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Gonzalo Guerrero

• 24 Comments
• He must have been a very intelligent and determined man. Not only did he assimilate into a completely foreign culture and marry into their aristocracy, but he did so after starting as a slave of said culture.

  By eschulz 18 hours ago

• Not only that, he resisted Hernán Cortés' efforts to recruit him for the conquest of Mexico using clever guile and cunning.
  Twice he helped in thwarting the Spanish entradas into the part of Yucatán where he lived. By then, he had fully assimilated to Mayan culture.
  From the account of Bernal Díaz, he seemed to know what was coming from the clash between the Spanish and the natives.

  By neuralkoi 17 hours ago

• While this “going native” is interesting, sadly there are not much accounts of his whereabouts.
  This reminds me about the concept created by the Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno: “intrahistoria”, i.e. the unofficial history formed the common people.

  By elnatro 19 hours ago

• Unofficial history, many times, is simply glorified memory, which is very biased and dangerous.
  This fueled quite a lot the hangover of the nationalisms born during the XIX century.

  By pachico 18 hours ago

• And official history is unglorified, unsmudged fact and circumstance?

  By mistercheph 17 hours ago

• Not necessarily, but it's not not that hard to find anymore to the curious eye

  By pachico 17 hours ago

• Talk about turning your luck around...
  Somehow not mentioned in the Wiki page, but Guerrero actually means Warrior in Spanish. So I get the last name comes from him (?), unverifiable of course.
  EDIT: Several people pointed out that the surname “Guerrero” has existed in Spain long before the 1500s, so my guess about it originating with Gonzalo Guerrero was off. Thanks for the corrections—leaving the rest of my comment for context.

  By pelagicAustral 19 hours ago

• How did you come to that conclusion? The last name Guerrero predates the 1500s by centuries.

  By taveras 18 hours ago

• "Guerrero" is a common last name in Spain.

  By Azkron 18 hours ago

• There's that lovely phenomenon, I can't recall the name, of people that live to their name. Like a cook who's named Jon Cook, a gardener who's named Phil Gardener, you get it.
  So this.

  By yard2010 18 hours ago

• nominative determinism

  By enricozb 17 hours ago

• Well, it may surprise you to know that surnames such as "Cook" and "Butler" are occupational and actually derive from men, centuries ago, who were actually cooks or butlers and eventually coined a newfound surname from that occupation (which may often be passed down father-to-son.)
  So if a modern fellow is named "Jon Cook" it may indeed be a regression hearkening back to one or more of his ancestors and how they were named.
  I am more accustomed to "nominative determinism" being associated with a person's given name, and how they grow up to take on a given role.

  By AStonesThrow 14 hours ago

• It's name itself serving as a kind of fate for what it refers to

  By mistercheph 17 hours ago

• Is that "bootstrapping"?

  By pelagicAustral 17 hours ago

• Or a librarian named Mr Bookman.

  By jxjnskkzxxhx 11 hours ago

• "Guerrero" comes from Spanish "guerra", which is cognate to English "war". They both derive from a common proto-Germanic root.

  By matheist 17 hours ago

• Why would the last name come from him and not the other way?

  By LtdJorge 18 hours ago

• Sounds like the back story to "Dances with Wolves"

  By ugh123 8 hours ago

• Fun fact, Gonzalo means warrior

  By lockedinspace 15 hours ago

• "battle-elf" :D
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_(name)
  "Gonzalo Guerrero" is the "Magnus Maximus" of names.

  By skylurk 15 hours ago

• An inspiration to Avatar maybe!

  By pilooch 16 hours ago

• I think that distinction belongs to The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's a short read, a bit polemic and not as strong as some of her other work IMO, but it clearly had some impact on the writers of Avatar.

  By 0_____0 9 hours ago

• Loyalty is one of the strongest qualities of Spaniards. Or curses. Depends on the occasion I guess. But the saying "ser más papista que el papa" (to be more pro-pope than the pope himself) is not said by chance in Spain.

  By mrfinn 17 hours ago

• "More Catholic than the pope," I believe that may also mean, referring not to loyalty but to intolerably unctuous and hypocritical sanctimony.
  We do have that expression in this language, and "papist" is one of the old anti-Catholic (anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Latin) slurs that actually survives, however deracinated, to the present.
  One example of the sort of such slurs that did not survive is 'mackerel-snapper,' deriving from the pre-Vatican II meat fast observed on Fridays, which is also what first put a fish sandwich on McDonald's menu.

  By throwanem 16 hours ago