Hernan Cortes Analysis

The Aztecs were a civilization located in Mexico with a ruler by the name of Montezuma II. They were not peaceful people, but rather known as warriors. They were especially not peaceful when the Spanish came to Mexico. A Spaniard by the name of Hernan Cortes sailed out of Cuba in 1518 and encountered a civilization named the Aztec. It was horrible for just one man’s greed to end a whole civilization.

I’ve heard that people wanted Hernan Cortes to be in a museum of historical explorers, but I'm here to tell you that he should not be in that museum of historical explorers for being another villain in history. So I hope that with this information, you don’t put him in your museum. He would be better known as an explorer with one goal, fame and fortune.

Convinced of the superiority of Catholicism to all other religions, Spain insisted that the primary goal of colonization was to save the Indians from heathenism and prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism. The aim was neither to exterminate nor to remove the Indians, but to transform them into obedient Christian subjects of the crown. To the Spanish colonizers, the large native populations of the Americas were not only souls to be saved but also a labor force to be organized to extract gold and silver that would enrich their mother country. Las Casas’ writings and the abuses they exposed contributed to the spread of the Black Legend-the image of Spain as a uniquely brutal and exploitative colonizer. This would provide of a potent justification for other European powers to challenge Spain’s predominance in the New World.

Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro managed to bring down the administration and basic structure of the Aztec Empire and Inca Empire with only a few hundred men by utilizing various advantages that they possessed. Both men had far superior weaponry than the natives that they fought however the natives could have countered this with just sheer numbers and utilizing the terrain that they knew so well. What really allowed these men to dominate their enemies was their strategies and experience. Both men were also aided by the diseases that they brought with them, devastating the native population for decades.

Hernan (also Hernando or Fernando) Cortes was born in Medellin, Estramadura, in Spain in 1485 to a family of minor nobility.

The book Ambivalent Conquests, by Inga Clendinnen, is very illuminating read for anyone wanting to know more about the events between the Spaniards and the Maya peoples of the Yucatan Peninsula. The book is separated into two separate parts: the Spaniard and the Indians. In the Spaniards section, Clendinnen wrote of the arrival of the Spanish in search of gold, and the attempts of the Christianization by missionaries. The second part, Indians, covered the way the Maya viewed the Spaniards arrival and following attempts of Christianization. The overall theme of the book was the continuing idolatry by the Mayans in the eyes of the Franciscans who tried to Christianize them and the actions taken by the Franciscans as a response.

In 1542, a Christian missionary named Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote about the little-known realities of the brutalities occurring in the New World between Spanish conquistadors and Native Americans. Even though the Spanish originally set out to bring Christianity to the New World and its inhabitants, those evangelizing efforts soon turned into torture, mass killings, rape, and brutal slavery of the innocent natives to fulfill their greed for gold and wealth, according to Las Casas. In his primary account A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolomé de Las Casas attempts to inform King Phillip II of the cruel acts and injustices committed by the Spanish conquistadors. Despite this condemnation, Las Casas does not reject imperialism, because he feels Spain has the obligation to spread the word of Christianity around the world. Instead, he finds fault with the Spanish conquistadors for implementing this evangelization the wrong way, by both physically harming the Native Americans and, fundamentally, in their underlying perception of them as inferior. Furthermore, the key to the coexistence of imperialism with Las Casas’ Catholic ideas and his defense of indigenous peoples lies in considering and treating these Native Americans as equals and as humanity rather than inferiors.

It is easy to mistakenly interpret the fall of Tenochtitlan as a one-sided ravaging, a destruction handed down from the higher power that was the Spanish. The label “conquistador”, or conqueror, given to the Cortés’ forces, reflects such a belief. However, the interactions between the Aztecs and Conquistadors and between Cortés and other natives as depicted in Cortés’ Second Letter and the compilatory Florentine Codex reveal that the exchange that transpired in Tenochtitlan was more complicated than an unprovoked vanquishing on the part of the Spanish. Further analysis of these two texts reveals that Cortés is not the destructive conqueror one would assume him to be, and that the Aztecs may be partially responsible for their own demise.

