History With Lime and Salt – Part 2

Cortés de San Buenaventura Discovers Our Nearby Towns

There is a famous story about one of the most illustrious poets of the Spanish Golden Age, Fr. Luis de León. He was, of course, an Augustinian brother and a renowned professor at University of Salamanca. After having spent four years in prison thanks to the Inquisition, he returned to his beloved tenure, starting by saying “And so, as we discussed yesterday…”

With this episode in mind, we shall continue to narrate the history of Riviera Nayarit, in spite – and maybe with all the more reason – of the things going on in this world of ours.

And so, as we discussed last week, Cortés de San Buenaventura (full surnames to differentiate him from his famous cousin) set course to the west in 1524. He passed the lands of the P’urhépecha that were already being colonized by the Spaniards, and claimed the chiefdom of Colima, which was at the time the most important entity outside the main Mesoamerican region.

He advanced further north, claiming a string of towns along the dry jungles and the central highlands of Jalisco, until he entered the region we now know as Nayarit. And if you have ever made the drive from Bahía to Tequila, you might recognize the names of some of the towns he
passed: Amatlán, Ixtlán, Ahuacatlán or Tetitlán.

Next he arrived to the valley of Matatipac, where the chiefdoms of Tepic and Xalisco were in a cold war of sorts – and from time to time, it flared up! Both cities tried to win the favor of this foreigner; as was the case for the Aztecs, it was too late before they realized they came from a different
diplomatic and warrior culture and they were up for conquest, not alliances. Still, Cortés de San Buenaventura did not take them on; the chronicles said that he had no more than 300 men under his command at this time.

After appraising the situation in the valley and a foray north to find the mouth of Río Santiago, Cortés decided to go along the coast. Two of his soldiers discovered Islas Marías from the top of a hill during the journey, or so the story goes (and if you’ve driven the road between Las Varas and
Compostela, it’s not too hard to believe). There he found the small fishing villages of Chacala and Jaltemba (some familiar names!) and arrived to a place called Tintoc (or, whose chief name was Tintoc: remember, they didn’t speak the language!), in the current location of Valle de Banderas,
the county seat.

And here is where legend takes its turn at bat. The chroniclers say that when Cortés de San Buenaventura arrived in Tintoc, he found no less than 20,000 warriors ready for battle (which is barely believable: the whole Bahía de Banderas municipality had that population in the early
nineties). All of them with feathers in their bows and spears. The Spaniards immediately thought of the flags carried by medieval jousters and armed peasants, and so they named that place as Valle de Banderas: the Valley of Flags.

And what happened in that combat? Next week I’ll tell you the story.