SOURCE: "Narratives of Authority: Cortés, Gómara, Diaz," in Prose Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3, December, 1983, pp. 239-63.

In the following excerpt, Loesberg examines the rhetorical means by which Cortés, in his Letters, seeks to consolidate his authority and to justify his actions.

Anthony Pagden on the tone and content of Cortés's Letters:

All the "captains"—as they called themselves—of the Spanish crown were required by law to send regular reports (relaciones) on their activities, and most did; but none of these are anything more than perfunctory, usually disingenuous, accounts of services rendered. Cortés's letters are also disingenuous, but they are never perfunctory. They are far longer than the conventional relación and provided with a conscious, if often clumsy, narrative structure. They were also written in the form not, as was usual, of itemized accounts but of letters. Cortés spoke to his monarch...