Among the women who participated in the Conquest no distinctions were made between indigenous and Spanish.
Malinche: the 'language' of Hernán Cortés and the mother of a legitimate bastard
María de Estrada: the brave one who fought "better than any man" in the Americas
To María del Carmen Martínez Martínez, professor at the University of Valladolid, we owe a magnificent study of the oldest document that is conserved of the events carried out by Hernán Cortés after his departure from Cuba: the Petition to the Cabildo of Veracruz , dated the 20th of June 1519, at the foot of which several hundred signatures of the "companions, neighbors and shelves in the village" were stamped. All of them, some executed by hands alien to those who were behind the ink, belong to men. However, it is known that with the first conquerors who left Cuba, some women passed to the continent , to which those who came in the successive waves of Spaniards who joined the courteous host joined.
A trace by the classic sources allows to reconstruct the traces of some Spaniards , but also of the natives that some members of the host of Cortes took as wives. Such was the case of the palentino Juan Pérez de Arteaga, who received a Tlaxcaltec woman with whom he had children and with whom he could learn the rudiments of the Nahuatl language, because during the siege of Tenochtitlan he served as an interpreter to Cortés . As in other similar cases, among them that of Cortés himself, Arteaga later married a Spanish woman, which did not prevent him from legitimizing his mestizo children.
Relations with indigenous women oscillated between sexual urgency and the realm of fantasy. Years after the taking of Tenochtitlan, Cortés, in his Fourth Letter of Relationship, regarding the expedition of Gonzalo de Sandoval to Colima, referred to “an island all populated with women, without any male and that at certain times go from the mainland men, with whom they have access and those who become pregnant, if they give birth to women they keep them and if men throw them out of their company ». The connections with the fables that incorporated powerful females did not cease there.
In 1535, Cortés took possession of a bay he called from California . The name came from the Sergas de Esplandián , a work that speaks of an island populated by black women similar to the Amazons, ruled by Queen Calafia. A much more real woman, his wife, Doña Juana de Zúñiga, tried to curb the adventurous life of her husband. The Marquise sent a letter to Cortes in which he asked "to look at the sons and daughters he had, and stop stubbornly more with fortune and be content with the heroic deeds and fame that are everywhere of his person." This, along with another letter sent by the viceroy of Mendoza, managed to get the conqueror back to Acapulco leaving behind some waters that are now known as Mar de Cortés .
Before, in a context close to the harshest reality , we find women with their own profiles. The Sad Night brought up another female figure. Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, in his Chronicle of New Spain , narrated how, while the Spanish column tried to recover from the disaster, Alonso de Ojeda found a preacher named Cristóbal, accompanied by "his wife, who was gypsy; he found them half dead in the ground , they poured water on his face, gave them to drink and a bird that was cooked, with which they returned. "
In the final offensive, during the work that was carried out on the dock of Lake Texcoco to throw away the brig, the compass of the hammer of the convert Hernando de Aguilar , Majayerro, of which Bernal Díaz del Castillo said he had just lost to his wife, Beatriz de Ordás , because of fevers. Soon after, we find the name of two women dedicated to caring for the wounded between the smell of oil and the rumor of psalms. This is Isabel Rodríguez and the mulatto Beatriz de Palacios , wife of Pedro de Escobar, whom she sometimes relieved in the night guards. To the dripping of feminine names, in which María de Estrada's one stands out , we must add those that Bernal contributed when narrating the banquet that happened to the conquest and the sacking of the heart of the Mexican Empire.
A scene that, in some points, reminds of another feast, allegorical of the Last Supper: the one that included Luis Buñuel in Viridiana . To celebrate the victory reached on August 13, 1521, Cortés sent wine and pigs from Cuba from Veracruz . The place chosen was Coyoacán, since the city of Tenochtitlan still remained devastated and wrapped in the unhealthy stench of the insepultured bodies. Not without causing discomfort among those not summoned, Cortes invited the captains and the soldiers he considered most important.
From the beginning, the confusion took hold of the party, a disorder that increased when the wine began to run and what Bernal called "Noah's plant" , referring, perhaps, to the substance that Moctezuma smoked. In that loaded environment some men could be seen walking over the tables. Others were unable to find their way out of the courtyard they were in, while some claimed that they would buy gold chairs for the horses or make that metal the tips of their arrows.
Raised the tablecloths, some women went out to dance with the men, who danced armed. Again it is Bernal who puts face and condition on the women who attended: "Firstly, the old María de Estrada , who later married Pedro Sánchez Farfán ; and Francisca de Ordaz , who married a gentleman named Juan González de León; Bermuda, who married Olmos de Portillo, the one from Mexico; another lady, wife of Captain Portillo, who died in the brig, and this, because she was a widow, did not take her out to the party ; and a Fulana Gómez, a woman who it was from Benito de Vegel; and another beautiful lady who married a Hernán Martín, who came to live in Guaxaca; and another old woman who told herself Isabel Rodríguez, a woman who at that time was a Fulano de Guadalupe; and another woman something Mari Hernández , an old woman who belonged to Juan de Cáceres, the rich man; I don't remember that they hoped in New Spain anymore, because since they had raised the tables, I had a lot of joy, and they thanked God for the many goods and favors that we always hac continues to ea the made ".
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