Gerónimo de Aguilar, O.F.M. (1489-1531) was a Franciscan friar born in Écija, Spain. Aguilar was later involved with the 1519 Spanish conquest of Mexico, and with La Malinche he assisted Hernán Cortés in translating indigenous language to Spanish.

In 1511 Aguilar left Panama on a caravel sailing to Santo Domingo, accompanying the procurator Juan de Valdivia. They were shipwrecked near the Yucatán Peninsula due to bad weather, but Aguilar, along with a sailor from Palos, in Spain, Gonzalo Guerrero, were two of fifteen survivors. Strong currents brought them in their ship's boat to the coast of the modern-day Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

Aguilar and the others were captured by the local Maya and scheduled to be sacrificed to Maya gods. He and Gonzalo Guerrero eventually managed to escape later to be taken as a slave by another Mayan chief named Xamanzana.^[1] Here he and Guerrero were able to learn the language of their captors. Aguilar lived as a slave during his eight years with the Maya. Guerrero became chief in time of war for Nachan Kaan, Lord of Chektumal, married a rich Maya woman and fathered the first mestizo children of Mexico.

Hernán Cortés invaded Mexico in 1519. Aguilar joined the expedition. Speaking both Maya and Spanish, he, and La Malinche, who could speak Maya and Nahuatl, translated for Cortés during the Conquest of Mexico. His usefulness in that capacity ended once La Malinche had learned Spanish.

Aguilar died in 1531 in an unknown location.

His house in Mexico City later became the home of the first printing press to operate in the New World.

A fictional version of Aguilar's adventures in Mexico is recounted in Anita Mason's novel The Right Hand of the Sun (John Murray, UK, 2008).

[edit] See also

• Spanish conquest of Mexico
• Spanish conquest of Yucatán
• La Malinche
• Hernán Cortés
• Gonzalo Guerrero

[edit] References