the De rebus gestis Quintero devises a reckless revenge against the pilot, Francisco Niño, for being chosen for that position over Quintero’s father. While the pilot is sleeping, Quintero and his father induce those who are steering to go off course, producing the desired result and endangering crew and passengers in the process (García Icazbalceta 1: 314). 18. Models for the pícaro would be easier to find than for Don Juan, who does not enter onto the scene of Spanish literature until Tirso’s Burlador appears around 1625 (Casalduero 27). 19. Díaz del Castillo says that the Spaniards maimed seventeen spies, cutting the hands off of some and the thumbs off of others (1: 254; ch. 70) 20. The Spanish translation (El cortesano) saw fourteen printings by 1588, when it was published for the last time until the nineteenth century (Pozzi 76). The original Italian version of Il cortegiano remained available in Spain as well, which is not surprising, since it was published some 62 times during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Burke 41). 21. Whether Gonzalo Pérez actually wrote this translation is open to question, as Elizabeth Wright has demonstrated (147–48n26). 22. For the strategies of the flatterer, see Frederick Ahl. My conversations with him have greatly influenced my reading of the Odyssey. 23. Europeans would continue to see evidence of Satan’s influence after the conquest in the lingering idolatry of New Spain (Gruzinski 185). 24. Here Gómara follows Andrés de Tapia (Germán Vázquez 89).

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Notes to Pages 113–21 Chapter Four Quoting Cortés in Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México 1. Kin Shing Chan argues that Gómara gives his protagonist power by letting him speak directly far more often than other characters, whose voices, especially those that might tarnish the hero’s image, are usually diluted in indirect discourse: “Voice gives power. Other focalizers—who could have tarnished the image of the hero—appear in the diegesis but are quieted, since in this account their voices are diluted within that of the narrator who summarizes their views, and even disputes them, thereby diminishing the impact that direct speech would have. The author skillfully manipulates the narrative modes in order to fashion the figure of the hero” (Chan 141). Such tight narrative control, however, undermines the narrator’s credibility, according to Chan (193), though not as severely in Gómara’s case as in Cabeza de Vaca’s, because, unlike Cabeza de Vaca, Gómara does not impose a uniform perspective on the events that he narrates. 2. Elsewhere Quintilian describes irony as capable of disguising an entire discourse when the meaning of the speech varies from the tone of voice (9.2.46). 3. For a discussion of this first stage of interpretation, see Palmer (14–20). 4. This loss of authority is perhaps related to the loss of “authenticity,” as seen in de Man’s “Allegories of Reading”: “ironic language splits the subject into an empirical self that exists in a state of inauthenticity and a self that exists only in the form of a language that asserts the knowledge of this inauthenticity” (de Man 214). 5. See Adorno (“Discourses on Colonialism: Bernal Díaz, Las Casas, and the Twentieth-Century Reader”). 6. For Aristotle’s discussion of the three classes of rhetoric (deliberative, epideictic, and forensic), see his On Rhetoric 1358b–77b. 7. I thank Nicholas Watson for pointing out the parallel and possible model of Catherine of Alexandria’s sermon against idolatry. Gómara could have had access to a Latin account of her life, printed around the end of the fifteenth century (Einenkel xii), or to Pietro Aretino’s version in Italian, Vita di Catherina Vergine, printed twice around 1540 (Einenkel ix). 8. For discussions of Malinali’s names, see Lockhart (33), Orozco y Berra (111 ff.) and Germán Vázquez (164n10). 9. For a discussion of Malinali’s place in Mexican historiography and fiction, see Sandra Messinger Cypess. As for Malinali’s role in Gómara’s history, Cypess says: “Gómara never sees La Malinche as anything more than an objectified extension of the will of Cortés” (32–33). For a discussion of the parallel between Malinali and Amadís, see Julie Greer Johnson. See also Glantz (“La Malinche: La lengua en la mano”).

