On Cortes-- The One and the Many

Fig. 1: The Man Himself, All By Himself

1. The Amazing Expanding and Contracting Pronoun: These are not merely letters; these are public performances, self-conscious public performances. The conquest, re-enacted, re-staged, re-written (and eventually re-sung, though one wonders what Cortes would think). At their center (except when the focus must shift, as we shall see) is Cortes, the writer, the hero, the Conquistador par excellence. All that happens here, from his shifty flight from Cuba to his armed excursions across Mesoamerica, to his pleading for fundage from his Majesty, are the actions of Cortes, are focused on Cortes, and, of course, are written down by Cortes. Here we see him performing before the Crown, before the eyes of the public (at least, the public that might get a hold of this record), not just asking for reimbursement, but asking for something grander and more long-lasting, eternal even: recognition, fame, remembrance. And not just any remembrance, not just any fame- his memory must be in the form he desires, in which he is the motive power of the great Conquest, the man who single-handedly set up New Spain, and perhaps, Old Spain as well, himself bestowing Empire upon his Emperor. But more on the business of New Spain below. The point here is that all of this flows from the hand of Cortes.

Well, almost everything. The initial phase of the Conquest- the embarking from Cuba, the setting of up of Vera Cruz, the initial campaigns- Cortes describes through the imperious, all-embracing I. Here and there other wills, other actors, are allowed to intrude- his companions, for instance, wanted him to lead them, to free them from the stupidity and tyranny of Velasquez. But otherwise, Cortes leads, fights, scouts, builds, all of it. Occasionally we appears, but fleetingly. Cortes does it all, and we marvel. Hellofaguy. Of indigenous allies we hear little to nothing; of Dona Marina, so prominent in Diaz’s narrative, there is a brief mention by name in two places, and a few guessed mentions under the title of ‘translators,’ in the plural, appendages to Cortes’ speech, and nothing more really; her origins are not even brought up until well into the Fifth Letter, and then only briefly. Cortes absorbs Spaniard and indigenous, all fading into his looming pronoun. On an even higher level, Cortes assumes the role of the Monarch himself, most pointedly in his repeated magnanimous bestowal of forgiveness upon repentant towns, in the name of the Sovereign. But he does not stop here- at times Cortes appears to be channeling God Himself, as he suggests that his tactical brilliance was in fact divinely inspired. The lines between Cortes and royal authority- and even divine knowledge and right- become blurry. The great and glorious I expansive, indeed.

But Cortes, as attached as he is to his presence and agency in the text, knows when to draw back- or perhaps, must draw back at times. When things go wrong, he is careful to disentangle himself from events as much as he can. He knew that Spanish strategy- or lack thereof- would go wrong at times during the siege of Tenochtitlan; in the end he triumphed, but there were lots of other actors and wills tangling things up. The presence of allied peoples became inescapable further and further into the war; one gets the feel that Cortes must bow to the overwhelming scope of things. He is unable to occlude what is terribly obvious to him and would likely continue to be terribly obvious in any text, coming straight from la Noche Triste to overwhelming triumph. Something had to be different, and even Cortes cannot avoid it. He seeks to maintain control of the narrative- describing one particular Tlaxcala triumph as only having come alongside Spanish assistance. Yet at some points he must admit outright the balance of things- there are nine hundred Spaniards, he tells us, and one hundred and fifty thousand indigenous allies. Yet even once the Tlaxcala and others appear, they tend, more so here than in Diaz’s account, to melt into one mass of ‘Indians,’ a few with names, but fewer than with Diaz. If the many must appear against Cortes’ one, they are as monolithic as possible.

In the Fifth Letter, we see a somewhat more nuanced Cortes, as there is, one might imagine, somewhat less glory and importance attached to this expedition, the jungle shading things over and obscuring the magnificence of conquering the Mexica capital. Yet Cortes remains in control, and at times his self-image is inflated back to its true heights. He is terribly proud of his bridge, a bridge he built when his compatriots failed him. Yet here he must (I think must is the right word, but perhaps there is some further change going on here?) admit- if it had not been for the chieftans and their followers, no bridge, despite the sheer excellence of Cortes’ plan. Even heroes, it turns out, cannot stand completely alone, even in their own texts.

Fig. 2: Cortes and Some Others

2. Redrawing the Map: This is a world full of written documents, of writing over things, both on paper and otherwise. From the notary reading off his required bit (perhaps in translation, perhaps not) at the start of battle to the final (or is it?) act of Cortes putting it all on paper, for History, the world of the Americas is being re-inscribed. Its geography does not escape. As Cortes views again the ‘New World’ through his text, it becomes old. Granada is discovered again, its inhabitants wearing- just like Muslims!- burnooses, slightly different. Like the Muslim kingdom so recently defeated, Tlaxcala is mountainous, independent, and, presumably, far better off absorbed by the (Re)conquest. If it escapes renaming, that is only because even Cortes shrinks from some tasks he deems to enormous. Other towns and rivers are re-branded, recast as familiar places, the Spaniards not content to simply lay their old geography over the land inside their own heads. Names are followed by more vivid, more long-lasting geographical intrusions, as crosses go up, towns are founded and fortresses erected: the slow, granted, marking of the landscape itself with the traces, ever more and more enduring, of the Spanish presence, of Spanish-Castillian, really- land.

The whole land- much of it simply imagined (perhaps there is a Northwest Passage at one end?)- is named by Cortes: New Spain. Not, importantly, New Castille, but New Spain. Long before the whole can be united, before there is even real full union in Old Spain, Cortes has formed with the flourish of his pen a new entity, an all-embracing (like his imperious, pan-optic, pan-active I) place, a place that does not (yet- ever?) exist, that lies over every geographical and otherwise reality beneath it, and which- so Cortes hopes- will remark every place it embraces. Within its boundaries, now, acts of indigenous resistance become rebellions; conquest is not conquest, really, but merely imposition of the Spanish Monarch’s rightful authority. Function follows form. The name is summoned before the fact, and the fact must arise.

Fig. 3: At the Centre of Things