Mestizos

Notable mestizos: Inca Garcilaso de la Vega · Porfirio Díaz
Regions with significant populations
The Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States
Languages
Predominantly Spanish, (with a minority of other languages), while Caboclo speaks Portuguese, and Métis speak French; English in the United States, Kriol, Spanish, and English in Belize.
Religion
Christianity (predominantly Roman Catholic, with a minority of Protestant); and other religions.
Related ethnic groups
European, Amerindian people

Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America and Spain for people of mixed heritage or descent. In some countries it has come to mean a mixture of European and Amerindian, while in others, like Venezuela, mestizo means being mixed without specifying which admixture.^[1] The term was used as a racial category in the Casta system that was in use during the Spanish empire's control of their American colonies; it was used to describe those who had one European-born parent and one who was a member of an indigenous American population, in some countries, while it was used to refer to people of European, African and Indigenous admixture in others like Venezuela.^[2] In the Casta system mestizos had fewer rights than European born persons called "Peninsulares", and "Creoles" who were persons born in the New World of two European-born parents, but more rights than "Indios" and Negros.

During the colonial period, mestizos quickly became the majority group in much of what is today Latin America, and when the colonies started achieving independence from Spain, the mestizo group often became dominant. In some Latin American countries, such as Mexico, the concept of the "mestizo" became central to the formation of a new independent identity that was neither wholly Spanish nor wholly indigenous and the word mestizo acquired its current double meaning of mixed cultural heritage and actual racial descent.

Etymology[link]

The Spanish word Mestizo is from the Romance / Latin word mixticius, meaning mixed.^[3][4] Its usage has been documented as early as 1275, to refer to the offspring of an Egyptian and a Jew.^[5] This term was first documented in English in 1582.^[6]

Cognates[link]

Mestizo (Spanish: [mesˈtiθo] or [mesˈtiso]), Mestiço (Portuguese: [mɨʃˈtisu], [mesˈtisu] or [mesˈtʃisu]), Métis (French: [meˈtis]), Mestís (Catalan: [məsˈtis]), Meticcio (Italian: [meˈtittʃo]), Mestiezen (Dutch: [mesˈtizən]), Mestee (Middle English: [məsˈtiː]), and Mix (English) are all cognates of the Latin word mixticius.

History[link]

Mestizo man and his Indian wife, 1763, by Miguel Cabrera

During the Spanish colonial period, the Spanish developed a complex caste system based on race, which was used for social control and which also determined a person's importance in society.^[7] There were four main categories of race: (1) Peninsular — a person of Spanish descent born in Spain, (2) Criollo (fem. criolla) — a person of Spanish descent born in the Americas, (3) Indio (fem. India) — a person who is a native of, or indigenous to the Americas, and (4) Negro (fem. Negra) — a person of African slave descent.^[7] Persons of mixed race were collectively referred to as castas.^[8][9] During this era, myriad other terms (such as mulatto and zambo) were used to differentiate racial mixtures.^[9] By the end of the colonial period in 1821, over one hundred categories of possible variations of mixture existed.

In theory, Criollo status could also be attained by people of mixed origin who had the equivalent of a great grandparent with Amerindian ancestry. Such cases might include the offspring of a Castizo (3/4 Spanish, 1/4 Indian) parent and one Peninsular or Criollo parent.^[10] This one-eighth rule, also in theory, did not apply to African admixture.^[10]

A person's legal racial classification in colonial Spanish America was closely tied to social status, wealth, culture and language use. Wealthy people paid to change or obscure their actual ancestry. Many indigenous people left their traditional villages and sought to be counted as mestizos to avoid tribute payments to the Spanish.^[11] Many indigenous people, and sometimes those with partial African descent, were classified as mestizo if they spoke Spanish and lived as mestizos.

Often, but only early on, the term mestizo was associated with illegitimacy; The term also has a pejorative use about something that is not "pure". However, it evolved in the ensuing centuries.^{[citation needed]} According to historians Michael C. Meyer and William L. Sherman, early in the 16th century Spanish colonial usage of the term, mestizo "was almost synonymous with bastard" (illegitimate child).^[12]

Because the term had taken on a myriad of meanings, the designation "Mestizo" was removed from census counts in Mexico and is no longer in use.^[6]

A representation of a Mestizo, in a Pintura de Castas from Mexico during the Spanish colonial period. The painting's caption states "Spanish and Indian produce Mestizo".