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Notes to Pages 122–37 10. For the history of the only known manuscript of Cervantes de Salazar’s Crónica de la Nueva España, see the “Estudio preliminar” by Agustín Millares Carlo in Cervantes de Salazar (Crónica de la Nueva España 93–95). 11. Peter Martyr’s Cortés in the same situation says: “Et si forte, quod minime vereor, succumbendum foret, quid foelicius? potuit ne quisquamque hominum gloriosus unquamque vitam finiuisse? Memineritis praterea vos esse Hispanos qui solent esse imperterriti, neque vitam faciunt assis, vbi vel Dei omnipotentis obsequium, vel gloriae adipiscendae facultas sese offerat” (“And even if—the least of my fears—we should have to fall [in battle], what could be better [happier]? Has any man ever ended his life more gloriously? Besides, remember that you are Spaniards, men who are usually fearless and do not give a dime for their lives when given the chance to serve Almighty God or win glory” [65v; dec. 5, ch. 2]). 12. On another occasion, when Cortés speaks to his men about their imminent encounter with Narváez’s numerically superior army, Gómara turns his protagonist into something of a refranero: “era mejor Dios os salve que no quién está allá; y que si eran muchos, que valía más a quien Dios ayuda que no quien mucho madruga, y que buen corazón quebranta mala ventura” (Historia de la conquista de México 157; ch. 99). 13. For the date of the composition of Sepúlveda’s De orbe novo, see Antonio Ramírez de Verger’s introduction (Sepúlveda, Historia del Nuevo Mundo 12). 14. Simpson’s translation, “almost like God himself” (174), avoids the problem in a similar, and similarly unsatisfactory, fashion. 15. Stephen Greenblatt comments on a similar double strategy used by Cortés in Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s version of this speech, that of appealing to the Aztecs as brothers on the one hand and of setting them apart for their “demonic practices” on the other: “the oscyllation between brother and other under the sign of wonder is one of the principal tactics in Cortés’s strategy of conquest and the principal representational device in Bernal Díaz’s account of the peoples of Mexico” (138). 16. When speaking of the Christian’s duty to lead the lost multitude (“multitudinem . . . errantem”) to the light of the truth by the shortest path, Sepúlveda repeatedly uses the verb reducere, which literally means “to lead back,” though it is often synonymous with redigere in the sense of simply bringing or reducing “a thing to any condition, circumstance, etc.” (Lewis and Short 1540–42). Reducere thus connects the idea of recovery with the physical and verbal reduction. When Sepúlveda summarizes Cortés’s speech on idolatry, he says that the conqueror tells the Aztecs to “recover their senses” (resipiscere [De orbe novo 209; 5.24]). 17. Oviedo (117: 17–20; bk. 2, ch. 3) entertains the idea that Spain’s rights to the Indies date back to earlier “Spanish” voyages to the Ameri-

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Notes to Pages 138–48 cas, a theory that did not enjoy wide acceptance, even from Sepúlveda, who elsewhere uses Oviedo extensively. 18. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca provide a simple example of an argument ad hominem that bears comparison: “There will be eleven people for lunch. The maid exclaims, ‘That’s bad luck!’ Her mistress is in a hurry, and replies, ‘No Mary, you’re wrong; it’s thirteen that brings bad luck.’ The argument is unanswerable and puts an immediate end to the dialogue. This reply can be considered as a type of argument ad hominem. It does not question any personal interest of the maid, but is based on what she accepts. It is more immediately effective than a speech on the ridiculous character of superstitions and makes it possible to argue within the framework of prejudice instead of opposing it” (111). 19. Pagden discusses this passage and Las Casas’s response to Sepúlveda’s claim here “that such sacrifices represented a diabolic category mistake” (The Fall of Natural Man 143–44). 20. The Legatio Babylonica was published along with his first Decade in 1511 (MacNutt 30).

