Gonzalo Guerrero And Zazil Ha
Creative CommonsGonzalo Guerrero was a Spanish soldier who was captured and assimilated into a Mayan tribe.
The unlikely relationship between Gonzalo Guerrero and Zazil Ha is another famous — and groundbreaking — interracial couple from history.
Gonzalo Guerrero, also known as Gonzalo Marinero or Gonzalo de Aroca, was a 15th-century Spanish soldier. The early records of his life have never been recovered — possibly because the Spanish government destroyed them.
He likely fought in the Reconquista and the First Italian War under the renowned Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. Some scholars believe that he may have heard about Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the “New World” at some point during his service to Fernández de Córdoba.
Guerrero found himself in the New World by 1511. He was later shipwrecked during a voyage that departed from Panama to Santo Domingo under the order of Governor Vasco Núñez de Balboa. De Balboa had hoped his gifts of gold and slaves would sort out issues in the settlement of Santo Domingo.
But the ship never made it there. The vessel was wrecked after being hit by a storm near Jamaica. Twenty men survived the ordeal, only to be taken as slaves by the local Mayan tribe. One of the Spanish slaves was Gonzalo Guerrero. He managed to escape captivity alongside a friar named Geronimo de Aguilar. But they were captured yet again by another tribe.
Wikimedia CommonsGuerrero, known as the “first father of Mestizaje,” died in combat against the Spanish conquistadors.
As slaves, the two Spanish men slowly began to assimilate into the Mayan culture, even learning how to speak the local language. But they were very different. Aguilar clung to his Catholic faith and Spanish identity, while Guerrero fully embraced his new way of life with the Mayans.
With his superb military prowess and easy assimilation into the Mayan culture, Guerrero rose through the ranks of the tribe’s warriors. He was ultimately given the hand of a Mayan chief’s daughter named Zazil Ha.
Not much is known about Guerrero’s life among the Mayans. But Guerrero and Ha are among history’s most famous interracial couples. Historians believe that their children were possibly the first American mestizos, people who had both Indigenous and white European heritage.
Having Mayan children further cemented Guerrero’s adoption of the Mayan culture as his own. When Hernán Cortés arrived in the Yucatán and met with tribal leaders, he and his men were astonished to find a Spanish man living in the midst of the native people. It was later said that Guerrero had the “body and appearance of an ‘Indio’ yet the beard of a Christian.”
Cortés offered Guerrero the chance to return to Spain, but he declined.
“I married a Mayan woman, have three children, am chief and captain, taken their ways with tattoos, pierced ears, and scarred face,” Guerrero allegedly told the captain. “This is my place.” Guerrero later died fighting alongside his Mayan comrades against the Spanish conquistadors.
Today, Gonzalo Guerrero is considered the “father of Mestizaje” and his relationship remains one of the most iconic of early interracial couples. And a statue of Guerrero with his family is now on display in Mérida, Mexico.