Spanish-speaking Latin America[link]

Mexico[link]

The large majority of Mexicans can be classified as "Mestizos", meaning in modern Mexican usage that they identify fully neither with any indigenous culture nor with a particular non-Mexican heritage, but rather identify as having cultural traits and heritage incorporating elements from indigenous and European traditions. By the deliberate efforts of post-revolutionary governments the "Mestizo identity" was constructed as the base of the modern Mexican national identity, through a process of cultural synthesis referred to as mestizaje. Mexican politicians and reformers such as José Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio were instrumental in building a Mexican national identity on the concept of mestizaje.^[13][14] Cultural policies in early post-revolutionary Mexico were paternalistic towards the indigenous people, with efforts designed to "help" indigenous peoples achieve the same level of progress as the rest of society, eventually assimilating indigenous peoples completely to Mestizo Mexican culture, working toward the goal of eventually solving the "Indian problem" by transforming indigenous communities into mestizo communities.^[15]

The term "Mestizo" is not in wide use in Mexican society today and has been dropped as a category in population censuses; it is, however, still used in social and cultural studies when referring to the non-indigenous part of the Mexican population. The word has somewhat pejorative connotations and most of the Mexican citizens who would be defined as mestizos in the sociological literature would probably self-identify primarily as Mexicans. In the Yucatán peninsula the word Mestizo is even used about Maya-speaking populations living in traditional communities, because during the caste war of the late 19th century those Maya who did not join the rebellion were classified as mestizos.^[16] In Chiapas the word "Ladino" is used instead of mestizo.^[17]

Countries with dominant Mestizo population. Based on: Population Estimates from the CIA World Factbook

Sometimes, particularly outside of Mexico, the word "mestizo" is used with the meaning of Mexican persons with mixed Indigenous and European blood. This usage does not conform to the Mexican social reality where a person of pure indigenous genetic heritage would be considered Mestizo either by rejecting his indigenous culture or by not speaking an indigenous language,^[16] and a person with a very low percentage of indigenous genetic heritage would be considered fully indigenous either by speaking an indigenous language or by identifying with a particular indigenous cultural heritage.^[18]

In May 2009, Mexico's National Institute of Genomic Medicine issued a report on a genomic study that involved 300 Mestizos from the states of Guerrero, Sonora, Veracruz, Yucatán, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato. The study found that the Mestizo population of these Mexican states were on average 55% of indigenous ancestry followed by 41.8 % European, 1.8% African, and 1.2% East Asian ancestry. The study also noted that whereas Mestizo individuals from the southern state of Guerrero were on average 66% of indigenous ancestry, those from the northern state of Sonora were about 61.6% of European ancestry. The study found that there was an increase in indigenous ancestry as one traveled towards the Central and the more Southerly states of the country, while the indigenous ancestry declined as one traveled to the Northern states in the country, such as Sonora.^[19]

El Salvador[link]

In Central America intermixing and intermarriages between European men and the indigenous women in Cuzcatlán or what is now El Salvador happened almost immediately after the arrival of the European Spanish led by Pedro de Alvarado. The majority of Salvadorans in El Salvador identify themselves as 90% Mestizo with heavy Meso-American indigenous and European-Spanish traditions, leaving the 9% White and 1% indigenous Salvadoran population as a minority. The mixing between the Europeans and the Native American indigenous people in El Salvador was so extensive that it is the only country in Latin America to be composed almost entirely of the Mestizo population which completely dominates other racial populations in the small nation. Salvadorans who are racially European, especially Mediterranean, and indigenous people in El Salvador who do not speak indigenous languages nor have an indigenous culture, also identify themselves as Mestizo culturally.

