received his first official appointment in Cuba as Clerk to the Treasurer, a position of esteem he intended to exploit to serve his own ambitions, which included a position of power and leadership from where he could significantly increase his wealth.
The success experienced by Cortes in the colonization of Cuba and in the administration of his duties there led to his mounting the expedition into mainland Mexico that resulted in the fall of the Aztec Empire and the securing of major parts of mainland Mexico for Spain. The efforts of Cortes and his men are generally portrayed as being responsible for the Conquest of Mexico. This is certainly the case in two sources of the period, Cortes' own Letters from Mexico and his contemporary Bernal Diaz del Castillo's account of the experience in Conquest of New Spain.
In the former, Cortes basically attempts to portray himself as a servant of Spain, going to extraordinary lengths to acquire new lands and resources for Spain while converting the natives to Christianity. Diaz' account is biased from his own resentment of Francisco Lopez de Gomara's, Cortes' chaplain and secretary, efforts to paint the conqueror as one of the great men of history and responsible for the Conquest. As Paul E. Greene offers, "A conquistador himself, Diaz reacted bitterly to the prominent role Gomara assigned to Cortes...Much of Diaz' True History is, therefore, an attempt to 'set the record straight.' His chronicle reflects his rank and his hatred of Gomara's work, rejecting the need to constantly present Cortes in a superlative position."[3] Even so, in The Conquest of New Spain Diaz offers an ethnocentric view of the Conquest that reinforces and justifies the imperial aims of Spain and portrays Cortes' role as significant to the victory. Diaz slightly diminishes Cortes' role, though, by portraying his soldiers and captains as responsible for success in the Conquest of Mexico.
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