Chapter Five Moctezuma’s Translatio Imperii 1. Vitoria: “Imagine the barbarians recognized the wisdom and humanity of the Spaniards’ administration, and one and all, both masters and subjects, spontaneously decided to accept the king of Spain as their prince. This could happen, and might be a legitimate title in natural law” (288; q. 3 a. 6). Vitoria feels, however, that “the requisite conditions for a legitimate choice were lacking” (276; q. 2 a. 6). Las Casas emphasizes that the consent of all subjects is necessary for an act of donation to be valid (De regia potestate 152–57; ch. 23). 2. Curtius traces the medieval concept of a justified transferal of power (translatio imperii) to the Bible: ‘“Regnum a gente in gentem transfertur propter injustitias et injurias et contumelias et diversos dolos’ (Ecclesisticus 10:8). ‘Because of unrighteous dealings, injuries, and riches got by deceit, the kingdom is transferred from one people to another’” (28). Translatio imperii became related to the translatio studii, the transferal of learning, which Curtius first finds in Horace, Ep 2.1.156 (29). 3. Eulalia Guzmán believes that Cortés invented the speeches, just as she supposes him to have invented other major events, like the battle of Cintla (279–82). Elliott says that Moctezuma’s speeches in the Segunda relación seem to be based “more on fantasy than fact” (“The Mental World of Hernán Cortés” 37), and Pagden says that they “would seem to be apocryphal” (Letters 467n41). For an extended discussion of sixteenth-century intepretations of this speech, especially in relation to the Quetzalcoatl myth, see Gesa Mackenthum (71–140).

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Notes to Pages 153–65 4. See Brading (96–100); Parish (52–53); Gutiérrez (379–95); Pennington (159); and Carman (“On the Pope’s Original Intent” 201). 5. For a discussion of the various accounts of Cortés’s imprisonment of Moctezuma, see esp. José Luis Martínez, Hernán Cortés 244–49. Martínez makes the point that if Cortés had taken Moctezuma prisoner on his first day in Tenochtitlan, he surely would have been the first to boast about that act of boldness (249). See also Francis Brooks (164–83). 6. Lucan and others would exploit the parallel between this violent legendary beginning of Roman society and the Civil War that pitted Caesar against Pompey, son-in-law against father-in-law, gener contra socerum (The Civil War 1.118). 7. Rabasa also points to the importance of the ambiguity of the term natural in this passage: “Cortés’s appropriation of the narrative provides a vehicle for representing ‘natural’ servitude and the illusion of the slave qua his own language” (Inventing America 108). 8. “Does not this contain overtones of Jesus’ words to his disciples (‘a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have’) and of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (‘we also are men of like passions with you’)?” (Elliott, “The Mental World” 37). 9. Rabasa understands this abdication in similar terms: “In the abdication of power Moctezuma assumes the likeness of a noble savage condemned to die as a consequence of an ideality Cortés fabricates. Moctezuma is noble because of rank and spirit; but at the same time, he is a savage because he ignores the ideality of what he says beyond the confines of his own language” (Inventing America 109). 10. For similar readings of this response, see Rabasa (Inventing America 107) and Todorov (118). 11. Andrés de Tapia does not even mention the speech at this juncture, but he says that after Cortés takes Moctezuma prisoner the latter explains that he believes the Spaniards are descendents of his ancestors, and that they have come back to rule over the Aztecs as has been foretold (in Juan Díaz et al. 104). Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia does not describe the entrance or stay in Tenochtitlan: “Otro día entramos en México y estuvimos en él ocho meses, poco más o menos, hasta la venida de Pánfilo de Narváez” (in Juan Díaz et al. 143). Francisco de Aguilar relates briefly Moctezuma’s recognition of Charles V’s authority and how he considers the Spaniards to be gods whose return his ancestors foretold (Aguilar 81). Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s description of the speech is brief. Like Aguilar, he has Moctezuma say that the Spaniards must be the men who, according to his ancestors, would come from the East and rule over “these lands;” but Díaz does not at this point have Moctezuma call the Spaniards gods or connect them to former rulers of the Aztecs (1: 316–17; ch. 89). 12. Mackenthum maintains that these reworkings of Cortés’s version of Moctezuma’s speech show that Gómara “does not even attempt to

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Notes to Pages 175–205 preserve the myth of imperial donation” (86). She also argues that Gómara was among those readers who “seem to have appreciated [Cortés’s Segunda relación] for its visible construction of an acceptable, rather than a truthful, representation of reality” (86).

