Chroniclers- Mexico. Hernán Co

List of chroniclers who wrote us the facts of the conquest of New Spain

The Conquest of Mexico related by the Chroniclers who accompanied Hernán Cortés and who detailed their struggles and alliances with the descendants of the Mayas and the Aztec of Moctezuma.

Chronicler is the writer who collects and writes historical or current events, which are called chronicle.

Before the appearance of modern journalism and the systematization of the chronicle as a journalistic genre, the writer was considered to narrate the facts that he considered worthy of remembrance (of "passing into history"), recorded systematically in time (for example, year to year); the term was almost equivalent to historian. Unlike the anonymous or known writers of epic songs, historians and chroniclers distinguished themselves by their desire for truth in their stories; that often went back from contemporary events to antiquity, in more or less credible ways.

Although they are usually mentioned as "chroniclers of the Indies" to all those who wrote about the territories of the Spanish Empire overseas, only a part of them had the official appointment of major chronicler of the Indies, granted by the King of Spain.

The office was instituted in 1571 by Philip II, had life status, with residence in the court, and depended on the Council of the Indies until 1744, when Philip V ordered his transfer to the Royal Academy of History, created 6 years earlier. Notwithstanding this provision, Fernando VI and Carlos III still appointed two candidates to fill this job.

After the arrival in America by the Europeans, their stories that informed about the geography and the way of life of the Latin American natives were known, from the relations of Christopher Columbus himself, his son Hernando, the famous letter of Amerigo Vespucci and many other discoverers and conquerors like Hernán Cortés.

Many Indian chroniclers focused on specific geographical areas, making regional chronicles of some of the viceroyalties of America.

In the app we related the "Chroniclers of the Indies" who detailed with their information not only the time of the conquest but also the subsequent decades of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. We try to give also the vision of the conquered, not only of the conquerors, with the author's biography and highlighting his most representative work with links to his "free" versions (18 books) to facilitate its reading.

We also incorporate a last page called PDF links, where we specify the websites that contain the pdf, in case the reader had problems when viewing on his mobile (or tablet) produced by the sizes of the files (number of megs), the rest of html files are online so we should not have any problem to be able to read their content.