Page:Historia Verdadera del Mexico profundo.djvu/200

(Jaques Lafaye. 1991)

He later accompanied Diego Velázquez in 1511 in the conquest of Cuba. He was then his Secretary and later Santiago de Baracoa major. Despite having difficulties with Diego Velázquez, as he seduced the sister of the governor’s bride, Catalina Juarez Marcaida (whom he later strangled at his Coyoacán home in 1522), and refused to marry her, fleeing from the law he took refuge in a church. By his later marriage in 1514 with Catalina, he managed to make Velázquez his godfather.

It is important to point out that Diego Velázquez as Cuba governor obtained the concession from the spanish crown to go and "rescue gold"^[1] on the shores of what is now the territory of Mexico. He tries to subrogate the concession, first to Baltasar Bermúdez and finally does it with Cortés.

"Diego Velázquez decided to set up –at his cost, according to the usual procedures- an expedition. He intended to entrust the command to one of his Cuellar compatriots, Baltasar Bermúdez, but he had conditions that displeased Velasquez; the governor, angry, violently threw him out as was his custom. Then, according to Las Casas, Amador de Lares convinced him to entrust the command in Cortés, whit whom he was to share the benefits of the expedition. But here we note what Gómora said (that is the marquez himself), according to which, Baltasar Bermúdez refused the mandate because Velásquez claimed a share of three thousand ducats; after that failure, Cortés was sought, on the condition that he covered half of the costs, since he had “two thousand gold castellanos in association with Andrés de Duero, a merchant", thus he had a business partner. We see here, on a modest scale, how commercial capital was beginning to be invested in colonial enterprises." (Jacques Lafaye. 1970)

The invasion.

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1. The Spaniards called "rescue and pacify" as an euphemism to plunder and colonize