You have probably learned about Christopher Columbus and how he discovered North America, but do you know about Hernándo Cortés? Hernán Cortés was a famous conquistador who caused the fall of the Aztec Empire. Hernándo, was an amazing conquistador, had a hard early life, and is very important to our world today. Hernán brought large portions of Mexico under the King of Castile. He started many cocoa bean plantations. He had a rough early life and his parents wanted him to be a lawyer, but he went his own way. He was very wealthy and successful. Without him many things would have been different.

Hernan Cortés was born at Medellin in Spain in the year 1485 and eventually became one of the great Governors of Mexico City. Cortés’ way of heading to the top to get noticed was by the Governor of Cuba, Diego Velazquez. He placed Cortes in charge of an expedition to colonize Mexico. He had many great success; he claimed land for Spanish Crown King, Charles V. Since Cortés claimed it for King Charles V he was named the Governor and Captain General of Mexico in 1523. He had many great successes that was still going on when he was on his way to colonize the The New World.

The native Indians had fallen victims to Spain’s conquest, causing tremendous losses of their people, their lands, and traditions, forced into slavery, and to assimilate religion of a foreign civilization, losing all autonomy. The apparition of La Virgen de Guadalupe to an indigenous represented a profound change in their circumstances, because colonial churches had become the center of culture for New Spain. There was no native Indian culture, because the Spaniards had destroyed any trace of it. (Class lecture of 9/14/2016). The indigenous were now part of community that celebrated and honored a figure that signified life, protection, compassion and a devotion that would promote the continuity of indigenous

Hernán Cortés is an important Spanish conquistador who was responsible for the fall of the Aztecs. Cortes was born Medellin, Spain to a family of minor nobility. He chose to find be part of the military in the new world. It started with Columbus finding the Americas. Cortes moved to Santo Domingo in the west of the Indies. Couple of years later, he fought under the supervision of Diego Velazquez. Cortes was supposed to sail to the Yucatan in 1519, it was canceled because of the cost. Although Cortes conquered the Aztec Empire to make them join the holy faith of Christianity, his main priorities were searching for gold for himself and become in power.

In her book, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570, Australian historian and anthropologist Inga Clendinnen explores the conflict between the ambitious and persistent Spanish conquistadors and the resisting and defensive Mayan Indians in the midst of Franciscan friars’ mission to convert the Indians to Christianity in the 16th century colonial world. Clendinnen allows readers to see the drama unfold through two perspectives, that of the Spanish, who she classifies as explorers, conquerors, settlers, missionaries and that of the Indians. Clendinnen’s thorough research suggests that although the Franciscan persecution of idol worshippers undermined the Mayan community, the Maya’s understanding of the past gave them a cultural resilience that helped them cope with the drastic

Dear Hernan Cortes, we admire you for all those places you visit . At the age of 19, you sailed to New World. Then, migrated a journey to Cuba.After that, you went to explore Mexico. After, you traveled to the island of Santo Domingo, or Hispaniola. That shows us that you like to learn about the places that you visit and that you like traveling.You made a excellent decision of sailing with the wind. If you went against it, it would cost you a lot of trouble to arrive to your destination. As you can see, sailboats which are powered only by the wind can travel easily with the wind at their backs, but it may seem impossible that they turn around and come home again, with the wind blowing straight against them.

The success of the Spaniards' colonization of the Americas was partly a result of the condition of the natives. Columbus referred to the natives as "timorous creatures" without any weapons, so " the men who remain there alone sufficient to destroy all that land". In addition to this, the Aztec belief in the return of Quetzalcoat also played a significant role in the submission of the natives to the Spaniards. As the Spaniards were coming from the sea with their ships, the natives believed that they were the agents of the God and thus they showed their respect. Columbus recounted that "they all believe that power and goodness are in the sky, and they believed very firmly that I, with these ships and crew, came from the sky; and in such opinion they recevied me at every place where I landed..." Another, yet not the last, factor in the success of the Spaniards was their use of Indian tribes such