Appendix Texts and Translations of Two Key Speeches 1. lord: Here and below Pagden translates “señor” as “chieftain.” 2. have no worry: Pagden translates as “you shall receive no hurt.” 3. This last paragraph has been included because Peter Martyr’s description of the reaction to the speech differs substantially from that of the other historians. 4. almost with the same God: Simpson avoids this problematic wording by translating as “almost like God himself.” 5. I along . . . everywhere: Simpson translates: “This is the great boon that I and my companions desire and strive to attain for you, and the more we strive, the closer becomes our bond of friendship. We do this also because we are your guests, and being such, we are obligated, forced and constrained by these considerations, as anyone is anywhere.” 6. And . . . Father: Simpson: “And if we desire the help of our Father.” 7. For this speech Sepúlveda gives only a brief version in indirect discourse. I nevertheless include it here for the sake of consistency. 8. Torquemada has “contentarle” here instead of “descontentarle” (1: 465: bk. 4, ch. 54). 9. Herrera and Torquemada omit the phrase “que no haya tan gran poder, tan gran saber, tan gran bondad” (Herrera 1: 269; dec. 2, ch. 7; Torquemada 1: 465; bk. 4, ch. 54) 10. Herrera and Torquemada emend this to: “derramado, o en la calle, o en una gran vasija” (Herrera 1: 269; dec. 2, ch. 7; Torquemada 1: 466; bk. 4, ch. 54). Other differences among the versions of the speech in Cervantes de Salazar, Herrera, and Torquemada are minor.

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241

Index Abril-Castelló, Vidal, 212n14 Adorno, Rolena, 64, 72–73, 91, 211n6, 221n5 Aguilar, Francisco de, 160, 224n11 Aguilar, Gerónimo de, 21, 116– 17, 119–20, 148, 163, 167 Ahl, Frederick, 211n4, 220n22 Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando de, 30 Alvarado, Pedro de, 26, 66, 214– 15n22 Angleria, Peter Martyr of (Pietro Martire d’Anghiera), 15, 73– 76, 78, 214n17, 219nn3–6 on Aztec glyphs, 143 and Cortés, 3, 12 on Cortés’s letters, 63–64 Cortés’s speeches in, 128, 130, 136, 193–95, 222n11 Moctezuma’s transfer of power in, 12, 150, 157–58, 160, 161–62, 176–79, 225n3 translations of, 173 Annals of the Emperor Charles V (Anales de Carlos Quinto) (Gómara), 86–87, 220n14 Annals of Tlatelolco, 30, 215n29, 218n12 Aristotle, 16–18, 38, 42, 61–62, 133–35, 170, 213n18, 221n6 Augustine, Aurelius, 14, 17, 139, 219n7 Aztecs, 20, 23, 62, 92, 137, 151, 156, 162, 214n14, 218n14 legend of returning leader, 137, 157–58, 218n12, 224n11 priests and nobles as Cortés’s audience, 11, 75, 117, 118, 119, 133–45, 191–210 prophecies and omens, accounts of, 30

Sepúlveda and Todorov on, 5– 6, 211n7 term, 31, 215–16n31 writing system, 5–6, 29–30, 74, 142–44, 157, 215n28 See also Cuauhtemoc; Moctezuma Xocoyotl; Quetzalcoatl; Tenochtitlan Barbarroja, Jaradín (Khair el-din Barbarossa) and Oruch (Koruk Barbarossa), 85, 95–96 Barilli, Renato, 16 Bataillon, Marcel, 73, 85 Binotti, Lucia, 218n2, 220n12 Blázquez-Garbajosa, Adrián, 53, 217nn2–3 Bok, Sissela, 60, 139 Bolaños, Alvaro Félix, 211n5 Booth, Wayne, 114–15 Boruchoff, David, 217n4 Boscán, Juan, 106, 220n20 Brading, D. A., 224n4 Brenes Carrillo, Dalai, 107 Brocense, El (Francisco Sánchez), 18 Brooks, Francis, 214n18, 224n5 Caesar, Julius, 22, 77, 78, 79, 100, 107, 211n2, 224n6 Carman, Glen, 216n38, 224n4 Carrasco, Davíd, 29, 215n27 Cartas de relación (Cortés), 2–3, 10–11, 29, 45–71, 72–73, 114, 119, 121, 122, 139, 147, 153, 155, 168–71, 216n1, 217n8, 218nn1–2 Primera relación, 53–56, 60 Segunda relación, 45, 51–52, 55, 56, 58–59, 63–69, 71, 136, 143, 150, 156–61, 173–76, 191–93, 215nn23– 24, 218n2, 225n12

