Geronimo de Aguilar

Jerónimo or Gerónimo de Aguilar (Écija, province of Seville, 1489-New Spain, 1531) was a Spanish clergyman. Some sources cite him as a subdeacon and others as a friar. He arrived in America with Juan de Valdivia; He was taken prisoner by the Mayans of the Yucatan between 1511 and 1519, the year in which he was rescued by Hernán Cortés, for whom he served as an interpreter in the Mayan language and with whom he participated in the conquest of what is now Mexico.

From castaway to prisoner of the Mayans

Shortly after the Spanish settled in the islands of the Caribbean Sea, in the process that occurred Immediately after naming new governorates of the Indies, Vasco Núñez de Balboa led an expedition in which he would found Santa María de la Antigua del Darién, in September 1510. He was accompanied on that expedition by, among others, two people, Gonzalo Guerrero and Gerónimo de Aguilar, who would later lead the first interactions with the Mayans of the Yucatán peninsula, as a result of a shipwreck in which they both participated and from which they survived.

In effect, the expedition that took them to Santa María la Antigua del Darién, as an outpost sent back to Cuba by Núñez de Balboa, led by Juan de Valdivia, whom he had appointed as his alderman in Santa María de la Antigua, sailing on August 15, 1511, they encountered a great storm. The ship they were traveling on fell prey to the elements.

They were shipwrecked in the shallows of las Víboras or los Alacranes, off the island of Jamaica:

But God attacked the steps of Valdivia, and others understood, if they were to understand it, the works that they did, to be of all worthy eternal fire, because they embarked Valdivia on the same carabela in which he had come and gone, sank with his gold and with his ships in a bass or rocks that are near or next to the Island of Jamaica, which are called the Viper.

Bartolomé de las Casas

About twenty expedition members managed to save their lives in a boat. Eighteen men and two ladies temporarily managed to save their lives with great suffering.

Of the twenty that boarded the boat, dragged along by the currents of the northern Caribbean Sea, only eight reached the Yucatan coast. They have a first contact with the Cocomes, a Mayan group that predominated in the eastern region of the Yucatecan peninsula at that time, which was quite aggressive. Gerónimo de Aguilar was the main source of this story, since he was the only survivor together with Gonzalo Guerrero, but, joining the expedition of Hernán Cortés and narrating his adventure:

...(Aguilar) said that jumping from the boat those who were left alive, then they stumbled upon Indians, one of whom with a pothole smote one of our heads, whose name kept silent; and that going stunned, tightening with both hands his head, he stumbled into a thickness of toppled with a woman, which, holding her head, left him healthy, with such a sharp sign. He remained as a fool; he never wanted to be inhabited, and at night he came to the houses of the Indians for food, which did not hurt him, because they understood that their gods had healed him, seeing them that he was so horrific, he could not heal himself by the hand of one of his gods. They were happy with him, because he was funny and without prejudice lived in this life three years until he died.

Cervantes de Salazar, Francisco, Chronicle of New SpainBook I, Cap. XXII.

During the first encounters with the Maya, Captain Valdivia tried to defend himself and lost his life in the attempt. All the castaways died with the exception of Gerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero, who miraculously saved their lives. Fatal adventure for most of the expedition members, resulting in a prolonged stay for both characters in Yucatan.

Later, Hernán Cortés welcomed Gerónimo de Aguilar. Gonzalo de Guerrero, on the other hand, had already started a family and decided to stay to fight against the Spanish when the war of conquest spread in the Yucatan peninsula.

Eight years later, the expedition led by Hernán Cortés finds the castaways

When in 1519 the expedition headed by Hernán Cortés that would become part of the process of the conquest of Mexico, landed in Cozumel, he learned that there were Spanish shipwrecked people in those lands who had been part of previous expeditions and who lived among the Mayans.

Narrated by Diego López de Cogolludo in his work History of Yucatán (Madrid 1688).

"With the good treatment of General Hernando Cortés, with the failure of the Spaniards to do any harm to the Indians, they just secured all those of the Island, and they brought good provisions for the army. (...) A familiar communication with the Indians, says the chronist Herrera, it turned out that some understood that near that island on the firm land of Yucatan, there were men like the Spaniards with beards, and that they were not natural of that kingdom, with which Hernando Cortes had occasion to seek them.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo, for his part, expresses it in another way:

That as the general had heard of the soldiers who came with Francisco Hernández of Cordova, that the Indians told them Castilán, Castilán, pointing to the east, that he called the same Bernal Díaz and a Vicar named Martín Ramos, and asked them, that if it were as they were said; and answering that yes, the general said, that there were Spaniards in Yucatan, and it would be good to do diligence among the Indians."

And the chronicler of the True History of the Conquest of New Spain continues:

"He commanded the general to call the caciques, and by the language of the Indian Melchor (who already knew some of the Castilian, and that of Cozumel (Cuzamil) is the same as that of Yucatan) they were asked if they had news of them. All of them answered, that they had known some Spaniards in this land, and gave signs of them, saying that some caciques had them for slaves, and that the merchant Indians of that island had spoken them a few days, that they would be far from the earth in, and the way of two soles."