El Salvador is the only country in Central America that does not have a significant African population due to many factors including El Salvador not having a Caribbean coast, and because of president Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who passed racial laws to keep blacks out of El Salvador, but Salvadorans with African ancestry Afro-Salvadoran are present in El Salvador. The African slaves that were brought to El Salvador during the colonial times, eventually came to mix and merged in to the much larger and vaster Mestizo mixed European Spanish/Native Indigenous population creating Afromestizos. At the end of the colonial era the mixing of the various races in the country was well on its way in creating a population that no longer had strong ethnic identities as Native American, European, or African, but that of tri or Multiracial, perhaps one of the only places in the Americas were these three racial groups entirely mixed together, thus there remains no significant extremes of African physiognomy among Salvadorans like there is in the other countries of Central America. Maximiliano was also responsible for La Matanza ("The Slaughter"), in which indigenous people were murdered in an effort to wipe out the indigenous people in El Salvador during the 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising. Indigenous peoples, mostly of Pipil, Lenca, Kakawira (Cacaopera) and Mayan descent are still present in El Salvador in small communities, conserving their languages, customs, and traditions.

Paraguay[link]

During the reign of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, the first consul of Paraguay from 1811 to 1840, he imposed a law that no Spaniard may intermarry, and that they may only wed blacks, mulattoes or Indians. This was introduced to eliminate any sense of racial superiority, and also to end the predominantly Spanish influence in Paraguay. De Francia himself was not a mestizo (although his grandfather on his father's side was Afro-Brazilian), but feared that racial superiority would create class division which would threaten his absolute rule. As a result of this, today 90% of Paraguay's population are mestizo, and the main language is the native Guaraní, spoken by 90% of the population as a first language, with Spanish spoken as a first language by 10% of the population, and fluently spoken by a further 75%, making Paraguay one of the most bilingual countries in the world.

Peru[link]

According to Alberto Flores Galindo, "By the 1940 census, the last that utilized racial categories, mestizos were grouped with whites, and the two constituted more than 53 percent of the population. Mestizos likely outnumbered Indians and were the largest population group."^[20]

Noted mestizos migrating to Europe[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2010)

Martín Cortés, son of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and of the Nahuatl–Maya indigenous Mexican interpreter Malinche, was one of the first documented mestizos to arrive in Spain. His first trip occurred in 1528, when he accompanied his father, Hernán Cortés, who sought to have him legitimized by the Pope.

There is also verified evidence of the grandchildren of Moctezuma II, Aztec emperor, whose royal descent the Spanish crown acknowledged, willingly having set foot on European soil. Among these descendants are the Counts of Miravalle, and the Dukes of Moctezuma de Tultengo, who became part of the Spanish peerage and left many descendants in Europe.^[21] The Counts of Miravalle, residing in Andalucía, Spain, demanded in 2003 that the government of Mexico recommence payment of the so called 'Moctezuma pensions' it had cancelled in 1934.

The mestizo historian Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of Spanish conquistador Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega and of the Inca princess Isabel Chimpo Oclloun arrived in Spain from Peru. He lived in the town of Montilla, Andalucía, where he died in 1616. The mestizo children of Francisco Pizarro were also military leaders because of their famous father.

Starting in the early 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Europe saw the arrival of thousands of Chileans, many of whom were mestizos, seeking political refuge during the dictatorial government of Augusto Pinochet. Today, there is a growing number of mestizo immigrants in Western Europe, primarily from Ecuador, Peru and Colombia.

Former Spanish East Indies[link]

Philippines[link]

Filipinas mestizas, early 1800s

In the Philippines, the word "mestizo" is a term used to denote Filipinos of mixed native (Austronesian) and any non-native ethnicity.^[4]

Guam and Northern Mariana Islands[link]

In Guam and Northern Mariana Islands, the term "Mestizo" was borrowed from the American colonies and was formerly used to identify people of mixed Pacific Islander and Spanish ancestry; however, as the United States gained control of these islands after the Spanish-American War in 1898, the term "Multiracial" replaced "Mestizo".^{[citation needed]} Mestizos/Multiracials currently form a small minority of the population. Because most Guamanians and Northern Mariana Islanders were also given Spanish surnames during Spanish colonial times, persons of white American and other non-Spanish European descent with Spanish surnames may be mistaken as having such descent.^{[citation needed][clarification needed]}

Portuguese-speaking Africa[link]

Mestiço – Angola[link]

The Mestiço are primarily of mixed European, native born indigenous Angolan and/or other indigenous African lineages. They tend to be Portuguese culturally and to have full Portuguese names.