243

Index Cartas de relación (Cortés) (Continued) Tercera relación, 51, 52, 56, 66, 216n38, 217n8 Cuarta relación, 60–61 Quinta relación, 52, 56, 63– 67, 69–70, 217n10 Castiglione, Baldassare, 106–07, 220n20 Catherine of Alexandria, Saint, 118, 221n7 Cervantes de Salazar, Francisco, 3, 15, 78, 173, 214n17, 218n12, 219n10, 222n10 Cortés’s speeches in, 121–22, 139, 203–10, 225n10 Moctezuma’s transfer of power in, 12, 160, 162, 165, 187–91 use of Gómara’s Historia de la conquista deMéxico, 10, 84 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1–2, 10, 57, 124, 212n12 Chan, Kin Shing, 221n1 Charles V, Emperor, 22, 27, 45, 58–59, 71, 77, 86–87, 158– 59, 217n9, 218n1 dispute between Cortés and Velázquez, 219n6 as ideal reader of Cortés’s letters, 62, 156, 158 Moctezuma’s transfer of power to, 12, 27, 52, 68, 110, 146–67, 170 Chartier, Roger, 216n32 Checa, Jorge, 49, 62, 217n3 Cheyfitz, Eric, 119 chivalry, books of, 11, 34, 51, 79, 104, 112, 124 Cholula, 32, 65, 81, 107, 110, 155, 162–63, 165, 214n13, 214n22 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 14, 17– 18, 37, 38, 43, 213n16

244

Clendinnen, Inga, 30, 213nn1–3, 214nn8–9, 214nn12–13, 214n15, 217nn2–4 Collingwood, R. G., 35–36 Columbus, Christopher, 31, 41, 119, 146, 149, 219n3 Conley, Thomas M., 18 Cook, Noble David, 213n1, 214n21 Córdoba. See Fernández de Córdoba, Francisco Corsarios. See Crónica de los corsarios Barbarroja Cortés, Martín, 85, 113 Council of the Indies, 29, 63, 72, 74, 122 Covarrubias, Sebastián de, 14–15, 51, 100, 101, 119–21, 158– 59, 165 Crónica de los corsarios Barbarroja (Gómara), 85, 87–90, 94–96, 107, 220n14 Crosby, Alfred W., 213n1 Cuauhpopoca, 67–69, 214n17 Cuauhtemoc, 26–27, 28, 69–70, 97, 109, 112, 215n26 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 52, 223n2 Cypess, Sandra Messinger, 213n7, 218n16, 221n9 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 212n13 De rebus gestis Ferdinandi Cortesii (Gómara), 86, 220nn16–17 Delgado Gómez, Angel, 56, 65, 72, 150, 215n22, 216n1, 217n5, 217n10, 218n13 de Man, Paul, 221n4 devil, the. See Satan Díaz Balsera, Viviana, 48, 49, 62, 70, 217n3 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, 53, 78, 99, 214n17, 220n19 authorization as eyewitness, 51, 52

Index Cortés’s speeches, 128, 222n15 and Gómara, 6–8, 91, 104, 116, 212n11 legend of returning Aztec leader, 218n12 Malinali, 67, 120, 213n7, 218n15 Moctezuma’s transfer of power, 12, 149, 160, 224n11 Díaz-Thomé, Jorge Hugo, 84 Dray, W. H., 32–33 Durán, Diego, 7, 30, 215n31 Eatough, Geoffrey, 219n4 Egyptian hieroglyphs, 74, 142–43 Elliott, J. H., 53, 72, 148, 159, 213n1, 214n10, 217n2, 218n12, 223n3, 224n8 Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, 74, 76 Fernández de Córdoba, Francisco, 54, 56 Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo, 78–80, 137, 144, 219n9, 222–23n17 Moctezuma’s transfer of power, 12, 150, 151–52, 160 Fish, Stanley, 213n16 Florentine Codex, 215n27, 218n12. See also Sahagún, Bernardino de Fox Morcillo, Sebastián, 18, 40– 42, 90, 112, 143, 168, 216n36, 216n38 Frankl, V., 53, 56, 214n10, 217n2 Fyer, Celia Allen, 217n3 García Icazbalceta, Joaquín, 80, 220nn16–17 Garcilaso de la Vega, the Inca, 2, 9, 211n2

