On good friday of april 1519, hernando cortés and his company of supporters landed on a beach in what is now Mexico. On that beach, he and his companions resolved to found a town, named La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (the rich town of the True Cross), in commemoration of their landing on that holy day. This event provides an important signpost in the conquest of Mexico, a dividing point from the prior activities of the Spaniards in the New World. Cortés had sailed from Cuba with some five hundred men under the auspices of and with a...

From the time of christopher columbus’s first voyage in 1492, Spaniards had eagerly come to the Caribbean to seek their fortunes. Except for 1497, when the return fleet gathered in Hispaniola was destroyed by a hurricane, ships traveled between Spain and the Americas every year following 1492. Europeans completed dozens of transatlantic voyages before Columbus’s death in 1506. In 1508 alone Spaniards made forty-five such journeys.¹ By 1520 they were undertaking annual transatlantic voyages of commerce and colonization, which were financed and organized by Spanish merchants who were shipping European textiles, implements, food, wine, and medicines to the colonists.² Already...

The founding of the town of Veracruz was a critical point in the conquest of Mexico. The events at Veracruz changed the direction and nature of the Cortés expedition, marking the shift from a mission of trade and discovery to one of settlement and conquest. One modern scholar has referred to this event as “crossing the Rubicon,”¹ comparing it to the famous moment when Julius Caesar entered Roman territory not as a returning general but as a conqueror. The men who participated in the events understood them to be daring. Historians looking back have also recognized their significance.

The founding...

On april 22, 1519, as we discussed in chapter 2, hernando Cortés and his company landed on the eastern shore of what is now Mexico. On the sandy beach of the island they named San Juan de Ulúa, facing the broad expanse of the mainland, he and his companions founded a town they named La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, which was destined to become modern Mexico’s major port. Despite the heat, humidity, and unrelenting mosquitoes, all of the men, including Cortés, worked to establish a toehold on the North American mainland. These events marked an important moment in...

En la villa rica de la Vera Cruz deEta ysla de

Uluacan nuevamente descubierta

lunes veynte dias del mes de junyo año

del nascimiento del nuestro salvador Jesu

Christo de mill e quinientos e diez y nueve a estando presentes los

muy nobles señores Alonso Hernandez Portocarrero e Francisco de

Montejo alcaldes e Pedro de Alvarado e Alonso de Martin e

Alonso de Grado e Christoval Doli rregidores en su cabildo

acordando algunas cosas conplideras al servicio de dios

nuestro señor e de sus altezas segund que lo an de uso e de costumbre

e en presencia de mi Pedro...

In the last two hundred years many scholars have attempted to compile lists of the conquerors based on various accounts of the conquest and on lists compiled after the fact, and through archival research, as was outlined in chapter 3.¹ The following analysis of the composition of the Cortés expedition has relied heavily on the works of Bernard Grunberg, Hugh Thomas, Robert Himmerich y Valencia, and Peter Boyd-Bowman. Other scholars have also studied the composition of the expeditions which fought in other regions of the Americas, including Panama, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. Consequently, one can begin to take a comparative...

A.Gonzalo de Alvarado. Gonzalo was one of the four Alvarado brothers who served in the conquest of Mexico, the most famous of which was Pedro (see signature D). The brothers were originally from Badajoz. Gonzalo arrived in the New World in 1510, landing in Santo Domingo. He had moved on to Cuba by 1517, settling in the town of Trinidad. He was elected one of the town councilmen (regidor) of Veracruz. He might have signed the 1520 Segura de la Frontera letter, since there is an incomplete name which might well be his. He served as a company captain,...

The founding of la villa rica de la vera cruz was a unique event in the conquest of Mexico and in the exploration and discovery of the New World up until that point. Certainly other towns had been founded in the Indies prior to 1519, but none became so heavily invested with symbolic meaning. The image of the conquistador—clad in a steel breastplate andmorriónhelmet, striding through the waves to plant the flag of Spain on some American shore—is mythic in its proportions. In just such a way the founding of the town of Veracruz has become...