Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Atahuallpa (ca. 1498-1533) was the emperor of the Incas when the Spanish conquered Peru. He became emperor after an internal war among the Incas when the previous ruler, Huayna Capac, succumbed to smallpox before the Spanish arrival.

This civil war among the Incan elites weakened the empire, making it vulnerable to Spanish conquest under Francisco Pizzaro in the 1530s. As Restall notes, “Had Pizarro arrived in northern Peru just a few months later, he most likely would have found a united Inca empire under Atahuallpa’s rule. But Pizarro’s timing was accidentally perfect” (49). After failed negotiations with Pizarro, the Spanish took Atahuallpa captive. Recognizing the Spanish desire for gold and silver, he offered them a ransom that served to delay his demise and allowed him to challenge his rival and brother. Once the ransom was paid in full, however, the Spanish executed him because of his ability to foment resistance.

Resistance, however, did not die with Atahuallpa, nor was Incan society and culture completely destroyed by Spanish conquest. As Restall shows, “native desolation” is a myth. The “Inkarrí cycle,” which holds that Atahuallpa would return one day to defeat the Spaniards, took shape in the decades following his execution. This mythology fostered Inca revolts against Spanish colonial rule well into the 18th century.

Francisco Pizarro (ca. 1478-1541) was a Spanish conquistador who conquered the Inca Empire centered on Peru. He was not formally educated, countering the myth that Spanish literacy is partly responsible for their successful conquests. He may have had some minor military experience before setting out for the Americas.

He extensively explored the Caribbean, and in 1519, he co-founded the Spanish colony of Panama. He then began plans for the exploration of South America, where the Spanish believed they would find gold. Initial expeditions yielded results, so Pizarro gained the crown’s support and financial backing.

In November 1532, Pizarro met the Incan emperor Atahuallpa in the plaza of Cajamarca. Surviving accounts differ, but suggest that after the Spanish read the Requiremiento (the Requirement that commanded subjugation), a Dominican friar offered a Bible to the emperor, who either tossed it aside or the book fell to the ground. The Spanish perceived this event as an insult and promptly massacred hundreds of Incans, took the emperor captive, extracted precious metals as ransom, and eventually executed Atahuallpa.

Pizarro’s successful conquest of Peru largely hinged on Inca disunity wrought by the untimely death of the emperor, Huayna Capac, who contracted the newly-arrived European disease, smallpox. The Incas descended into internal warfare, with Atahuallpa and his brother fighting for power. This disunity left the Inca Empire vulnerable to conquest. Thus, factors beyond Pizarro’s reach facilitated Spanish success in Peru, countering the myth of Spanish superiority.

Hernán Cortés (ca. 1484-1547) was a Spanish conquistador who defeated the Mexica (or Aztec) empire of Mesoamerica in 1521 after several years of warfare.

He received a legal education at the University of Salamanca and set out for the Americas in the early 1500s in pursuit of financial and political gains. He took part in Cuba’s subjugation and became a local magistrate in the service of the Spanish governor, Diego Velázquez. Velázquez eventually commissioned Cortés to explore Yucatan.

Cortés learned of the expansive Mexica empire in 1519 and, circumventing Velázquez’s authority, set out to conquer it in the name of the Spanish crown, hoping to garner favor with the monarchy that would grant him power. As he advanced to the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlán, he allied with the Tlaxcalans, who were foes of the Mexica. Meanwhile, Velázquez sent men to stop Cortés, but he defeated them and added these forces to his own.

He met the Mexica emperor, Moctezuma II, several times but the negotiations proved futile for the Mexica. By 1521, Tenochtitlán had fallen to Spanish forces despite fierce and violent resistance. The Spanish monarch thus bestowed the governorship on Cortés. He embarked on further efforts to subdue parts of Mesoamerica, but never fully consolidated power over a unified New Spain—a task left to others who followed in his footsteps.

Restall argues that colonial sources and modern historians overestimate Cortés’s skills as a negotiator and military strategist. His conquest of central Mexico, moreover, was limited in scope and dependent on circumstances beyond his control, like the destruction wrought by disease and ongoing wars among Indigenous Nahua peoples, including the rivalry between the Mexica and the Tlaxcalans.

The woman known as Marina or “La Malinche” (ca. 1505-1529) is a controversial and mysterious figure in the history of Mesoamerica and the Spanish Conquest. She has come to represent betrayal, since she worked as a translator for the Spanish and had a child with the conquistador Hernán Cortés. However, her story is more complicated, as Malinche played a role similar to that of other Indigenous elites who adapted to colonial power structures in order to maintain some autonomy and survive colonialism’s exploitations.

Marina was an elite Nahua born around modern Veracruz in Mexico. She was enslaved by Chontal traders from the city of Xicalango. During her early enslavement, she learned to speak Yucatec Maya. Her enslavers later gave her to the Spanish, who used her as a translator in their negotiations with the Mexica who, like Malinche, spoke Nahuatl. She then translated Nahuatl into Maya and another interpreter, the Spaniard Gerónimo Alonso de Aguilar, would translate the message into Spanish for Cortés. Eventually, she also learned Spanish, rendering de Aguilar unnecessary and making her an indispensable asset to the Spanish.

As Restall notes, we do not have any of Malinche’s direct words, which has resulted in the contradictory mythmaking that surrounds her:

[She has] become many things to many people: a symbol of betrayal; an opportunistic sexual siren; a feminist icon; an Aztec goddess in disguise; the mother of the first mestizo, and thus of the Mexican nation; the ultimate rape victim in the Conquest (86).

Though colonial and modern commentators focus on Malinche’s work as an interpreter, she was not unusual because the Spanish frequently used Indigenous Americans as translators. As an enslaved woman with little control over her own destiny, Malinche seized opportunity to improve her position as best she could.