An accidental
Spanish landing in Yucatán occurred after a 1511 shipwreck. In the
Spring of that year, Enciso y Valdivia sailed from Darién in Panama
to Santo Domingo. The ship wrecked on reefs near Jamaica, and the few survivors
drifted in an open boat to the eastern shore of Yucatan, where they were
either killed or enslaved by Maya caciques or nobles.
Two survivors, Gonzalo Guerrero and Geronimo Aguilar, remained alive when Cortés reached Yucatán in 1519. Aguilar, a former priest who had been made a slave to a Maya cacique, was rescued by Cortés and became an interpretor, while Guerrero, who had married a Mayan wife, remained in his Yucatec village.
.
[Fig.1: Probable route of the 1511 Valdivia shipwreck and landing of the survivors around Cozumel Island.]
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