Spanish Landing on Veracruz Coast in 1519 Fact-Checked

Cortez and his company of ... of Mexico. The Spaniards brought guns, artillery, and horses. On Good Friday, 1519 they landed near the Totonac town of Chalchicueyecan close to what is now Veracruz....

Cortés landed his expedition force on the coast of the modern day state of Veracruz in April 1519. During this same period, soon after he arrived, Cortés was welcomed by representatives of the Aztec Emperor, Moctezuma II.

It is estimated that around 1,800 ... Veracruz to Tenochtitlan. (Thomas, pp. 528–29) The remaining Spanish forces consisted of 800–900 Spaniards, eighty horses, sixteen pieces of artillery, and Cortés' thirteen brigantines. Other sources estimate that around 860 Spanish soldiers and 20,000 Tlaxcalan warriors were killed during all the battles in this region from 1519 to 1521. It is well accepted that Cortés' indigenous allies, which may ...

Leaving a hundred men in Veracruz, Cortés marched on Tenochtitlán in mid-August 1519, along with 600 soldiers, 15 horsemen, 15 cannons, and hundreds of indigenous carriers and warriors. On the way to Tenochtitlán, Cortés made alliances with indigenous peoples such as the Totonacs of Cempoala ...

This expedition cut its way to the territories of the Totonac tribe, subjects of the mighty Aztec Empire. Even before the second expedition returned, Velázquez had already thought of a third, larger one, and he chose his brother-in-law, a city mayor named Hernán Cortés, as its leader. At the last second, Velázquez repented his choice, realizing the ambitious Cortés would likely stop obeying him if he found success, but Cortés overruled his orders to stop and sailed away anyway in February 1519.

Between 1519 and 1521 Hernán Cortés and a small band of men brought down the Aztec empire in Mexico, and between 1532 and 1533 Francisco Pizarro and his followers toppled the Inca empire in Peru. These conquests laid the foundations for colonial regimes that would transform the Americas. The conquest of Mexico began with an expedition to search for gold on the American mainland. In 1519 Cortés led about 450 men to Mexico and made his way from Veracruz on the Gulf Coast to the island city of Tenochtitlan, the stunningly beautiful Aztec capital situated in Lake Texcoco.

Soon after, the Spaniards helped ... June 1519, the Totonacs helped the Spaniards in the founding of La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (The Rich Town of the True Cross) on the site of the present-day port of Veracruz....

When Cortés left Cuba, he clearly did not set out to conquer an empire as so few of his 630 people were considered “soldiers.” As already mentioned, soon after he arrived on the coast, in Totonac territory, word of Cortes’ arrival quickly made it to central Mexico and the capital city of the Aztecs, Tenochtitlan. After the first set of messengers returned to the Aztec capital, Montezuma sent a small group of what the Spanish called “magicians and sorcerers” to try to scare the newcomers away.

At that time the Totonac occupied a strip of land flanked by the Atlantic Ocean and the Sierra Madre Oriental, between the Cazones River in the north and La Antigua River near the present port of Veracruz. Two important Totonac ceremonial centers existed in this territory. The first, El Tajín, was located in the north and had ceased to function before the arrival of the Spanish. The second, Zempoala, is reputed to have been populous when the Spanish arrived; soon after, it witnessed the collapse of its idols and their replacement with the Christian cross. Well before the Conquest, the Totonac people had extended even farther south, to the margins of the Papaloapan River.