subject: The Cortes Conquest: First Steps [print this page] The conquest of the Aztecs in 1519 is a famous part of history, but the broad story doesn't always include the small pieces along the way that led up to Cortes' siege of the capital city, Tenochtitlan. The Spanish explorer had a keen mind, and made several early decisions that pushed him ahead where previous expeditions had failed. The final conquest would have been impossible without these early steps.
Right from the start, Cortes had an advantage over other explorers, due to two invaluable resources that none of his predecessors had had: translators. One, Geronimo de Aguilar, was a Spaniard who'd survived a 1511 shipwreck and lived as a Maya slave ever since; he happily joined back with his brethren and translated from Spanish to Maya. The other was an Aztec-born woman called Malinche, also a captured slave, who would translate from Maya to the Aztec Nahuatl language. These two individuals allowed Cortes to communicate with just about any native person to cross his path. It was a devastatingly effective system.
After short stops in Cozumel and the Yucatan peninsula, the expedition landed on the eastern coast of the mainland. Before marching inward, he had a legal snafu to solve: even though he had defied Velazquez, Cortes was still technically under the Governor's legal authority. To get around this, Cortes had his men establish a settlement on the shore, legally constitute it, and give him the title of adelantado--the mandated conqueror of the land. With this, Cortes was assured that he would be able to benefit from the conquest, and he was also freed from authority. Today this town is known s Veracruz, and this is the purpose for which it was founded.
At the time, the Aztecs were the fiercest and most powerful civilization in Mesoamerica; defeating and conquering plenty of the neighboring tribes, they were accomplished warriors. The city-state of Tenochtitlan, built on an island in the middle of a lake, was one of the largest cities in the entire world at the time. The Aztecs had plenty of local enemies, a fact which Cortes would use to his advantage. He convinced the local Totonac tribe near Veracruz to join him in rebelling against the Aztecs, and they enthusiastically agreed. Cortes needed to be successful in his conquest if he hoped to save face before the Spanish crown; he could have used any assistance that was obtainable at the time.
Some of the men, plotted to steal a ship and escape back to Cuba as they were still loyal to Governor Velazquez. Cortes responded in a bold manner: all but one of the ships he sank, with a plan in mind. The small ship set forth for Spain, loaded with treasure, in order to increase the legitimacy of Cortes' actions. Then the company traveled inland to Tlaxcala, a confederacy of 200 towns; Aztec enemies were housed in all of them. The Tlaxcalans and the Aztecs had been fighting for nearly a century, and it was only a matter of time before the former was overtaken by the latter permanently. While they were initially hostile to the Spaniards, the Tlaxcalans were won over; an alliance was forged between the two groups, founded on the mutual goal of eliminating the Aztecs. Cortes' army was growing, infused with natives who knew all too well what they were up against. A storm was brewing and heading straight for Tenochtitlan.