Gaylord, Mary Malcolm, 147, 212n12, 218n11 Gillespie, Susan, 30 Giménez Fernández, Manuel, 46 Ginés de Sepúlveda. See Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de Glantz, Margo, 217n3, 218n16, 221n9 Greenblatt, Stephen, 41, 46, 161, 222n15 Grijalba, Juan de, 54–56, 98, 125 Gruzinski, Serge, 220n23 Guerrero, Gonzalo, 21, 120 Gurría Lacroix, Jorge, 9, 81, 85, 116 Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 224n4 Guzmán, Eulalia, 65, 69, 102, 148, 213n1, 214n11, 217n2, 223n3 Hassig, Ross, 30, 213nn1–2, 213nn5–6, 214n9, 214n13, 215n23, 215nn25–26 Hernández Sánchez-Barba, Mario, 217n2 Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio de, 10, 84, 122, 139, 160, 162, 225nn9–10 Historia de la conquista de México (Gómara), 1–3, 11– 12, 29, 66, 73, 75, 80, 82– 145, 150, 160–67, 168–71, 173, 180–83, 197–201, 211n2, 211n6, 212n8, 212n11, 214n12, 214n17, 216n38, 216–17n1, 218n12, 218n14, 218n1, 220n15, 220n17, 222n12, 224– 25n12 Historia general de las Indias (Gómara), 29, 83, 85–87, 89–91, 100, 107, 113, 212n8 historiography, humanistic, 3, 11, 18, 29, 34, 35–44, 73–78,

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Index historiography, humanistic (Continued) 83–97, 116, 121, 150, 160– 71, 212n8 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 41, 223n2 human sacrifice. See sacrifice, human Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, 84 idolatry, 5, 77, 92–93, 106, 118, 132, 133, 139, 140–45, 191–210 Iglesia, Ramón, 7–9, 46, 65, 79, 85, 88, 104, 116, 212nn9– 11 imperialism, 4, 5–6, 18, 44, 167– 71 inventio. See rhetoric irony, 113–16, 221n2 Isabella, Queen of Castile, 74, 76 Jameson, Fredric, 34 Jerome, Saint, 88–89 Jesus Christ, 159, 219n7, 224n8 Jiménez de Cisneros, Francisco, Cardinal, 75 Johnson, David E., 218n16 Johnson, Julie Greer, 221n9 Juan, Don, and Gómara’s Cortés, 11, 98–100, 102–03, 112, 220n18 Keen, Benjamin, 133–34 Kennedy, William, 18, 213n18 Kruger-Hickman, Kathryn D., 48, 51, 54, 217nn2–3, 217n6 LaCapra, Dominick, 33, 216n34 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 11, 79, 81–82, 91, 135 conversion through persuasion, 12–15, 212–13nn15–17 on Cortés, 12, 99, 102–03 debate with Sepúlveda, 12–13, 93, 133, 169, 212n14, 223n19

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judgment of Gómara, 2, 9, 93, 211n2 Moctezuma’s transfer of power, 12, 147, 152–55, 223 Lausberg, Heinrich, 116, 131 León-Portilla, Miguel, 29, 30, 77, 218n12 Lewis, Robert, 7, 84, 85, 88, 116, 212n8, 220n13 Lockhart, James, 30, 213–14n7, 215n29, 221n8 Loesberg, Jonathan, 49, 51, 91– 94, 96, 211–12n8, 217n3, 217n5 López de Mendoza, Iñigo, 74 López Pinciano, Alonso, 57 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 37, 46, 49– 50, 107, 162, 217nn7–8 Mackenthum, Gesa, 217n3, 223n3, 224–25n12 MacNutt, Francis A., 74, 75, 173, 219n4, 223n20 Malinali (Doña Marina, La Malinche), 21, 31, 67, 119– 21, 148, 163, 167, 213– 14n7, 218nn15–16, 221nn8–9 Marín, María Guadalupe, 217n3 Marineo Siculo, Lucio, 76–77, 78 Martínez, José Luis, 29, 81, 213n1, 213nn4–5, 214n13, 215n25, 224n5 Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda, 5, 217n3 Martyr, Peter. See Angleria, Peter Martyr of Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino, 18, 216n36 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 217n9 Merrim, Stephanie, 49, 69, 79, 217n3, 217n6 Merriman, Roger Bigelow, 7, 85, 87 Mexica, 31, 215–16n31. See also Aztec

