Luis Mario Gonzalez Suarez – Traduccion e interpretacion – Derecho Internacional y Comparado – Mediacion cultural<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The pinch of salt: what do we really know about\nhistory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have a basic command of Spanish, you may\nhave noticed that Bah\u00eda de Banderas stands for Bay of Flags<\/em>. But what\nflags? The flag of Spain, of Mexico? Curiously enough, none of them. To know\nthe answer, we need to go back to the time of conquistadors. (And, Kelly and\nDennis willing, we will\u2026 in the next article). First, I\u2019d like to share some\nthoughts about how history is recorded that arose from the research I conducted\nto tell you that story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is interesting to point out that while the\nconquest of Western Mexico was particularly cruel later on, the first Spanish\nvoyage into this land was rather uneventful\u2026 or so we are told. While the\nSpaniards had already settled in the Central Valleys of Mexico by the time,\nlearning the linguae francae<\/em> of the region (Nahuatl and P\u2019urh\u00e9pecha) and\nreaching an agreement of sorts with the old Native ruling class, the languages\nspoken in this region -mostly a local dialect of Nahuatl and Wix\u00e1rika (Huichol)-\n, and, most importantly, the lack of a contemporary and impartial record, blur our\nvision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researching for this article, I found that\nthere is only one direct source, and it was written almost 100 years after the\nfacts! It is Fr. Antonio Tello\u2019s chronicle, a traveling friar in a convent in\nGuadalajara, who frequently visited the Franciscan missions in Nayarit. So\nthere\u2019s that for accuracy. How much of what we are told actually happened and\ndid not pass through the lenses of time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is another source worth mentioning, the 1531 transcript of Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s\u2019 suit against Nu\u00f1o de Guzm\u00e1n (that cruel conqueror we talked about above)\u2026 which, of course, is tarnished by the sort of statements you\u2019d expect between two parties in a bitter trial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then again, back to our story: it was 1524,\nand only seven years had passed since the first Spaniards descended on the\nterritory we now call Mexico when an expedition, under Francisco Cort\u00e9s de San\nBuenaventura (related to that<\/em> Cort\u00e9s: he was his nephew) left the ruins\nof Tenochtitlan, the ancient Aztec capital, where Mexico City was already being\nbuilt with the stones of old pyramids, with a simple yet difficult task: to\nexplore beyond the P\u2019urh\u00e9pecha kingdom, the ancient enemy of the Aztecs. After\nthe first steps of the foray, in which Cort\u00e9s found the ocean and established\nseveral settlements of Spaniards (most notably, Colima), the expedition set\ncourse to the north and entered the current state of Nayarit through the\nsoutheast\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stay tuned for the history of the Riviera Nayarit on a weekly basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read about history in our area from our new columnist. Luis Mario Gonzalez Suarez. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-927","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n