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And he believed deeply in the god of his father’s people: the story of Jesus had touched the inner recesses of his heart. He whispered, “I have told the truth, and in the holy name of God who suffered for me, I will say nothing more from this moment until I die.”
Two more times they poured the water, before the judge at last decided that it was truly useless. He made the signal to desist.
To some of the Spaniards, he embodied the myth of the silent, stoic Indian, who suffered at the hands of others. In others’ eyes, he was simply a brave man, a man of honor, in the same way that any man might aspire to be. In whispered Nahuatl, the Indians told each other that the tecpan, the royal office, had been closed down again by armed men, this time in order to torture don Martín.
Early on, after Martín’s father had returned to Mexico, and about the time the boy received word that his mother, Malintzin, had died, he became deathly ill with an infection in the lymph nodes.
His father wrote to a cousin who was supervising his education: “Indeed I tell you that I don’t love him any less than the other [boy] whom God has given me with the Marquesa, and thus I always want to know about him.”
Cortés had married a duke’s daughter during his sojourn in Spain, and she had proceeded to bear her husband a legitimate son, whom they also named Martín. This boy would supplant Malintzin’s son in the inheritance—he would become the marquis, the recognized son of Hernando Cortés—
In subsequent years, don Martín remained connected with his brother, the heir, and they both attended their father’s deathbed. They had a somewhat stormy relationship. They lent each other sums of money, paid it back or failed to, quarreled and made up more than once. Eventually they had a spectacular fight, and the older Martín sued his brother to obtain his inheritance in a lump sum rather than an annuity, saying he wanted nothing more to do with his brother.
his own mother sued him at about the same time, in an effort to force him to provide dowries for his sisters.
He had a rather sordid and very public affair with doña Marina Vázquez de Coronado, the daughter of the man who had led the conquest of New Mexico and the wife of a good friend of his. A witty lampoon began to circulate: “A good man won this land by Marina, and now another man of the same name will lose it by another woman of the same name.”
The City of Mexico had become a political tinder box. First, the Mexica residents had exploded with anger when, in 1564, they were told that they were going to have to pay tribute just like all the other indigenous peoples of central Mexico.
Because don Martín had been given the post of chief constable, it had fallen to him to calm the roiling indigenous populace.
It was certainly true that the Spanish king wished to prevent the growth of an all-powerful noble class in Mexico.
That same day, they also arrested the marquis himself, and well as Luis. These three Cortés brothers were accused of conspiring with others to take over the Audiencia chambers by force, publicly renounce allegiance to the King of Spain, and set the marquis in place as ruler of Mexico.
The residents of Mexico City were stunned. They had not thought it would come to this for highborn Spaniards.
In November 1567, however, a tribunal of special prosecutors arrived from Spain with instructions to reopen the matter.
So it was that in January of 1568, don Martín was put on the rack and given the water treatment. When he would not confess even under torture, his lawyers were able to intervene successfully.
Martín was sentenced to perpetual banishment from Mexico. He died not long after, when the king sent him to fight the rebellious Muslims in the south of Spain.
Why had they been so taut with fear as to lose the ability to reason? If don Martín ever spoke to his dead mother as he lay in his prison cell, they must have laughed bitterly together. They would have known the answer to the question. What the Spaniards were afraid of was, ironically, the Indians.
In traditional accounts of the era, Aztec history has been missing; including it renders the chaotic period much more comprehensible. What seems to be a story of random violence and inexplicable mutual hatred is actually a predictable political crisis.
In the late 1520s, after the murder of Cuauhtemoc, the Spaniards had named Indians they knew and liked to lead the people. The Nahuas used an old term for them, quauhpilli, or “eagle lord,” the term they had always used for commoners or outsiders who rose to positions of power through merit rather than birth.
To Hernando Cortés’s chagrin, he himself was forced to take a backseat as a wealthy private citizen.
Christened Diego de Alvarado, he used his Spanish and indigenous names together and styled himself, “don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin.” After the reinstatement of the royal line in 1538,20 the new tlatoani wanted to make a sort of declaration on behalf of his people. Working together with Pedro de Gante, Huanitzin arranged to have the city’s most talented feather workers, who had once made gorgeous shields, craft a shimmering picture of the mass of Saint Gregory—
It proved an unfortunate moment to become leader of the Mexica people. Beginning in the 1550s, the Spaniards had started to discuss the prospect of having the indigenous people of the island city pay tribute, just like all the other native peoples of Mexico, except that their payment would be made to the Crown, rather than an individual encomendero.
The people had some staunch defenders in the Spanish population, among them the Franciscan friars as well as the viceroy,
Spain, however, had more power over the Indians now than they had had when the conquest was new. King Philip was in no mood to humor the Indians of the New World. He was strapped for cash—
Valderrama insisted that he had it on good authority that the ordinary people would be delighted to pay a head tax to the king, if in exchange for that they were freed of their responsibility to labor on public projects and no longer had to support their own nobility.
The gobernador, don Luis Cipactzin, appealed immediately, but to no avail.
