Gonzalo de Sandoval

Itzohuatzin at the time of the Spanish Conquest, is governing Cuernavaca, a rich and densely populated city, with large farms and its characteristic ravines bridged over.

In the center of the city is a large fort; however, this fort and the entire city fall to the Spanish, who march on Cuernavaca even before taking the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.

They are led by Gonzalo de Sandoval, who is joined later by Cortés.

Alvarado had been wounded when Cuauhtémoc attacked all three Spanish camps on the feast day of St. John.

His company is the first to make it to the Tlateloco marketplace, setting fire to the Aztec shrines.

Cortes' and Sandoval's companies join him there after four more days of fighting.

The Jalisco area has been occupied by a variety of ethnic groups, including the Bapames, Caxcans, Cocas, Cuachilchils, Huichols, Cuyutecos, Otomis, Nahuas, Tecuejes, Tepehuans, Tecos, Purépecha, Pinomes, Tzaultecas and Xilotlantzingas.

Some writers have also mentioned groups such as the Pinos, Otontlatolis, Amultecas, Coras, Xiximes, Tecuares, Tecoxines and Tecualmes.

When the Spanish arrive, the main ethnic groups are the Cazcanes, who inhabit the northern regions near Teocalteche and the Lagos de Morenos and the Huichols, who also inhabit the northwest near Huejúcar and Colotlán.

Other groups include the Guachichil in the Los Altos area, the Nahuatl-speaking Cuyutecos in the west, and the Tecuexes and Cocas near what is now Guadalajara and the Guamares in the east near the Guanajuato border.

Shortly after the conquest of the Aztecs in 1521, the Spanish push west, overpowering the Purépecha in Michoacán and converting their capital of Tzintzuntzan as a base to move further west.

One reason for the push towards the Pacific is to build ships and shipping facilities in order to initiate trade with Asia.

Another draw is to find more mineral wealth, as the Purépecha have already developed copper working along with silver and gold.

In 1522, Cristóbal de Olid is sent by Hernán Cortés northwest from Mexico City into Jalisco; Other incursions had been undertaken by Alonso de Avalos and Juan Alvarez Chico in 1521, and Gonzalo de Sandoval in 1522 .

Spaniards arrive in Oaxaca very soon after the fall of Tenochtitlan.

Moctezuma II had informed Cortés that the area had gold.

In addition, when Zapotec leaders heard about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, they had sent an offer of an alliance.

Several captains and representatives had been sent to the area to explore the area, looking for gold, and routes to the Pacific to establish trade routes to Asian spice markets.

The most prominent of Cortés' captains to arrive here are Gonzalo de Sandoval, Francisco de Orozco and Pedro de Alvarado.

They overcome the main Aztec military stronghold only four months after the fall of Tenochtitlan.

Their reports about the area prompt Cortés to seek the title of the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca from the Spanish Crown.

The valley Zapotecs, the Mixtecs of the Upper Mixteca, the Mazatecs and the Cuicatecas, for the most part, choose not to fight the newcomers, instead negotiating to keep most of the old hierarchy but with ultimate authority to the Spanish.

Resistance to the new order is sporadic and confined to the Pacific coastal plain, the Zapotec Sierra, the Mixea region and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Cortés returns to Cuernavaca in 1523, stopping in Tlaltenango, where he founds the Church of San José and constructs the first sugar plantation.

The fertility of these lands compels the conquistador to establish his favorite residence here.

The Spanish had made incursions into Colima after conquering the Aztecs and the Purépecha.

The first incursion into the Colima area had occurred under Juan Rodríguez de Villafuerte in 1522 but was defeated by the natives of the Tecomán Valley.

Hernán Cortés now sends Gonzalo de Sandoval to defeat the Tecos, which he does at the Paso de Alima and the Palenque de Tecomán.

Sandoval establishes the first Spanish settlement in the fertile but isolated Colima Valley, called Caxitlán, in 1523, making it the third oldest functioning city government in Mexico and the second municipality of western New Spain.

The Catholic Church has seen early attempts at conversion in the Caribbean islands by Spanish friars, particularly mendicant orders, during the Age of Discovery.

Cortés makes a request to the Spanish monarch to send Franciscan and Dominican friars to Mexico to begin the daunting work of converting vast populations indigenous to Christianity.

In his fourth letter to the king, Cortés pleaded for friars rather than diocesan or secular priests because those clerics were in his view a serious danger to the Indians' conversion.

He wishes the mendicants to be the main evangelists.

Mendicant friars do not usually have full priestly powers to perform all the sacraments needed for conversion of the Indians and growth of the neophytes in the Christian faith, so Cortés lays out a solution to this to the king:

     Your Majesty should likewise beseech His Holiness [the pope] to grant these powers to the two principal persons in the religious orders that are to come here, and that they should be his delegates, one from the Order of St. Francis and the other from the Order of St. Dominic.

     They should bring the most extensive powers Your Majesty is able to obtain, for, because these lands are so far from the Church of Rome, and we, the Christians who now reside here and shall do so in the future, are so far from the proper remedies of our consciences and, as we are human, so subject to sin, it is essential that His Holiness should be generous with us and grant to these persons most extensive powers, to be handed down to persons actually in residence here whether it be given to the general of each order or to his provincials.

The deaths caused by smallpox are believed to have triggered a rapid growth of Christianity in Mexico and the Americas.

At first, the Aztecs believed the epidemic was a punishment from an angry god, but they later accepted their fate and no longer resisted the Spanish rule.

Many of the surviving Aztecs believe that smallpox can be credited to the superiority of the Christian god, which results in their acceptance of Catholicism and yielding to the Spanish rule throughout Mexico.

Since the conversion to Christianity of indigenous peoples is an essential and integral part of the extension of Spanish power, making formal provisions for that conversion once the military conquest is completed is an important task for Cortés.

Cortés manages the founding of new cities and appoints men to extend Spanish rule to all of New Spain, imposing the encomienda system in 1524.

He reserves many encomiendas for himself and for his retinue, which they consider just rewards for their accomplishment in conquering central Mexico.

However, later arrivals and members of factions antipathetic to Cortés complain of the favoritism that excludes them.

The Franciscans arrive in May of 1524, a symbolically powerful group of twelve known as the Twelve Apostles of Mexico, led by Fray Martín de Valencia.

Franciscan Geronimo de Mendieta claims that Cortés's most important deed was the way he met this first group of Franciscans.

The conqueror himself is said to have met the friars as they approached the capital, kneeling at the feet of the friars who had walked from the coast.

This story will be used by Franciscans as a demonstration of Cortés's piety and humility as a powerful message to all, including the Indians, that Cortés's earthly power is subordinate to the spiritual power of the friars.

However, one of the first twelve Franciscans, Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinia does not mention it in his history.

Cortés and the Franciscans will have a particularly strong alliance in Mexico, with Franciscans seeing him as "the new Moses" for conquering Mexico and opening it to Christian evangelization.

In Motolinia's 1555 response to Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas, he will praise Cortés.

When Cortés learns of Olid's rebellion, he sends Francisco de Las Casas against Olid with two warships.

Despite the fact that both these ships are destroyed in a storm and many of his soldiers defect to Olid, Las Casas defeats Olid in battle and captures him.

Accounts of how Olid died vary; Bernal Díaz del Castillo asserts in his Verdadera Historia de la Conquista de Nueva España that Las Casas had him beheaded at Naco, while Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, who will write near the end of the century, wrote that Olid's own soldiers rose up against and then murdered him.