This Conquistador Changed History. Neglect Haunts His Tomb in Mexico

Mass at the Church of Jesus the Nazarene rarely lures enough congregants to fill more than a few pews. Trash piles up outside under broken stained-glass windows. The unhoused of Mexico City’s old center perform their bodily functions in its shadows.

It could be any run-down church in this vast metropolis, except for a small sign on the front wall declaring: “In this temple rest the remains of the conquistador, Hernán Cortés, who died in 1547.”

Cortés overthrew the Aztec Empire five centuries ago, setting a pattern for European conquests and changing the course of history. But unlike Mexico’s grand pantheons and mausoleums guarding the remains of other major personages, his tomb is marked by neglect and indifference.

Pro-cannabis activists congregate daily in the plaza directly in front of the church. The decaying facade of a cash-strapped hospital founded by the conquistador is connected to the church. An eerie, unfinished mural depicting the Apocalypse looms over the tomb itself.

The Rev. Efraín Trejo, who cares for the church, expressed regret that Cortés isn’t viewed with more nuance as a figure shaped by the forces of his time.

“It’s completely unfair when people judge history through a modern lens,” said Father Trejo, 63, as he eased the church’s wooden doors open for a visitor on a September morning. “What will be said of us in a few centuries?”

The treatment of Cortés’s bones, which lie in a tomb encased in a stone wall, spotlights how quarreling over the conquistador continues to shape views of the conquest’s legacy, Mexican nationalism and the country’s strained relations with Spain.

Since taking office, President Claudia Sheinbaum, a leftist, has repeatedly called on Spain to apologize for the conquest’s atrocities. This year, she singled out actions by Cortés, like his 1525 order to kill Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor.

An apology from Spain remains a political non-starter, revealing how Cortés is often viewed there in a softer light. When the far-right Spanish party Vox demanded in recent years that the Mexican authorities clean up Cortés’s tomb and make it more welcoming, responses in Mexico ranged from chortles to suggestions that the remains be shipped off to Spain.

Ms. Sheinbaum’s stance yields clear political benefits at home, tapping into strains of what the historian Ilán Semo calls “antigachupinismo.” The concept, a longstanding feature of Mexican politics and art, refers to a sentiment of animosity to the Spanish, rooted in Cortés’s conquest and Mexico’s struggle for independence from Spain.

“The prevailing view on Cortés in popular culture is that he was evil, brutal, terrible,” said Mr. Semo, a history professor at Iberoamerican University, in Mexico City. “More people would visit his tomb if that weren’t the case. It’s not even in most tourist guides.”

Inside the church, Cortés’s tomb is simple and unadorned, in contrast to the elaborate tombs of far less historically prominent, if well-heeled, congregants whose remains rest elsewhere in the temple’s walls.

The priest, who divides his time between Cortés’s tomb and another nearby church, said visitors do occasionally drop by, including some from Spain. A man also recently entered the church shouting profanities in the direction of Cortés’s bones, he said.

Other factors might deter potential visitors, Father Trejo added, citing a makeshift tent in front of the church where pro-cannabis activists, from a group called La Comuna 420, have set up a “tolerance zone,” where they gather daily to puff on joints without police interference.

“The aroma is hard to ignore,” the priest said.

Steps away from the cloud of marijuana smoke, street vendors hawk clothing and food. Their booths conceal from public view an outdoor mural on the church depicting Cortés’s legendary meeting with the most famous and the penultimate Aztec emperor, Montezuma (also known as Moctezuma) at Huitzilan, a site whose Nahuatl name roughly translates as “place of the hummingbirds.”

Ulises Salomón, 25, an Indigenous street vendor from a Triqui-speaking village in southern Mexico, whose booth stands in front of the mural, said he had never stepped foot inside the church.

“Cortés,” Mr. Salomón said, “is an insult to Native peoples.”

The conquistador’s bones took an unusual route to this unusual tomb.

He died in Spain in 1547 and was buried there, but his family unearthed his bones, took them to Mexico and had them placed in multiple sites, including a convent and another church before eventually installing them in the Church of Jesus the Nazarene, which was built as part of a hospital that Cortés had founded for Spanish soldiers.

Historians say the bones drew controversy in the 19th century when Mexico won independence from Spain. Desecration threats spurred a clandestine scheme to place the remains in a hidden location under the church’s floorboards, with a cover story suggesting they had been taken to Italy.

The remains were largely forgotten in the church until 1946, when researchers found documents detailing their hidden place. They were exhumed and confirmed as Cortés’s, then redeposited the next year in the church’s wall.

Echoing the wandering of his remains, views of Cortés have continuously shifted in Mexico and beyond. Some now ascribe greater agency to the Indigenous allies who aided Cortés, presenting him more as a political opportunist, playing on divisions of pre-Columbian Mexico, rather than a solitary conqueror.

But in Mexico, predominating views still blame Cortés for the devastation of Indigenous societies, grounded in accounts by some of his contemporaries, who cast a pall over Cortés’s reputation during his lifetime.

Still, no such judgments plague Cortés in his resting place, where a sign simply warns visitors they are prohibited from getting too close to the site where his remains are sealed in a stone wall.

Above the tomb, an unnerving mural on the ceiling by José Clemente Orozco, a giant of 20th-century Mexican art, does not seem to refer to Cortés at all. Instead the dimly lit work depicts scenes from the Apocalypse, including severed heads and contorted, tormented bodies.

Connected to the church, the hospital built by Cortés is still somehow functioning 500 years after its founding. On idyllic patios inside, patients bask in the sun as hummingbirds flutter around hibiscus flowers.

In contrast to his tomb, tributes to Cortés abound in the Hospital de Jesús. These include a bronze bust of the conquistador, huge paintings of Cortés and his son, and a statue of Cortés holding in his hand a miniature model of the adjacent church where his bones are kept.

The hospital now operates as a nonprofit, and those at its helm say the ties to Cortés have made it harder to raise funds, especially since the governing leftist party, Morena, rose to power in part by demanding an apology from Spain.