Francisco López de Gómara's Humanist Reframing of the Missionary Project on Cozumel

Abstract

This article examines the rhetorical strategy and discursive practices employed by Francisco Lopez de Gomara in his Conquest of Mexico. It focuses specifically on the historian's treatment of events on the Island of Cozumel prior to Cortes' invasion of the mainland. The article interprets Gomara's Cozumel story, “the first encounter,” as a typological figure of speech. The political goals of empire, conversion and material gain are subsumed in a rhetorical vision of the New World. Cozumel is the promise. The historian frames the conquest of Mexico, the fulfillment that Cozumel heralded as a humanist project, and the New World as a work of Renaissance lay culture. The principal weapon of conquest and reconstruction is language. Wielded by Cortes and his historian, it functions to construct and communicate a rhetorical vision of a New World that incorporates the best of Europe and America even while it decries human rights abuses on both sides.