Student in Residency Parts 3,4 & 5 - Essay Example

Still, there were those who saw him as weak and ineffectual, and just really incidental to the defeat of the mexicas. In spite of that, many more conquistados followed after him due to the fact that mexico proved to be highly profitable to the Spanish empire. It can be argued that cortes provided the ultimate signal of conquest not just for the for Spanish conquistados but conquerors from all over the world through the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Hernán 16). It is important to understand that one of the most important elements of Cortes’ portrayed is that he was working very closely with the Catholic Church.

The most important aspect of the conquest in the history of colonial Spain is the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the introduction of Catholicism to Mexico. Thus the emphasis is not on the wealth alone that was channeled out of colonies of Latin America back to Spain, but rather what the Mexican people gained from the conquest (Cortés 26). When Hernando Cortes Landed along the Caribbean coast (present day Mexico) in 1519 his goal was to conquer the Mexican empire. In order to do that, he understood that he needed to the assistance of native allies.

He only had about 600 people and of those, only 530 were fighting men. The Spanish capitalized on the fact that the Mexican was always warring with their neighbors, and they had many surrounding city states under subjugation. These groups were ideal for forming alliances. Without doubt, to successfully cultivate military alliances, there was the overriding need to communicate with the subjugated people under Mexica Empire. But there was the problem of language barrier. Early on in the expedition, Cortes picked up Geronimo de Aguilar,a ship-wrecked Spaniard proficient in the Mayan dialect.

Unfortunately the groups that Cortes wanted to most ally with were the Tlaxcala dialect who spoke Nahualt not the Maya dialect. He was however fortunate to receive from a Mayan