Spanish Reach Mexico

In 1517, a small Spanish expedition led by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba reached the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, bringing Europeans into sustained contact with the Maya world for the first time. The voyage was modest in scale and ended badly for its commander, but it revealed the existence of wealthy, urbanized societies to the west of Spanish Caribbean holdings. That news helped set in motion the expeditions that led to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and the transformation of Mesoamerica.

By the early 1510s, Spain had established colonies on Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, and colonists in Cuba were hungry for new sources of labor, gold, and status. The Caribbean's Indigenous populations had been devastated by forced labor and newly introduced diseases, which increased the demand for fresh territories to exploit. Diego Velázquez, the governor of Cuba, supported or at least tolerated exploratory voyages, and Hernández de Córdoba, a settler with some means, organized an expedition with roughly three ships and over a hundred men. Accounts differ on its exact purpose, but slave raiding and the search for new lands seem to have both played a part.

The ships left Cuba in early 1517 and, after storms, made landfall on the Yucatán coast. The Spaniards were struck by stone-built towns, which they compared to cities in Spain, and by the clothing, metalwork, and organized society of the people they met. They did not meet a single unified empire. The Maya of this period lived in a patchwork of competing city-states, and the great classic-era cities of the southern lowlands had declined centuries earlier. Encounters along the coast turned violent. At a place usually identified as Champotón, Maya warriors inflicted heavy casualties on the Spaniards, and Hernández de Córdoba was badly wounded.

The expedition returned to Cuba with survivors, some gold objects, and reports of substantial settlements. Hernández de Córdoba died soon afterward from his injuries. His voyage nonetheless encouraged a second expedition in 1518 under Juan de Grijalva, which gathered more information about the Gulf coast and about the powerful Aztec state farther inland. In 1519, Hernán Cortés set out with a larger force, and the conquest of central Mexico followed.

For the Maya, the consequences unfolded slowly. Unlike the Aztec capital, which fell in 1521, the Maya regions resisted Spanish control for decades, and some areas held out until the late 1600s. Epidemic disease, warfare, and colonial rule nonetheless caused severe population loss and upheaval. Maya languages, communities, and traditions persisted, however, and millions of Maya people live in Mexico and Central America today. The 1517 landing is remembered as an opening act in a long and often brutal encounter between two worlds.