Cortes Lands at Veracruz and Gains Malinche as Interpreter
An expedition of 500 soldiers scuttles its own ships and marches inland with a translator whose skill would shape the conquest
Quick facts
- Departure
- Cuba, February 1519
- Force size
- 11 ships, c. 500 soldiers, 100 sailors, 16 horses
- Veracruz founded
- 22 April 1519
- Key figure
- Malintzin (La Malinche), interpreter
What happened
Hernan Cortes departed Cuba in February 1519 with eleven ships, about 500 soldiers, 100 sailors, and 16 horses, landing first at Tabasco in March. There, local leaders gave his expedition gifts including twenty enslaved women, one of whom, a multilingual Nahua woman named Malintzin (later called La Malinche or Dona Marina), became his interpreter and, eventually, the mother of his son. Fluent in both Nahuatl and Chontal Maya, she went on to learn Spanish and gave Cortes a communication channel into Aztec politics that no previous expedition had. Cortes landed at Chalchihuecan on 22 April 1519, Good Friday, and founded the settlement of Veracruz there, naming himself captain general to bypass the authority of Cuba's governor. He then ordered his ships deliberately grounded and broken up, removing the option of retreat, before marching inland toward Tenochtitlan.
Why it matters
Malintzin's translation and political advice let Cortes negotiate alliances with Aztec tributary states, especially Tlaxcala, whose warriors would outnumber the Spanish by more than a hundred to one at the siege of Tenochtitlan two years later. Without her, the small Spanish force had no way to exploit the resentments inside the Aztec tribute system.
How we know
Contemporary Spanish accounts, including chroniclers who traveled with Cortes, describe the Tabasco encounter, the founding of Veracruz, and the scuttling of the ships; the events are corroborated across multiple independent 16th-century sources.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Hernan Cortes · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. La Malinche: A Complicated Woman in Context · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Age of Exploration → · See the wider Age of Exploration timeline for how Cortes's expedition fit into Spain and Portugal's global voyages.