The Hero Gonzalo Guerrero
On 12 October 1992, depending on your point of view, we observed either the quincentennial celebration of Columbus Day or the International Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People. After 500 years it was hard for indigenous people, and many others, to get behind Columbus. After seeing the first native inhabitants he wrote: ‘They do not carry weapons and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance... With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.’ And so from the beginning the strategy was set.
Before 2011 ends, there is another quincentennial I want to talk about. It’s been 500 years since 1511 when Gonzalo Guerrero washed ashore in what today is Quintana Roo, after his ship sank in a hurricane and he drifted two weeks on a raft off the Caribbean coast of Mexico. Nineteen years earlier this hired soldier had been on the carvel Niña during Columbus’ first voyage. Born in Andalusia, a veteran soldier and Christian, Guerrero found himself far from his ranks, far from Christendom, captured and put into a cage and forced into slavery.
Columbus was a flawed character. He cheated the captain of the Pinta out of the award of a lifetime pension, promised by the King of Spain, by lying about having seen land first. He demanded tribute from indigenous peoples, cutting off their hands and watching them bleed to death when not paid on time.
Guerrero was a hero. He overcame great danger and physical trials. He overcame isolation. Most heroic of all, he overcame his own culture. He overcame the great Christian lie of his time, the time of the inquisition, with soldier-monks murdering tens of thousands of Jews, protestants and homosexuals in Europe, all in the holy name of the ‘love your enemy’ Christ. And now there was a new world, where everyone was a non-Christian and so everyone could be tortured with impunity.
The reality of this land is that the invasion of Europeans and the invasion of Christianity was a disaster of unimaginable proportions. Ninety percent of the people of two continents paid with their lives.
Guerrero was Spanish. Guerrero was Christian. Yet he went from being a slave in a cage, on a hot tropical beach 5,000 miles from home, to having a Mayan wife and three Mayan children, and to being a Mayan Cacique, lord over the temples of Ichpaatún near Chetumal, and a Mayan war chief. He fought against the enemies of God and man, against his Christian countrymen, and led the Maya fight against Cortés. He taught European war theory and battle science to his adopted Mayan brothers. It may have been due to his influence that the Yucatán Maya were never completely subdued, and they continued to fight their overlords of European descent in the Caste War extending into the 20th Century.
Mayan war Chief Gonzalo Guerrero was killed in battle. He had gone with 50 war canoes to aid fellow Mayan Cacique Cicumba, who was being attacked by Pedro de Alvarado in what is today Honduras. Pedro de Alvarado was the conquistador who conquered Guatemala, known best for his legendary cruelty toward all of humanity. It was a confrontation between the best and the worst of the Spanish, and of the human family. Gonzalo Guerrero was killed by a Spanish arquebus shot to the chest.
The gift of Gonzalo Guerrero was more than a set of survival skills. The gift of Gonzalo Guerrero was a way of seeing. He never rejected the god of his upbringing in Andalusia, and sent his countrymen away ‘with God’s blessing’ when they came to ‘rescue’ him. He was no longer Spanish. He was never fully Mayan. He was what we today would call an American, a catch-all term for the people of this hemisphere.
Gonzalo Guerrero was open to the reality of this land, to the spirit, or angels, or however he would describe, with his Christian vocabulary, the divine nature of the ground beneath his feet. The names are not important. The reality, the inspirited reality that predated Guerrero by thousands of years and remains beneath our feet today, is what is important. It does not mean that there is no place for Christianity here. It does mean that Americans must at the very least be respectful of the way God has been manifested in this place.
Our ability to live in healthy relationship with the environment, within the natural system of life and spirit, waits for our eyes to be opened. It waits for us to receive Gonzalo Guerrero’s gift of seeing.