Talk:Hernán Cortés

The section "After the fall of Tenochtitlan" needs work

I am really not very comfortable with the following text but I'm not ready to remove it without a better understanding of the events described therein.

<begin quoted text> Bernal Diaz del Castillo tells us that other Spaniards supported him on his brutal decision to execute Cuauhtémoc. The execution eventually had to be carried out by Tlaxcallan soldiers. Notarized testimony at his many subsequent trials (for murdering his legal wife, etc.) has abundant testimony from friends and enemies alike that this crime ruined Cortés. He never forgave himself and seems to have gone somewhat mad.

Cortés took off on a senseless, death-defying expedition through Guatemala to Honduras to punish a fellow Spaniard who had betrayed him, and with his departure all shadow of personal authority left Mexico. He became paranoid as well, having Cuauhtémoc hanged over the strong objections of his men. <end quoted text>

My basic problem is that the above text is highly derogatory of Cortes and I just haven't seen any support for this assessment of his post-Tenochtitlan behavior. A more neutral discussion of his exploration of Baja California seems to be in order. I'll do try to do some research and then improve this section.

Link to online version of Cortez's first letter is wrong

Hi there,

I have noticed that the link provided to the online version of Cortez's first "Carta de Relacion" does not lead to the document (this is under "Writings"). Could someone change it? Please find below the correct link.

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/IbrAmerTxt/IbrAmerTxt-idx?type=header&id=IbrAmerTxt.Spa0015&pview=hide

Thank you very much in advance.

March 12, 2008 (4:11 EST)

173.89.14.170 (talk) 15:34, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay first of all I want to announce that all the comments made by bcr were made by me! bcr wasn't a real account. That was just a name I came up with to sign under. This was something I signed under with a different IP address before. However, I was wondering if I could remove all the comments I made on this page. I don't think it's fair to leave my comments if nobody cares about them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.89.14.170 (talk • contribs) 11:34, March 8, 2009

Edit request from 71.231.250.228, 9 December 2010

{{edit semi-protected}} I am a college student and I recently took an anthropology class with Dr. R.Farrow, at Greenriver Community College, where I learned that H. Cortez was never a conquistador. Also that his endeavor into Mexico was an act of piracy and against the King of Spain's Law. As a result the king had an arrest order for cortez to bring him to justice and possibly be hung for piracy. H. Cortez apparently killed the commanding officers of the Spanish Navel fleet sent to arrest him and took control of the ships and the men and returned to his already begun actions in Mexico. The stolen gold he returned to Spain with along with the territories in Mexico were his method of paying for his pardon and life, in a sense. This I learned from a man with a PHd. in Anthropology. Please review your article on H. Cortez and please do not refer to him as a Conquistador. In this day and age where information is at ones finger tips let us collaborate together to discontinue the practice of misinforming our youth. Crispin Prado

71.231.250.228 (talk) 09:30, 9 December 2010 (UTC) Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. While I am not saying that I doubt the professor, I'm sure that if you talked to him, he would agree that, in scholarly articles and encyclopedias, information must be verified with reliable sources. If you can contact the professor and get details about his sources, or if he provided those to you, please let us know. Then we can determine how to incorporate that info into the article. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:07, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

The perspective given by your professor is mostly correct. Cortes did violate the king's law and acted beyond the explicit authority granted to him in the name of the king by Gov. Velasquez. Yet he did not kill other Spaniards that we know of. The encounter your professor mentioned mentioned was between Cortes and Panfilo de Narvaez who had been sent to arrest Cortes. That was a bloodless event in which Cortes convinced the arresting expedition to join his cause. Ultimately, Cortes called himself a conquistador which makes it perfectly reasonable to call him one. Additionally, after the siege and conquest of Tenochtitlan the King retroactively granted Cortes full rights to conquer the region nullifying any earlier insubordination. He was subsequently made governor of the region. You professor I believe was emphasizing the fact that the Spanish conquest was not a monolithic event in which Spaniards were sent out 'en mass' for a specific goal. Rather it was a complex process in which competing goals and rivalries existed. Cortes did commit treason, he did oppose other Spaniards, but he was also a conquistador. Grin20 (talk) 15:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Do contents of Cortés' letters belong in this article?

