Later on however in 1511 Hernán Cortés ended up in Cuba, and convinced the governor of Cuba, Velázquez, to select him as captain of a expedition to colonize Mexico in 1518. Velázquez later canceled the expedition to Mexico, but Hernán Cortés ignored the command given to him and took about 608 men, 11 ships, and 16 horses, and sailed for Mexico arriving in February of 1519. When Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico he stopped at Tabasco where he enquired valuable information about the Aztecs, and how to conquer them. The native people of Tabasco also spoke Spanish which led Cortés to believe that the Spanish were there, later Cortés found out about a European shipwreck and found Jeronimo de Aguilar one of the survivors of the shipwreck who was fluent in Mayan, Jeronimo de Aguilar later became Cortés’s chief interpreter, an important asset to Cortés and the