The Names of Heaven

One man. An extraordinary choice. In 1511 the survivors of a Spanish shipwreck were captured by the Maya near the town of Tulum in Yucatan. Among them was a sailor from Palos named Gonzalo Guerrero. He lived among the Maya as a slave for three years, learning their language and customs; he then escaped to Nachancan, lord of the city of Chetumal in Belize, who made him a free man. In Chetumal Gonzalo quickly rose to become Nachancan's war captain; he married Nachancan's sister had had three children with her. This was the foundation of the first European-American family, and the birth of the new race called the Mestizo. In 1517 Hernando Cortez came to bring Gonzalo back to the Spaniards; the decision Gonzalo took then was the only one ever taken by a white man in the conquest of the Americas, and it made him a hero.