Gonzalo Guerrero was a sailor from Palos

Palos de la Frontera

Palos de la Frontera is a town and municipality located in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is situated some from the provincial capital, Huelva...

, in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 who shipwrecked along the Yucatán Peninsula

Yucatán Peninsula

The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel...

 and was taken as a slave by the local Maya

Maya peoples

The Maya people constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term...

. Earning his freedom, Guerrero became a respected warrior under a Maya Lord and raised three of the first mestizo

Mestizo

Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...

 children in Mexico. Little is known of his early life.

Shipwrecked

In 1511, sailing with 15 others in a caravel from Panama and heading for Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo, known officially as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, and estimated at 3,294,385 in 2010. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...

, he was shipwrecked. However, the crew managed to board the ship's lifeboat and drifted for two weeks along the Yucatán Peninsula

Yucatán Peninsula

The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel...

 until strong currents brought them to the shore of what is now Quintana Roo

Quintana Roo

Quintana Roo officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Quintana Roo is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 10 municipalities and its capital city is Chetumal....

, in Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. On reaching land, Guerrero and his crew were captured by the local Maya

Maya peoples

The Maya people constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term...

.

Slavery

Bernal Díaz de Castillo (Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Chapter XXIX) said Aguilar told them some of the ship's crew were sacrificed almost immediately, while the rest were put into cages. They managed to escape but were captured by other Mayan lords, who enslaved them. By 1519, the year Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...

 began his Conquest of Mexico, only two from the original shipwreck were still alive: Gonzalo Guerrero, who by this time had become famous in the Mayan world as a war leader for Nachan can, Lord of Chactemal; which includes parts of Mexico and Belize, and Gerónimo de Aguilar

Gerónimo de Aguilar

Gerónimo de Aguilar O.F.M. was a Franciscan friar born in Écija, Spain. Aguilar was later involved with the 1519 Spanish conquest of Mexico, and with La Malinche he assisted Hernán Cortés in translating indigenous language to Spanish....

, who had taken holy orders in his native Spain. Guerrero had by then married Nachan Can's daughter and was the father of America's first mestizo

Mestizo

Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...

 children.

Reluctant to return

On arriving in Cozumel from Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, Cortés sent a letter by Maya messenger across to the mainland, inviting the two Spaniards, of whom he'd heard rumors, to join him. Aguilar became a translator, along with Doña Marina, 'La Malinche', during the Conquest. According to the account of Bernal Díaz, when the newly freed friar attempted to convince Guerrero to join him, Gonzalo Guerrero responded:

Spanish: "Hermano Aguilar, yo soy casado y tengo tres hijos. Tienenme por cacique y capitán, cuando hay guerras, la cara tengo labrada, y horadadas las orejas. ¿Que dirán de mi esos españoles, si me ven ir de este modo? Idos vos con la bendición de Dios, que ya veis que estos mis hijitos son bonitos, y dadme por vida vuestra de esas cuentas verdes que traeis, para darles, y diré, que mis hermanos me las envían de mi tierra."

English Translation: "Brother Aguilar; I am married and have three children, and they look on me as a cacique

Cacique

Cacique is a title derived from the Taíno word for the pre-Columbian chiefs or leaders of tribes in the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles...

 (lord) here, and captain in time of war. My face is tattooed and my ears are pierced. What would the Spaniards say about me if they saw me like this? Go and God's blessing be with you, for you have seen how handsome these children of mine are. Please give me some of those beads you have brought to give to them and I will tell them that my brothers have sent them from my own country."

And Gonzalo's wife Zazil Há

Zazil Há

Zazil Há was a Mayan princess and daughter of Nachan Can in the region of Chetumal, Mexico. She married the stranded Spanish sailor Gonzalo Guerrero and with him raised three children....

 angrily addressed Aguilar in her own language:

"Why has this slave come here to call my husband away? Go off with you, and let us have no more talk."