Although they make up about 2% of the population, they are the socially elite, and racially privileged, group in the country. Historically, Mestiços formed social and cultural allegiances with Portuguese colonists, subsequently identifying with the Portuguese over and above their indigenous identities. Despite their loyalty, the ethnic group faced economic and political adversity at hands of the white population during times of economic hardship for whites. These actions lead to ostracizing Mestiços from their inherited economic benefits which sparked the group to take a new sociopolitical direction. However, since the over 500 year Portuguese presence in the country, the ethnic group has retained their position of entitlement which is highly evident in the political, economic and cultural hierarchy in present day Angola. Their phenotype range is broad with a number of members possessing physical characteristics that are close to others within the indigenous black non-mixed population. Since the Mestiços are generally better educated than the rest of the indigenous black population, they exercise influence in government disproportionate to their numbers.

Mestiço – Guinea-Bissau[link]

1% of the population is of mixed African Native and Portuguese descent.

Mestiço – Mozambique[link]

A minority population of Mozambicans of mixed Bantu and Portuguese heritage.

Mestiço – São Tomé and Príncipe[link]

Mestiços of São Tomé and Príncipe are descendants of Portuguese colonists and African slaves brought to the islands during the early years of settlement from Benin, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola (these people also are known as filhos da terra or "children of the land").

Portuguese-speaking Latin American[link]

Mestiço – Brazil[link]

This section may stray from the topic of the article. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (August 2010)

In Brazil, the word mestiço is used to describe individuals born from any mixture of different ethnicities. Individuals that fit the specific case of having Portuguese and Native American parents are commonly known as caboclo or, more commonly in the past, mameluco. Individuals of European and African ancestry are described as mulato. Cafuzos (known as zambo in the English language) are the production of Native American and African ancestors. The Mixed Race Day (June 27) is a official date in States of Amazonas, Paraíba and Roraima.^{[citation needed]}

Related concepts[link]

Métis – Canada[link]

This section may stray from the topic of the article into the topic of another article, Métis people (Canada). Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (August 2010)

This section may stray from the topic of the article into the topic of another article, Indian Act. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (August 2010)

Louis Riel, Canadian Métis.

French Colonial empire in Canada, the Métis are regarded as an independent ethnic group.^{[citation needed]} This community of descent consists of individuals descended from marriages of First Nation women, specifically Cree, Ojibway, and Saulteaux with Europeans, usually French, English, and Scottish laborers or merchants employed in the North American Fur Trade.^{[citation needed]} Their history dates to the mid 17th century, and they have been recognized as a distinct people since the early 18th century.^{[citation needed]}

Traditionally, the Métis spoke a mixed language called Michif (with various regional dialects). Michif (a phonetic spelling of the Métis pronunciation of "Métif", a variant of Métis) is also used as the name of the Métis people. The name is most commonly applied to descendants of communities in what is now southern Manitoba.^{[citation needed]} The name is also applied to the descendants of similar communities in what are now Ontario, Quebec, Labrador, and the Northwest Territories, although these groups' histories are different from that of the western Métis.^{[citation needed]} In Northern Manitoba some communities spoke Bungee, a combination of Gaelic, Orcadian, Cree, and Ojibwe. Bungee is now extinct.^{[citation needed]}

Estimates of the number of Métis vary from 300,000 to 700,000 or more.^{[citation needed]} In September 2002, the Métis people adopted a national definition of Métis for citizenship within the "Métis Nation." Based on this definition, it is estimated that there are 350,000 to 400,000^{[citation needed]} Métis Nation citizens in Canada, although many Métis classify anyone as Métis who can prove that an ancestor applied for money scrip or land scrip as part of nineteenth-century treaties with the Canadian government.^{[citation needed]} However, Labrador, Quebec, and even some Acadian Métis communities are not accepted by the Métis National Council and are represented nationally by the "Congress of Aboriginal Peoples."^{[citation needed]}

The Métis are not recognized as a First Nation by the Canadian government and do not receive the benefits granted to First Nation peoples.^{[citation needed]} However, the 1982 amendments to the Canadian constitution recognize the Métis as an aboriginal people, and have enabled individual Métis to sue successfully for recognition of their traditional rights such as rights to hunt and trap.^{[citation needed]} In 2003, a court ruling in Ontario found that the Métis deserve the same rights as other aboriginal communities in Canada.^{[citation needed]}

Mestiços - Sri Lanka[link]

In Sri Lanka, the names Mestiços (Portuguese for "Mixed People") or Casados ("Married") were applied to people of mixed Portuguese and Sri Lankan (Sinhalese and Tamil) descent, starting in the 16th century.