They gave some odd reasons for insisting that their current indigenous governors should not be empowered to rule—saying that they were not literate in the Spanish letters, that they loved to celebrate feast days with old-style dancing and even the wearing of feathers, and that they did not care who was a polygamist or how many taverns there were in the city. These were not complaints likely to emanate from an ordinary indigenous baker and tailor.
More importantly, perhaps, don Luis defended himself in the eyes of his people. In June, he married doña Magdalena Chichimecacihuatl (Chee-chee-me-ka-SEE-watl, Chichimec Woman), who was apparently the ward (the grandniece) of the former gobernador, don Diego Tehuetzquititzin.
Within days of the wedding, don Luis sent emissaries to speak to key groups. The indigenous church painters and scribes who worked for the Franciscans received them with interest. Two elders came who presently were serving on the cabildo. The speakers used ancient metaphors to remind their listeners that they should remain devoted to the cause of keeping the Mexica polity alive and viable, speaking poetically and formally, just as their fathers had done in trying political times. “Does it not stem from here, the breath, the words of the altepetl, its years of blood sacrifices?”
They all felt they simply could not afford to pay the required new head tax every four months. Most did not blame don Luis for the change in the law, as Valderrama wanted them to
members of the indigenous council were arrested. They were to be held hostage while the Crown’s office demanded popular participation in some public works projects in addition to the collection of the tribute. On Friday it was announced that three hundred people would be arrested at random and sold into indentured servitude if the community did not cooperate.
Public tears were symbolic for the Mexica; they were laden with political weight and shed only at significant moments.33 It was as if the woman had touched the core of years of anger. The situation devolved into pandemonium.
The Spanish officers gathered really fast and pursued people and dispersed them. Right away they took people prisoner. The ones whom they collected they took upstairs and put into the hands of the governor, who beat them.
The Spaniards’ chief constable arrived. The people gave a great shout. Perhaps they knew who he was—the son of Hernando Cortés by his indigenous woman, the lady Malintzin. It was indeed don Martín himself who had come on this day in 1564, not long after his arrival in the city.
He said if they did not go home, orders would be issued to arrest them and sell them into slavery.
Forty-six men ended up being arrested—thirty-one Tenochca and fifteen Tlatelolca. They were quickly tried over the next few days; all were found guilty. On July 21, their heads shaven to mark their shame, they were marched through the streets and given two hundred lashes as they went. Then they were sold into servitude for terms of two or five years. The town crier announced the punishment at every corner, so that everyone in the city should know of their crimes.
That Sunday, July 23, the writer mentioned, there was a public performance of the Chalca Woman’s Song, the same vehicle for subtle protest that had been sung years before by the musician known as Flamingo Snake, when he wanted to call the Mexicas’ attention to the unnecessarily draconian measures they were using to repress the Chalca people.
Inspector Valderrama, meanwhile, was in a state of shock. He had genuinely convinced himself that the indigenous people wanted to enter into a cash economy with payments made directly to the king rather than continuing with the status quo.
Malintzin’s son don Martín insisted on resigning as chief constable the moment he learned that don Luis de Velasco had breathed his last. Apparently he could not bear the thought of enforcing the orders of Ceynos and Valderrama.41
Ceynos said, “Fine, you will be sold to the metal works.” “Fine, you know what to do, for you are the king.”47 Pedro Acaçayol’s last words were clearly laced with irony. To the Nahuas, a king by definition knew what was best for his people and considered their future. Yet Ceynos understood nothing about the community he temporarily governed and persisted in making reckless demands, causing social unrest and producing poverty.
One ardent protestor who had not yet been jailed asked to meet with don Luis Cipac and the other cabildo members. He had what he considered a brilliant idea, designed to unite the nobles and the commoners behind one cause.
Now this man suggested that two Mexica individuals, one pilli and one macehualli (one nobleman and one commoner), come forth and agree to sacrifice themselves for their community. They would stand together, each loudly refusing to pay the tax.
They would probably be executed—but they would have made the point to the Spanish authorities that they could not push the Mexica beyond a certain point. That would give the Spaniards pause; it would pressure them to readjust their demands.
They laughed harshly. “You propose that [only] two will die? When they have died, then you will die.”
Word spread throughout the city both of the gobernador’s arrest and of his whipping of the women. In the first week of October, indigenous officials began to move through the neighborhoods of the city, house by house, collecting the tax, or as much of it as they could.
He concluded by forecasting political doom if they didn’t somehow find a way to raise the rest of the required 14,000 pesos, this year and every year, for the Spanish state had not yet exhausted its strength.
He was an Indian from the Chesapeake Bay, in the far north (a kinsman of Powhatan, father of Pocahontas).
Only then did Paquiquineo learn how poorly it had served him that he had impressed the Dominican provincial, fray Pedro de Feria, with his courage and his intelligence. Suddenly the friar decided that he saw in him the key to his order’s future.
He spoke to the archbishop—who was himself a Dominican—and obtained a document forbidding Paquiquineo from returning home.
