The New World of Martin Cortes [Paperback]

Anna Lanyon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 14, 2005

As the once-great Aztec empire lay in ruins, an illegitimate child was born to its conqueror, Hernan Cortes. The product of a union between the famous conquistador and his Mayan slave woman and translator, Malinche, the child was named Martin Cortes—remembered today by Mexicans as the first mestizo, emblematic of Mexico’s origins.In The New World of Martin Cortes, Anna Lanyon takes us on a journey of historical discovery, vividly evoking those extraordinary times when two empires—Spain and Mexico—collided. This is a tale of intrigue and identity, exploring Martin Cortes’s relations with his famous father, his half-brother of the same father and name (Cortes also named his second, legitimate son, Martin), his mother’s indigenous people; and his father’s noble peers. As Lanyon unearths the life and times of Martin Cortes, we learn something about the processes of history and legend as well, and the nature of the human spirit caught between two worlds.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this well-researched and attractive exploration of the life of the "first mestizo," or "the first 'Mexican,' " Australian writer Lanyon (Malinche's Conquest) tells the dramatic tale of Martín Cortés, the son of Hernán Cortés and the Amerindian woman Malinche, from his birth in 1522 in Tenochtitlán–Mexico City to his death less than five decades later near Granada. The story traces his passage to Spain as a six-year-old, long years of royal service under Charles V and the disastrous return to Mexico, where—accused of conspiracy against the Crown—Martín confronts imprisonment and brutal torture. Lanyon effectively interweaves historical reconstruction with personal narrative, crossing the divide between traveler and scholar in order to evoke the human immediacy of history. Lanyon is always receptive to the unsolicited clue and the unexpected sight connecting her, and us, to Martin's multiple new worlds. Waiting for a train in Madrid, Lan yon observes the immigrant faces: the "people of empire" who have crossed the Atlantic to stake their own modest claims on Spain. Lanyon avoids romanticizing the victims of conquest, but is acutely aware of the suffering of the indigenous peoples, and her fleeting analogies with the trauma of the Australian aborigines are illuminating. There are a few mistakes in her references to Spain before Empire, yet this remains a deeply likable book with significance beyond its immediate subject. Illus., maps.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Pursuing the archival traces left by a son of Hernan Cortes, Lanyon produces a meditative account of her travels, a sequel to Malinche's Conquest (2000). That book told the story of the female Amerindian translator for Cortes, who bore him a son, Martin Cortes. Here Lanyon tells Martin's life story and also ponders the symbolism that Martin's dual ethnicity holds for the Spanish/Amerindian society engendered by his father's subjugation of the Aztecs in 1521. She relates that when Cortes returned to Spain to gain royal approval for his unauthorized adventure to Mexico, he took Martin with him, had him raised to be a courtier and soldier for the future Phillip II, and fathered another, legitimate, son he named Martin. Both Martins eventually went to Mexico in 1562, and what ensued--legal conflict between the half-brothers, their implication in a supposed rebellion, and horrific torture of the Mexican-born Martin--prompts the author's empathetic though inconclusive reflections on the older Martin's possible inner thoughts about his identity and fate. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (June 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306814218
• ISBN-13: 978-0306814211
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #894,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In Search of... the only son of Malinche and Hernan Cortes, November 11, 2008

By 

ixta_coyotl (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New World Of Martin Cortes (Hardcover)

I saw the paperback version of this book one day at my local bookstore and bought it sight-unseen right off the shelf. I was not disappointed as I read through it with great pleasure in just a couple of days.

Author Ann Lanyon (Malinche's Conquest) engages on her journey of discovery about the child known symbolically as the first mestizo, Martin Cortes, son of the conqueror Hernan Cortes and his translator/mistress known in different languages or incantations as Malinalli (given nahuatl name), Malintzin (nahuatl name in terms of honor), Marina (Spanish equivalent), Malinche (mixed language version). While there is not much written on the subject, we travel with her from Extremadura to Morelia to old church and state archives where she thumbs through Renaissance documents in search of any mention of him. To make matters more difficult, Cortes also named his son by his second wife: Martin Cortes, apparently he had George Forman complex. While the end result may be more travelogue than the kind of picture that was made available by Russell Shorto's "Island at the Center of the World", the great historical background and human story at the center of this drama more than make up for any shortcomings in this regard; it is still a story worthy of being heard even if few voices of the past are available to tell it to us. It also introduced me for the first time to the Mexico of the sons of the conquistadors, and the fate that befell them in the later decades of the 16th century after the conquest.

If I may add a slight criticism: some of the details provided could have been better proofed for accuracy. One little thing that caught my attention was her translation of "xochitepec" as place where flowers grow. Xochitl is indeed flower but tepec means hill. It's a trite observation but one that left me wondering about other details about which I knew less. Finally, she ends the book by meeting a direct descendent of our very Martin Cortes. But she gives almost no details. Maybe he was ugly or dirty and she was minding her manners to say nothing unkind. But she doesn't even tell us how she found him or checked his papers to see if he was authentic. It was a little anticlimactic. But those notes aside this is a great book for Mexico-lovers like myself or anyone interested in history and how things go on after the big events and characters of history go off into the sunset.