Hernán Cortés sends letters to the castaways

Bernal Díaz continues by saying:

Great was the joy of the Spaniards with this new one, and so the general told the caciques that with letters, that would give them to them, they would send them to seek. To those who pointed out the caciques (to go, flattered) and gave some shirts and beads, promising to give them more when they came back. The caciques told the general, sent with the rescue messengers to give to the masters, whose slaves were, to let them come, and so they were given of all kinds of accounts and other things, and the two smaller ships were set up with twenty balls and shotguns, by their captain Diego de Ordaz. He gave them order the general who were on the coast of Punta de Cotóch (c'otoch) waiting eight days with the major ship, and with the minor he came to realize what they were doing. He gave everything, and the letter that General Cortez gave to the Indians, that they should take to the Spaniards, thus said: "Lords and brothers, here in Cozumél (Cuzamil) I have known, that you are in the power of a cacique detained. I ask you for mercy, that you then come here to Cozumel (Cuzamil), who for this purpose sent a ship with soldiers, if you need them, and rescue to give those Indians with whom you are, and carry the ship of square eight days to await you. Come quickly: from me you will be well looked, and taken advantage of. I stay here on this island with five hundred soldiers and eleven ships. In them I go through God the way of a people called Tabasco or Potonkan.

Jerónimo de Aguilar meets the expedition members

The Indians who brought the letter from Hernán Cortés gave it to Jerónimo de Aguilar. Bernal refers that they did not dare to give it to him, but to his master, and that Aguilar, hesitating a lot, wanted to give him permission to leave, with great humility he put the whole business in the will of his master. Giving him permission, he had some Indians accompany him, asking him to request the friendship of the Spaniards for him because he wanted to have it with such brave men.

But Bernal Díaz affirms:

"Al Jerónimo de Aguilar the letter and the ransoms were given, and that having read it was very loose (it is well understood the degree in which it would be) and that he went to his master with it, and the ransoms to give him the license, which he then gave to go where he tasted. Jerome Aguilar, given his master's license, went in search of another partner named Gonzalo Guerrero and taught him the letter, and said what was going on."

It is said that Gonzalo Guerrero replied:

"Brother Aguilar, I am married and have three children. You have me for cacique and captain, when there are wars, the face I have labrada, and the ears that will tell of my Spaniards, if you see me going this way? You go with God, who already see that these my little children are beautiful, and give me your life of those green beads that you bring, to give them, and I will say, that my brethren send them from my land. "

The chronicle of Díaz del Castillo follows:

"When they came back to Cozumel (Cuzamil) the ships, he put it on Jerónimo de AguilarAnd he tried hard to reach them. He paid with the green accounts of the ransom that sent him, and six Indian remeros that in a short time (for not more than four leagues the journey) passed from the band of Tierra firme to the beach of the island, although by the violence of the currents they decayed some of the port to where they would stop. There were soldiers who had been hunted for pigs, of whom the navel had up in the spine; they told the general as they had seen, that from the part of Cape Cotoch he went through a large canoe to the island, and that the people of it beside the people. He sent the general to Captain Andrew of Tapia, who with two other soldiers was to recognize that newness was that. Seeing the native remeros go the Spaniards for them, they wanted to take to board, but Aguilar begged them, telling them, that they were not afraid, that they were his brothers. As the Spaniard came in the same way as the Indians, he sent to General Cortés, captain Andrew of Tápia, that seven Indians were those who had arrived in the canoe. The Spaniards who found them asked Captain Tapia for Spanish; but how did he come, to know him, though he was present? From his natural colour he was black, he came three-wayed like an Indian slave, he brought a row to the shoulder, a ruin blanket, his parts covered with a cloth like a braguero, that the Indians use and call Puyut, and in the blanket a lump, which was later seen were very old hours, and with this snare he came to the presence of General Cortés who also asked the Spanish captain Tapia Jerónimo de AguilarAnd when he had put himself in cradles, like the rest of the Indians, he understood the general, and said, I am; and Cortés commanded him to wear a shirt and a heap, and some underpants, and to put a pint on him, and they gave him to cover his head a bush, which at that time could not be given other garments."

Jerónimo de Aguilar set out with Hernán Cortés to the Conquest of Mexico in which he served as an interpreter or translator since he spoke the Mayan language, and together with La Malinche who spoke the Mayan and Nahuatl languages, Hernán Cortés was able to communicate with the Mayas and Mexicas through the triangulation of three languages, from the Spanish language to the Mayan language (through Gerónimo de Aguilar) and from the Mayan language to the Nahuatl language (through La Malinche) and vice versa.

Later Life

For his merits in the conquest, he was entrusted with the towns of Molango, Xochicoatlán and Malilla. He had a natural daughter with an Indian named Elvira Toznenitzin, daughter of the Tlaxcalan nobleman Alonso Cuauhtimotzin, from whose union a daughter named Luisa de Aguilar was born.

Jerónimo de Aguilar died in 1531 near the Pánuco River. The towns of his entrustment were retaken by the Crown. The place where he was buried is unknown.