Index Mignolo, Walter, 4, 5–6, 142, 215n28, 218n13, 219n5 Mizrahi, Irene, 217n8 Moctezuma Xocoyotl, 22, 55, 66, 118, 143, 191–210, 216n31, 217n6 captivity, 25, 67–69, 80, 105– 06, 137, 144, 153, 219n9, 224n5 death, 26, 215n23 gifts from, 20, 23, 24 Gómara on, 109–11, 112 meeting with Cortés, 24, 29, 52–53, 146, 154 transfer of power to Charles V, 12, 27, 75–76, 116–17, 119, 146–67, 170, 173–91, 223n3, 224n9, 224– 25nn11–12 voice of, in European accounts, 6, 39, 63, 146–67, 170, 173–91 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 73 Motolinía (Toribio de Benavente), 30, 218n12, 219n10 narrative and historical representation, 32–34 Narváez, Pánfilo de, 25–26, 45, 64, 73, 75, 96–97, 105, 107, 117, 222n12 Nebrija, Antonio de, 18 Nelson, John S., 216n33 New Laws, 80–81 Odysseus 2, 3, 107–09, 112, 163, 170 O’Gorman, Edmundo, 79, 219n3 Olbrechts-Tyteca, L., 138, 223n18 Olid, Cristóbal de, 72 Orozco y Berra, Manuel, 215n23, 221n8 Oviedo. See Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo Pagden, Anthony, 30, 132, 148, 173, 214n13, 215n22–23,

217n9, 218n12, 223n19, 223n3, 225nn1–2 Palmer, Richard E., 221n3 Parish, Helen Rand, 224n4 Pastor, Beatriz, 48–50, 51, 52, 217n3 Paul, Saint, 139, 141, 224n8 Pautz, Patrick Charles, 64, 72–73 Pennington, Kenneth J., 224n4 Perelman, Chaim, 36, 138, 223n18 Pérez, Gonzalo, 107–09, 220n21 Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán, 88, 98 Pérez de Oliva, Hernán, 3, 12, 15, 75, 77–78, 141, 173, 195– 97, 219n8 Moctezuma’s transfer of power in, 12, 150, 160, 161, 178–80 Pérez de Tudela Bueso, Juan, 79 Philip II, King of Spain, 82, 107, 108–09 picaresque elements and Gómara’s Cortés, 11, 98–102, 112 Piedra, José, 217n4 Pizarro, Francisco, 100 Plutarch, 88–89 Polybius, 90, 107 Prescott, William H., 8, 25, 214n20 Pulgar, Fernando de, 88 Quetzalcoatl, 28–30, 110, 218n12, 223n3 Quijote, Don. See Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de Quintilian (M. Fabius Quintilianus), 17–18, 115, 221n2 Rabasa, José, 6, 62, 157, 217n3, 224n7, 224nn9–10 Ramírez Cabaña, Joaquín, 220n15 Ramírez de Verger, Antonio, 173, 222n13 Ramos Pérez, Demetrio, 99, 219n3 Ramus, Peter, 18

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Index rhetoric conquest defined in rhetorical terms, 18, 70, 127, 167, 168 definitions of, 15–16, 61–62 and historiography, 35–44, 168–71 inventio, 38–39, 42, 54–55 relation to “truth,” 3, 15–18, 58, 139–40, 168–71 set speeches, 116–18, 121–45, 169–70 sixteenth-century studies of, 18 types of, in set speeches, 118, 221n6 Roa-de-la-Carrera, Cristián Andrés, 212n8 Roberts, Geoffrey, 216n32 Rodríguez de Fonseca, Juan (Bishop of Burgos), 22, 218n1 Rummel, Erika, 76 sacrifice, human, 5, 12, 24–25, 28, 78, 106, 110, 132, 137, 214n16 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 7, 30. See also Florentine Codex Saint-Lu, André, 81 Sallust (Sallustius Cripius Gaius), 37, 90 Sandoval, Prudencio de, 85, 87 Satan, 109–12, 122, 162, 166, 220n23 Scipio Africanus, 90, 107 Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de on Aztecs, 5–6, 141–42, 157, 211n7, 219–20n11, 223n19 on Cortés, 3, 12, 13 Cortés’s speech on idolatry, 134, 201–03, 222n16 De orbe novo, 134, 201–03, 222n13, 222n16, 225n7 debate with Las Casas, 13, 43, 82, 93, 133–34, 169

