Gonzalo Guerrero

Gonzalo Guerrero (also known as Gonzalo Marinero, Gonzalo de Aroca and Gonzalo de Aroza) was a sailor from Palos, in Spain who shipwrecked along the Yucatán Peninsula and was taken as a slave by the local Maya. Earning his freedom, Guerrero became a respected warrior under a Maya Lord and raised three of the first mestizo children in Mexico and presumably the first mixed children of the mainland Americas. Little is known of his early life.

In 1511, sailing with 15 others in a caravel from Panama and heading for Santo Domingo, he was shipwrecked. However, the crew managed to board the ship's lifeboat and drifted for two weeks along the Yucatán Peninsula until strong currents brought them to the shore of what is now Quintana Roo, in Mexico. On reaching land, Guerrero and the other members of the crew were captured by the local Maya.

Bernal Díaz de Castillo (Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Chapter XXIX) records Aguilar's account, whereby Mayans sacrificed some of the ship's crew almost immediately, while putting the rest into cages. The Europeans managed to escape, but other Mayan lords captured and enslaved them. By 1519, the year Hernán Cortés began his Conquest of Mexico, only two from the original shipwreck remained alive: Gonzalo Guerrero, who by this time had become famous in the Mayan world as a war leader for Nachan can, Lord of Chactemal (which included parts of Mexico and Belize); and Gerónimo de Aguilar, who had taken holy orders in his native Spain. Guerrero had by then married Nachan Can's daughter Zazil Há and had fathered the Americas' first mestizo children. Cortes also learned that it was Guerrero's suggestion which led to the earlier attack on Cordoba's expedition.

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