Hernán Cortés’ Turf-War Trap Against Fellow Spaniards

Around August, 1519, the conquistador Hernán Cortés went to the city of Cempoala to talk to his native allies about a fateful mission he was envisioning—to seek out the Aztec leader, Montezuma II. Giving the Spaniards a course in regional politics, the Cempoalans (who had been brought into rebellion against Montezuma by Cortés) suggested that the Spaniards enlist the aid of the Tlascalans, perhaps Montezuma’s greatest native foe at the time. Eager to start his journey, Hernan Cortés deputized a man named Juan Escalante to look after their newfound colony of Vera Cruz during his absence. With his intel gathered and his forces mustered, Cortés was ready to begin a new phase of his expedition. Yet, before he could set off, a message arrived from Vera Cruz with troubling information. A European ship had sailed past the colony, and despite the inhabitants of Vera Cruz making smoke signals, and waving red cloaks in the air to catch the attention of the ship, the sailors onboard pretended not to see them and refused to enter the colony’s harbor, instead dropping anchor at a location several miles away.

It was all bad news for Cortés. Various thoughts must have run through his head. Did the ship belong to a rival colonial power? Was it a crew of pirates or outlaws? Cortés did not have any reinforcements scheduled—in fact the governor he worked for wanted him arrested.

In response to the message, Cortés gathered around fifty of his swiftest men, leaving the rest behind in Cempoala, and quickly marched back to Vera Cruz, reaching the colony around nightfall. Upon arrival, there was little rest and no food for the weary travelers, as Cortés almost immediately set off with the same band of fifty men, this time heading for where the mysterious ship had anchored. While they marched, they happened to encounter four scouts who had been dropped off by the ship—these men, they found out, were not pirates, and neither were the scouts from rival kingdoms or empires. Instead, they were fellow Spanish explorers, sent to claim land in Mexico for the Spanish crown on behalf of the governor of Jamaica, Francisco de Garay. Despite them being on the same team, as it were, Hernán Cortés looked upon this new ship of Spaniards with hostility.

Cortés’s motivations in Mexico may have been for country and currency, but there was one more word beginning with ‘C’ that he likely prioritized before the rest—Cortés. This was his turf and he already did not want to share it with his boss in Cuba, much less the governor of Jamaica. Hernán Cortés arrested the four scouts and continued marching to where the rival ship was sighted.

Cortés eventually decided that his best course of action was to seize the ship. He brought the captured Spaniards to their rendezvous point and pressured them to signal their comrades on the ship to row ashore. The sailors, however, had seen Cortés’ forces, and wisely ignored the signals.

His first plan thwarted, Cortés masterminded a more subtle plot. He commandeered the clothes of his four prisoners and dressed four of his own men of similar sizes in the captives’ clothing. These disguised conquistadors were left at the rendezvous point, while Cortés led the rest of his band along the coastline back toward Vera Cruz, letting the sailors see their departure. As soon as Cortés was out of sight of the ship, however, he quickly marched his force back to a forested area near the men he had left behind, and he set up an ambush for the rival Spaniards. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was present for this subterfuge, wrote down his experiences during that odd night and morning:

“So four of our men remained behind dressed in the prisoners’ clothes, and the rest of us with Cortes hid in a wood till after midnight, when the moon had set and it was dark enough for us to creep down to the mouth of the creek. Here we concealed ourselves again, leaving only the four soldiers to be seen; and when dawn broke these four began to wave their cloaks at the ship, from which a boat with six sailors quickly put off. Two of these sailors jumped ashore to fill two pitchers with water, and we who were with Cortes remained in hiding, waiting for the others to land. However they stayed in the boat, and our four men who were disguised kept their faces hidden and pretended to be washing their hands. Then the crew of the boat shouted: ‘Come on board. What are you doing there? Why don’t you come?’ Then one of our men called back: ‘Come on shore, you’ll find there’s a well.’ As they did not recognize his voice the men in the boat rowed away, and though we went on calling no one answered us. We wanted to shoot at them with our muskets and crossbows, but Cortes would not let us” (The Conquest of New Spain, chapter 60).

