Gonzalo Guerrero - Reluctant To Return

Reluctant To Return

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."

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. "

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.