Then Aguilar spoke to Guerrero again, reminding him that he was of Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 faith and should not throw away his everlasting soul for the sake of an Indian woman. But Gonzalo was not to be convinced.

According to Robert S. Chamberlain (Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, p.63), Francisco de Montejo

Francisco de Montejo

Francisco de Montejo y Alvarez was a Spanish conquistador in Mexico and Central America.Francisco de Montejo was born in Salamanca, Spain, in 1479 to Juan de Montejo and Catalina Alvarez de Tejeda. He left Spain in 1514, and arrived in Cuba in time to join Grijalva's expedition along the coast of...

 discovered that Guerrero was the military captain of Chectumal. He tried to win him over by sending him a longish letter reminding him of his Christian faith, offering him his friendship and a complete pardon, and asking him to come to the caravel. Guerrero replied by writing on the back of the letter that he could not leave his Lord because he was a slave, ‘even though I am married and have a wife and children. I remember God, and you, Sir, and the Spaniards have a good friend in me.’

Guerrero appears to have told his Maya friends and family that the Spaniards would suffer death like other men. He led the Maya in campaigns against Cortés and his lieutenants like Pedro de Alvarado

Pedro de Alvarado

Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalva's exploration of the coasts of Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and in the conquest of Mexico led by Hernan Cortes...

 and the Panamanian governor Pedrarias. One of Alvarado's orders in his Honduras campaign was to capture Guerrero.

Oviedo reports Guerrero as dead by 1532, when Montejo's lieutenants Avila and Lujón arrived again in Chectumal. Andrés de Cereceda, in a letter to the Spanish King dated August 14, 1536, writes of a battle that occurred in late June 1536, between Pedro de Alvarado and a local Honduran cacique named Çiçumba in which the naked and tattooed body of a Spaniard was found dead within Çiçumba's town of Ticamaya after the battle. According to Cereceda, this Spaniard had come over with 50 war canoes from Chetumal early in 1536, to help Çiçumba fight the Spanish who were attempting to colonize his lands. The Spaniard was killed in the battle by an arquebus shot. Although Cereceda says the Spaniard was named Gonzalo Aroca, R. Chamberlain and other historians writing about the event believe this was Gonzalo Guerrero. Guerrero was 50 years old when he died.

Knowledge of Guerrero's existence

There are no first-hand accounts written by Gonzalo Guerrero that have survived until today. The primary accounts of other people writing about him are our source of information. First, there is Geronimo de Aguilar, who says Guerrero was captured by the Maya at the same time as he was. Cortés exchanged letters with Guerrero, but did not meet him face to face. Bernal Díaz de Castillo wrote about the same events as Cortes. Cereceda found him dead on a battlefield in Honduras but never communicated with him. The initial Spanish attempts to chronicle the conquest, done in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Oviedo, Herrera), mention him, but are considered less accurate than the contemporary accounts.

Recent accounts

Literary critic Rose-Anna M. Mueller, in an essay titled From Cult to Comics: The Representation of Gonzalo Guerrero as Cultural Hero in Mexican Popular Culture, surveys the numerous depictions of Guerrero from a reviled figure for the sixteenth century Spanish invaders to founder of modern Mexico. Yet, like many symbols, the reality behind this myth remains very questionable.

Mueller concludes, 'while primary and secondary sources sketched Guerrero's history during the colonial period, today he has become a political and literary icon and has been transformed into a national myth....If he was reviled by the chroniclers, Guerrero has enjoyed a vindication of sorts, since he has become an exemplar who fills the need to connect the colonizers from Europe and the indigenous of the Americas in a domestic context'

Perhaps the most famous literary work celebrating Guerrero as the father of the mestizos in Mexico remains Gonzalo Guerrero: Novela historica by Eugenio Aguirre published in 1980 in Mexico. The novel became a national bestseller and went on to win the Paris International Academy's Silver Medal in 1981. Another popular book published in Mexico in 1999, Guerrero and Heart's Blood by Alan Clark tells of the inward life and history of Guerrero and Aguilar.