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Democrates secundus, 3, 13, 82, 85, 113–14, 132, 135, 145, 219–20n11 and Gómara, 84, 113 Moctezuma’s transfer of power in, 12, 150, 157, 160, 161, 183–86, 225n7 rhetorical vision of conquest in, 15, 39 spiritual and intellectual hierarchy in, 76, 141–42 Simpson, Lesley Byrd, 87, 127, 173, 211n1, 222n14, 225nn4–6 sodomy, 132 Soto, Domingo de, 83 Streuver, Nancy, 39, 211n3 Suetonius Tranquillus, C., 88– 89 Tacitus, Cornelius, 35, 37–38, 90, 116, 216n35 Tapia, Andrés de, 80, 160, 220n24, 224n11 Tenochtitlan, 8, 24–25, 26, 27–28, 31, 52, 59, 79, 92, 94, 97, 110, 117, 118, 133, 153, 154, 163, 214n15, 216n31 Thomas, Hugh, 29, 148–49, 213nn1–2, 213nn4–6, 214n9, 214n13, 214nn15– 17, 214n20, 215nn22–23, 215n25, 217n1, 219n6 Tlaxcala, 23–24, 27, 53, 62, 64, 65, 69, 75, 77, 101, 107, 118, 119, 127–33, 214n22, 218n12, 220n19 Todorov, Tzvetan, 6, 47–48, 211n7, 217n6, 224n10 Torquemada, Juan de, 10, 84, 122, 139, 160, 162, 225nn8–10 Torres Asensio, Joaquín, 75, 173 Townsend, Camilla, 213n1, 214n14

Index translatio imperii, 12, 147–48, 163, 167, 223n2 translation, 11–12, 66–67, 118– 21, 148–50, 153, 173, 211n1 “truth,” 34, 91 Cortés’s fabrication of, 51–61, 155 Cortés’s service to, 46, 53–54, 109, 138, 166 figures for, 3, 55, 57, 70, 120, 169 guises of, 44, 70–71 ideal of fixed, 50, 71 Moctezuma and, 55, 159, 166, 167 notion of, placed into question, 3, 71 relation to fiction and history, 34, 107–08, 216n32 relation to rhetoric, 3, 15–18, 58, 139–40, 168–71

White, Hayden, 32–34, 36, 216n32 Wilson, Diana de Armas, 212n12 Woodman, A. J., 37 Wright, Elizabeth, 220n21 writing systems, 5, 29–30, 74, 142–44, 157, 215n28 Xuárez, Catalina, 86, 100, 102

Valero Silva, José, 53, 214n10, 217n2 Valesio, Paolo, 36–37 Valla, Lorenzo, 38–39 Vázquez, Germán, 30, 80, 213n7, 220n24, 221n8 Vázquez de Tapia, 80–81, 160, 224n11 Velázquez, Diego, 20, 22–23, 46, 56, 59, 72, 79, 98, 100–01, 102–03, 107, 121, 125, 127, 129, 219n6 Verdesio, Gustavo, 211n5 Vickers, Brian, 18 Vilches, Elvira, 216n37 Vitoria, Francisco de, 147, 223n1 Vives, Juan Luis, 18, 39–40, 56– 57 Wagner, Henry R., 83, 84, 85, 103, 213n1, 214n19 Watson, Nicholas, 221n7

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About the Author Glen Carman, DePaul University in Chicago, teaches language and literature. His current research focuses on Bartolomé de Las Casas, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, and the sixteenth-century debates over Spain’s wars of conquest.

Also of Interest from PSRL Constructing the Criollo Archive: Subjects of Knowledge in the Bibliotheca Mexicana and the Rusticatio Mexicana by Antony Higgins