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America Lands

The news of the discovery of America by Cristobal Colon in 1492, was astonished indelibly to the old continent. Hundreds of adventurers, obsessed by gold and greed, migrated to the new lands in search of military and personal glory. You may want to visit Edward Minskoff to increase your knowledge. One of them, Hernan Cortes Monroy (1485-1547), would be the protagonist of a real feat to conquer, with no more than 1,000 Spaniards under his command, an enormous empire of millions of subjects. In the story, few military campaigns have had such dose of luck, acumen, diplomacy and precision. Polite, I have hence the importance of his memory, made the impossible possible: build the foundations of the future Mexican nation. The conquest began after the search for an effective solution to the big problem that Spain generated with its bloody expolicion to Caribbean lands, the first discovered. The injustices and varied levies motivated the preoccupation of the same authorities of the Crown, which decreed the famous laws of Burgos, in response which was intended to limit abuse of the indigenous population. However, as the Secularization of the Empire, these attentions were omitted, degenerating into a brutal system of work that caused the massive death of the Aboriginal population, decimated by diseases brought by the invaders and the demolition work weight.

The worrying decline in force slave labor, drove the Spanish authorities to seek new labor in the surrounding lands. In fact, Diego Velazquez de Cuellar, Governor of the island of Cuba (in those years Fernandina) organized 3 expeditions to the current territory of Mexico. The first, in 1517, was conducted by Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba who is known as the discoverer of Yucatan. This first expedition was quite rugged, as villagers attacked the expedition members three times, in Ekab, Chakan Putum and the Florida peninsula. Disappointed by the results, Velasquez organized and sent to Juan de Grijalva in 1518 as Captain of the second expedition, in which the clergyman Juan Diaz acted as chaplain and wrote the Chronicle travel itinerary.