The entire contents of his 2nd letter to Charles V was recently added to the article - does it belong here? I'd guess that it belongs (with other letters) in its own article, or simply as an external reference. There may be copyright problems as well, while the original letters are long since past copyright, the translation was from 1986 and probably is still under copyright. If we do keep the letter in the article, we need to at a minimum reformat for readability. Tarl.Neustaedter (talk) 03:22, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, someone answered my question by simply deleting the text in question, so question is moot. Thanks. Tarl.Neustaedter (talk) 21:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

HERNÁN CORTES WAS SPANISH.

Hernan was Spanish. From the union of the crown of Castilla and the crown of Aragon in 1492 is born Spain. Always we never speak about Spanish Empire, about Castilian Empire, it is an incongruity to speak about Spanish empire and to say that Hernán Cortes was Castilian, to modify the mistake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.120.149.231 (talk) 10:31, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is. We do indeed speak of the Spanish empire, not the Castilian empire. Hernán Cortés was born when Castile and Aragon were separate kingdoms, albeit the two crowns married to each other, and died when they were unified under a single king. The Kingdom of Castile continued to formally exist on paper into the 18th century, but generally, the boundary is considered to be when Carlos V ascended the throne, unifying the two crowns into a single person. Cortés probably thought of himself as Castilian, but the possessions brought into the empire were definitely thought of as Spanish - witness the mesoamerican region being known as "New Spain". It's not uncommon to end up with this kind of dichotomies during times of national upheaval. Tarl.Neustaedter (talk) 18:52, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 13 January 2012

The last sentence of the second paragraph reads, "Cortés returned to Spain in 1541 where he died peacefully but embittered six years later." It is clunky and confusing due to its lack or punctuation. It should read, "Cortés returned to Spain in 1541, where he died, peacefully but embittered, six years later."

Me2-BFD (talk) 21:42, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Done, although I found your rewrite overly punctuated, so I modified it a bit. — Bility (talk) 00:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Encomienda not Repartimiento

Under early life, after Cuba. He was given an Encomienda - no land was given to the early conquistadors, just Indian labor. The Repartimiento does not come around until after the New Laws as a response to the abuse of the Encomienda. This mistake is made frequently throughout Wikipedia. (Heck even the Repartimiento page dates it after the New Laws!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.254.159.120 (talk) 05:10, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I swapped the two instances and edited the second one for clarity. Good catch!Grin20 (talk) 15:32, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect Link to Diego Velázquez

In the section, "Appointment to governorship of Mexico and internal dissensions" there is a link to Diego Velázquez the Spanish Painter.

"In 1523, the Crown (possibly influenced by Cortés's enemy, Bishop Fonseca),[11] sent a military force under the command of Francisco de Garay to conquer and settle the northern part of Mexico, the region of Pánuco. This was another setback for Cortés who mentioned this in his fourth letter to the King in which he describes himself as the victim of a conspiracy by his archenemies Diego Velázquez, Diego Columbus and Bishop Fonseca as well as Francisco Garay."

I believe this link is meant to be to Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar the Governor of Cuba as Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez the painter was not born until 1599. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.166.83.254 (talk) 19:05, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

In July 1519, his men took over Veracruz (FOUNDED)

This article references the Good Friday 1519 landing at and subsequent founding of the 'City of the True Cross' Veracruz. Though indigenous people lived in the area the modern settlement was founded not taken over by Cortes. A source is The Penguin History of Latin America page 17 and the Wiki article on the city (rather than state) of Veracruz also states as much ("his was the place where he founded a city with the name Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, referring to the area’s gold and the fact he landed on a Good Friday."). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.117.145.73 (talk) 22:43, 15 March 2012 (UTC)