See also[link]

• Casta
• European colonization of the Americas
• Spanish colonization of the Americas
• Indigenous peoples of the Americas
• Viceroyalty of New Spain

Publication[link]

• Batalla, Guillermo, and Philip Dennis. Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming A Civilization. Univ of Texas Pr, 1996. ISBN 978-0-292-70843-3
• Wang S, Ray N, Rojas W, Parra MV, Bedoya G, et al. (2008) Geographic Patterns of Genome Admixture in Latin American Mestizos. PLoS Genet 4(3): e1000037. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000037
• "Genetic Study Of Latin Americans Sheds Light On A Troubled History" — Science Daily
• Duno Gottberg, Luis, Solventando las diferencias: la ideología del mestizaje en Cuba. Madrid, Iberoamericana — Frankfurt am Main, Vervuert, 2003

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mestizo

• The 1921 Mexican Census
• The Construction and Function of Race: Creating The Mestizo

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)

Joe Bataan (also spelled Bataán) (born 1942 in Spanish Harlem, New York City ^[1][2]) is a Filipino-African American Latin soul musician from New York.

Early life and career[link]

Joe Bataan was born Bataan Nitollano and grew up in the 103rd St. and Lexington Ave. part of East Harlem where he briefly led the Dragons, a local Puerto Rican street gang, before being sent to the Coxsackie Correctional Facility to serve time for a stolen car charge. His father was Filipino and his mother was African American

Upon his release in 1965, he turned his attention to music and formed his first band, Joe Bataan and the Latin Swingers. Bataan was influenced by two musical styles: the Latin boogaloo and African American doo-wop. Though Bataan was neither the first nor only artist to combine doo-wop-style singing with Latin rhythms, his talent for it drew the attention of Fania Records. After signing with them in 1966, Bataan released "Gypsy Woman," in 1967. (The title track is a Latin dance cover of "Gypsy Woman" by The Impressions.) He would, in full, release eight original titles for Fania which included the gold-selling "Riot!". These Fania albums often mixed energetic Latin dance songs, sung in Spanish, with slower, English-language soul ballads sung by Bataan himself. As a vocalist, Bataan's fame in the Latin music scene at the time was only rivaled by Ralfi Pagan.

Disagreements over money with Fania head Jerry Masucci led Bataan to eventually leave the label. While still signed to Fania however, Bataan secretly started Ghetto Records, a Latin music label which got its initial funding from a local gangster, George Febo. Bataan produced several albums for other artists, including Papo Felix, Paul Ortiz and Eddie Lebron.

In 1973, he helped coin the phrase "salsoul," lending its name to his first post-Fania album. Along with the Cayre brothers, he co-founded Salsoul label, though later sold out his interest. He recorded three albums for Salsoul and several singles, including "Rap-O Clap-O," from 1979 which became an early hip hop hit. After his 1981 album, "Bataan II," he retired from music-making to spend more time with his family and ended up working as a youth counselor in one of the reformatories he himself had spent time in as a teenager. In 2005, Bataan broke his long hiatus with the release of "Call My Name," a well-received album recorded for Spain's Vampisoul label.

Bataan is also the father of Asia Nitollano, winner of the Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll

In the 2006 video game, Driver Parallel Lines, Joe Bataan's song Subway Joe was included in the soundtrack.

In early 2009, Joe Bataan was featured in the Kenzo Digital-produced "beat cinematic" City of God's Son. Bataan was featured as the narrator of the story, paying the part of an older Nas reflecting upon his youth in the street with cohorts Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Biggie and Raekwon.

