Mestizaje

 

Chetumal 

Mestizaje, the officially-sanctioned method for biologically blending European and American bits in these parts, would arrive as something of an afterthought. 

For the first Spaniards to show up on the peninsula, indeed anywhere in what is now Mexico — albeit via the misadventure of the 1511 Valdivia shipwreck — were fattened up in cages and ritually eaten by a ravenous Mayan cacique.

All but two that is, for a pair of them escaped and found shelter with rival chieftains who seemingly saw them as more than a source of sacred protein.

One of this famous duo of survivors, Gonzalo Guerrero, went properly native and has since earned himself the dubious honour of being the subject of an endlessly “in production” biopic entitled Maya Lord, to be directed by 2012’s Roland Emmerich.

The other, Jerónimo de Aguilar, a man of the cloth, bumped into Cortés on Cozumel 8 years on and became a key part of his mammalian ‘babel fish’.

This two factor authentication system started with La Malinche — forever the sour aftertaste of Mexican miscegenation — who would translate Náhuatl into Mayan for the would-be conquerors, and then the recovered priest duly provided the crucial second stage of the process, rendering Mayan into Castellano.

Chetumal