popular campaign and not for the Crown of Spain. Indeed, investors and the adventurous personally financed expeditions, some with their own resources and others with their lives. The spanish crown granted the concession through a lobbying in the court and its "cost" was 20% of the stolen belonged to the crown, the famous "royal fifth", the remaining 80% was divided among courtesans, investors and adventurers, according to the investment that each had negotiated in the "campaign". The spaniards had previously made two expeditions to the coast of Mexico; Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (1517) and Juan de Grijalva (1518); hence they knew then, of the existence of those lands, its wealth and its inhabitants.
"He is therefore, a man (Cortés) outside the law (the governor had released an arrest warrant against him, without effect at two hundred leagues from Santiago de Cuba), who left from San Cristóbal, in mid-February, 1519." (Jacques Lafaye. 1991)
Upon Cortés arrival at Isla Mujeres, learned that two Spaniards lived in Chetumal, they had shipwrecked in 1511 in the Alacranes reef, traveling from Panama to Cuba and sent to rescue them.
Eight years after the sinking the two spaniards knew perfectly well the Maya language. While Jerónimo de Aguilar remained spanish, Gonzalo Guerrero totally assimilated the mayan culture. Gonzalo Guerrero is an obscure character in the "official history", a traitor for the Hispanic view of history. Gonzalo Guerrero bought his freedom, became a free man and joined to the mayan army and he became "nacon" (head of warriors), and he married a maiden of the Maya high nobility called Zazil Há under their customs and religion, having three children, the first mestizos of Mexico and perhaps most importantly, taught the mayans to fight the spanish and died fighting against the spanish invasion. Gonzalo Guerrero is the symbol of the foreigner that upon coming to live in these lands and in our culture, not only gives the best of him and defends it, but also gives his own life in it.[1]
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- ↑ Foreigners such as Gonzalo Guerrero have reached Mexico and have given the best of themselves and their lives to forge a nation. Not only men of arms like Francisco Javier Mina, but men of letters and arts, such as León Felipe or the many intellectuals who came as refugees from the Spanish Civil War.
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