Discography[link]

• 1967 Gypsy Woman (Fania 340)
• 1968 Subway Joe (Fania 345)
• 1968 Riot! (Fania 354)
• 1969 Poor Boy (Fania 371)
• 1970 Singin' Some Soul (Fania 375)
• 1971 Mr. New York & The East Side Kids (Fania 395)
• 1972 Sweet Soul (Fania 407)
• 1972 Saint Latin's Day Massacre (Fania 420)
• 1972 Live From San Frantasia (unreleased, Fania 432)
• 1973 Salsoul (Mericana)
• 1975 Afro-Filipino (Salsoul/Epic Records)
• 1980 Mestizo (Salsoul)
• 1981 II (Salsoul)
• 1997 Last Album, Last Song (Bataan Music)
• 2004 Call My Name (Vampisoul)
• 2009 King of Latin Soul (Vampisoul)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Joe Bataan official site
• Joe Bataan interview by Pete Lewis, 'Blues & Soul' July 2009
• Interview by Michael 'The Dood' Edwards 'UK Vibe' June 2009
• RBMA Radio On Demand - Melbourne Marvels - Joe Bataan (Suss'D)
• Joe Bataan article in the LA Weekly, 15 December 1999
• Joe Bataan interview
• Joe Bataan interview, from APEX Express radio program, KPFA FM, Berkeley, California (MP3)
• TheSoulGirl.com
• Light in the Attic
• Joe Bataan - Call My Name on AnthologyRecordings.com
• City of God's Son
• Part one of a Video Interview with Joe Bataan on Salsa-Central.com
• Joe Bataan Live in Europe

See also[link]

• Filipino hip hop

Gonzalo Guerrero (also known as Gonzalo Marinero, Gonzalo de Aroca and Gonzalo de Aroza) was a sailor from Palos, in Spain who shipwrecked along the Yucatán Peninsula and was taken as a slave by the local Maya. Earning his freedom, Guerrero became a respected warrior under a Maya Lord and raised three of the first mestizo children in Mexico. Little is known of his early life.

Shipwrecked[link]

In 1511, sailing with 15 others in a caravel from Panama and heading for Santo Domingo, he was shipwrecked. However, the crew managed to board the ship's lifeboat and drifted for two weeks along the Yucatán Peninsula until strong currents brought them to the shore of what is now Quintana Roo, in Mexico. On reaching land, Guerrero and his crew were captured by the local Maya.

Slavery[link]

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

Reluctant to return[link]

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This section's factual accuracy is disputed. Please help to ensure that disputed facts are reliably sourced. See the relevant discussion on the talk page.

On arriving in Cozumel from Cuba, 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."^[2]

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

Díaz goes on to describe how Gonzalo's Mayan wife Zazil Há interrupted the conversation and angrily addressed Aguilar in her own language:

Spanish: " Y asimismo la india mujer del Gonzalo habló a Aguilar en su lengua, muy enojada y le dijo: Mira con qué viene este esclavo a llamar a mi marido: idos vos y no curéis de más pláticas. "^[3]

English Translation: "And the Indian wife of Gonzalo spoke to Aguilar in her own tongue very angrily and said to him, "What is this slave coming here for talking to my husband, - go off with you, and don't trouble us with any more words.""

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

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[link]

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. Guerrero and Aguilar are central figures in the historical novel Maya Lord which was published in the U.S. in 2011.

See also[link]

• Maya civilization
• Spanish Conquest

References[link]

• Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Book XXXII, Chapter VI, 1851, Madrid.
• Robert S. Chamberlain, Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan 1517-1550, 1947, Washington DC.
• Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España, 1992, Madrid.
• Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Genaro Garcia (Editor), Alfred Percival Maudslay (Translator), The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, 2010, Cambridge.
• Archivo de la historia de Yucatán, Campeche y Tabasco. 3 vols, ed. J. Ignacio Rubio Mañé (Mexico D.F., 1942).

• Clark, Alan (1990). Guerrero & Heart's Blood. Mexico. 
• Morris, Walter F. (1990). Living Maya. ISBN 0-8109-2745-4. 
• Robbins, John Coe (2011). Maya Lord. ISBN 978-1-61160-095-7. 
• Santiago, Juan-Navarro; Theodore Robert Young (January 2001). A Twice-Told Tale: Reinventing the Encounter in Iberian/Iberian American Literature and Film. University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0-87413-733-0.