As the rowboat escaped to the ship, Cortés awkwardly launched his trap and captured the two men who had come ashore to gather water. After spending the entire night on the coast without food, he had managed to only capture six of the rival explorers, and the ship was able to sail away. Hernán Cortés brought his prisoners back to Vera Cruz, and Francisco de Garay would continue to be a political rival in the region for years to come.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution

Sources:

• The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz, translated by J. M. Cohen. New York: Penguin Books, 1963.
• http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm#CHAPTER_CXXXIII 
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/garay-francisco-de-1523  

Remember When the United States Media Presented Fidel Castro As A Hero Back In 1957?

(Fidel Castro arrives MATS Terminal, Washington, D.C., c. 1959, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

In December, 1956, Fidel Castro and more than eighty armed guerrilla fighters disembarked their ship, the Granma, and landed in a swampy area of Cuba near the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Despite their subtlety, Castro’s landing did not go unnoticed—military forces loyal to Cuba’s military dictator, Gen. Fulgencio Batista, were already there to intercept the guerrillas. In the intense firefight that followed, around fifty of Castro’s men were killed. The rest of the survivors fled to the mountains, where they regrouped, reorganized and began recruiting.

After the initial bloody skirmish, the Cuban military pumped out heaps of propaganda claiming that Fidel Castro and other revolutionary leader were all dead. One United States reporter, however, would soon disprove the military’s claims after an interview with Castro, face-to-face.

On February 24, 1957, The New York Times published the first of Herbert L. Matthews’ three articles about the situation in Cuba. The first article was given huge coverage—it was the headline on the newspaper’s front page. With modern hindsight, the observations and descriptions given by the reporter about Castro are endlessly ironic and even humorous.

Before describing his meeting with Castro, Matthews gave a brief description of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary 26th of July Movement. He described the rebels as a youthful socialist and nationalist group that, while not very warm to the United Sates, was also anti-communist. Their goal, he claimed, was to topple Gen. Batista and reinstitute a constitutional democracy. At the time of Matthews’ article, this was actually a fairly accurate description for portions of the movement. Many revolutionaries were solely focused on ousting Batista and restoring democracy—only after Fidel Castro was in power would the more democratic revolutionaries be arrested, made to mysteriously disappear, forced into exile, or simply massacred. Yet, that is a digression from this particular story.

Along with his wife, Matthews worked with the Cuban revolutionary network near the Sierra Maestra Mountains to gain an audience with Fidel Castro. The rebels advised Matthews to bring his wife along for the journey, so that the military roadblocks would find the reporter less suspicious. After they passed the checkpoints, Matthew’s wife was left at the home of a warm and hospitable Castro sympathizer. From there the reporter posed as an American sugarcane plantation owner, with a rebel acting as his interpreter. Together, they trudged through flooded fields until they reached the mountains, where they searched for Castro’s scouts. Matthew’s guide repeatedly signaled with two low whistles, until two responding notes were heard in the distance. The scouts then led Matthews to an outpost where the Castro brothers soon arrived for their interview.

In his article, the reporter lavished the rebels with an abundance of praise. He appreciated their generous hospitality. He enjoyed their simple, but delicious, food and drink. Even a blanket he was given by the rebels was praised as luxurious. To top it all off, Fidel Castro brought Cuban cigars to the interview. In these accommodations, Matthews and Castro sat down for a hopeful conversation about the future of Cuba. Unfortunately, many of Castro’s responses turned out to be misleading propaganda.

In his interview with Matthews, Castro commented that he had no ill will toward the United States or its people. His only verbal attack against the U.S. in the interview was criticism over United States weapon shipments to Gen. Batista, a practice that the U.S. ended in 1958. Castro and his men went on to claim that they always paid for any materials that they commandeered from the countryside. The rebels even reported to Matthews that their policy toward captured soldiers was to simply disarm and release them.

Matthews challenged very little, if any, of Castro’s claims in his article, and the United States people, at that time, had a fairly positive attitude toward Fidel Castro—he was seen by many at as a modern Robin Hood figure, a man who used disreputable tactics to achieve honorable goals. United States respect for Castro would eventually plummet, however, as the dictator allied himself closer and closer to the Soviet Union as the Cold War continued to rise in tension.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Sources:

• The Cuba Libre Story. Documentary series published by Netflix, 2016. 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fidel-Castro 
• http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/matthews/matthews022457.pdf#page=2&zoom=auto,-65,417