In Mérida, on Paseo de Montejo, there stands a monument to one of the most famous Spaniards ever to visit the New World. It is a monument to Gonzalo Guerrero, his wife Zazil Há, and their three children. There are no explanatory plaques on it, and few of those who pass by have even heard of the incredibly fascinating story behind the first Spaniard who truly fell in love with Yucatán and its people and became a Maya.

Gonzalo Guerrero was born in Palos de la Frontera in Huelva and died in Honduras around 1536. A sailor, strategist, and military leader of the Maya Indians. Little is known about Gonzalo Guerrero’s life before the conquest of Mexico. He must have arrived in America during one of the early expeditions that sailed from Spain at the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century, but no documentary evidence of this has survived.

In 1511, he sailed on a ship of the fleet of Diego de Nicuesa, governor of Veragua (modern Panama), which was heading from Panama to Santo Domingo and, having lost its way due to a severe storm, was shipwrecked near Jamaica in an area called Gaduki. Only about twenty people survived the shipwreck. They were carried on a small vessel, without water or food, for thirteen days by the current until they reached the coast of Yucatán (Mexico), still unknown to the Spaniards. Half of them died on the way. Only eight survived to land, and they had to resort to cannibalism to survive. The group of eight survivors was captured and enslaved by their captors from the Maya Kokom tribe on the coast of Yucatán. Four of these survivors were sacrificed. The rest were put in cages and fattened as victims for a future festival. The food gave the remaining four the strength to escape to the Maya Tutul Xiu tribe, who were enemies of the Kokoms. The chief of Tutul Xiu made these surviving Spaniards slaves; due to extremely hard labor and exhaustion, only Gonzalo Guerrero and Jerónimo de Aguilar survived. Jerónimo de Aguilar retained his religion and cultural customs, but Gonzalo Guerrero adopted Maya customs and became a military advisor and instructor, teaching the Maya the tactics of Spanish warfare. It was his military training that gave the Maya people living in the eastern jungles of the Yucatán Peninsula the ability to drive out the conquistadors. The Maya of the Quintana Roo region (eastern jungles) were never fully conquered, and only after Mexican federal forces suppressed a prolonged caste war in the early 1900s did this area become a territorial part of Mexico. Then Gonzalo killed an alligator that attacked his master, gained freedom from slavery, and became a full member of the tribe. He even inflicted ritual mutilations and tattoos on himself, which included piercing his ears and cheeks, and, according to some conquest chroniclers, adopted their religion. Around 1514, Guerrero entered the service of the Maya chief of Chetumal (modern Quintana Roo) named Na Chan Kan and was put in charge of the Ichpaatun temples north of Chetumal, currently marked on maps as Okstanka. At that time, Chetumal Bay was a major trade route, as it connected sea trade routes with rivers including artificial canals. Possessing exceptional military talent, he soon proved himself a skilled strategist and continued to teach the natives Western warfare tactics, fort construction, trenches, and strongholds, while studying Maya warfare methods until he became a prominent military leader. Leading Maya warrior detachments, he fought against the first Spanish attempts to conquer Mexico: the expeditions of Hernández de Córdoba (1517) and Juan de Grijalva (1518).

Guerrero’s full assimilation into Maya culture occurred after he married a native woman, who, according to some authors, was the daughter of Chief Na Chan Kan himself. They had several children, the first representatives of the mixed-race Mexican lands. When Hernán Cortés, setting out to conquer Mexico, landed on March 6, 1519, on the island of Cozumel off the coast of Yucatán, he learned from the local Indians that two Spaniards had been shipwrecked nearby. Cortés hastened to send messages to both survivors, inviting them to join his expedition. As soon as Jerónimo de Aguilar learned of the Spaniards’ arrival, he hurried to meet them and accompanied Cortés in the conquest of Mexico as a translator of the Maya language.

However, Gonzalo Guerrero, who was by then more Maya than Spaniard, refused Cortés’s offer, citing that his wife and children were more important to him than all the glory he could achieve in the conquest of Mexico or elsewhere. When told he could take his family on the expedition, he continued to resist, claiming he was a slave and had no freedom of choice. Guerrero remained in Maya lands until the end of his days, repelling all Spanish attempts to conquer the Yucatán Peninsula. His military talent and organizational skills greatly contributed to the fact that the conquest of Maya territory was not completed until the end of the 16th century.

He is largely responsible for the failure of Francisco de Montejo’s expedition in 1527. Montejo, knowing Guerrero’s authority as a military leader and his training of the Maya in Spanish warfare tactics, tried to force him to join his troops and help conquer Yucatán. To this end, he sent him a letter urging him to abandon his Indian customs and return to the service of the Spanish Crown, promising him the highest honors. But Guerrero again chose to remain loyal to his adopted people. Therefore, he handed Montejo his letter, writing on the back that as a slave he could not part with the Indians, but that all Spaniards could consider him their friend. Then, knowing Montejo’s plans to move on Chetumal and wishing at all costs to prevent him from reaching his goal, he began organizing the fortification of the city together with the Maya.

Francisco de Montejo, having founded a city in Yucatán that served as his operational base and named it Salamanca, divided his soldiers into two groups. One, commanded by himself, headed south by sea, while another detachment of one hundred fifty infantrymen and sixteen horses went by land under Alonso Avilés’s command. Both armies were to unite at Chetumal to besiege the city, but Gonzalo Guerrero devised a trick to prevent the Spaniards from reaching their destination. Thus, when the two armies were halfway, he sent Alonso de Avilés a message reporting Montejo’s death, while the latter received reports that Alonso de Avilés and his men had been destroyed by Indians on the way. Both were misled by this information. Thus, Alonso de Avilés considered it useless to continue moving to meet Montejo, who, in turn, believing that he and his men were dead, decided to return to Salamanca.

Subsequent attempts to conquer the Yucatán Peninsula also failed due to the hostility of the natives, always led by Gonzalo Guerrero, who was in the service of Na Chan Kan. Thus, in mid-1531, when detachments under Alonso de Avilés again tried to conquer Chetumal, they had to face a native uprising. The entire southeast of Yucatán rose up with weapons against the invaders, and although Alonso de Avilés tried his best to suppress the rebellion, he failed; by autumn 1532, the situation became so unbearable that the entire Spanish army had to flee by canoe to Honduras.

Finally, in 1536, Guerrero moved to Honduras when the local Maya were attacked by Spaniards. Commanding the troops of Chief Chicumba against his former countrymen, he was killed by a shot from an arquebus. In a report by the governor of Honduras, Andrés de Cerezeda, dated August 14, 1536, it is said that a dead white man was found, dressed as a native, with hair cut in the Maya style, painted and looking entirely like an Indian.

Halfway between history and myth, Gonzalo Guerrero became a dual figure for Mexicans: for Spaniards and Latin Americans, he is simply a traitor-renegade, while Indian nationalism made him a model of assimilation and a martyr of anti-imperialist struggle, allowing him to remain in Mexican collective memory as a symbol of the union of two peoples and mixed marriages. Several monuments have been erected in his honor, depicting him as a Maya military leader, the most famous of which stands on Paseo de Montejo in the Yucatán city of Mérida. It stands on a street named after the man he fought against and who personified the Spanish conquest (colonization), against which he dedicated and ultimately gave his life. At the same time, for the Maya, one of the names symbolizing the struggle against colonial power and the fight for freedom became the name Gonzalo Guerrero.

Sources:

https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/85636/gonzalo-guerrero

https://www.bicycleyucatan.com/gonzaloguerrerochetumal.html