Cortés Invades Mexico

In 1519, the Spanish adventurer Hernán Cortés led an expedition of roughly 500 men from Cuba to the coast of Mexico. Within two years, he and his indigenous allies had brought down the Aztec Empire, one of the largest states in Mesoamerica. The conquest opened the way for Spanish rule across much of the mainland Americas and reshaped the political, cultural, and demographic map of the region.

The background lay in the Spanish colonization of the Caribbean, which had begun after Columbus's voyages. By the 1510s, Spaniards based in Cuba were hearing reports of wealthy societies to the west. Diego Velázquez, the governor of Cuba, authorized Cortés to lead an expedition but grew wary of his ambitions and tried to revoke the commission. Cortés sailed anyway, in early 1519. Meanwhile, the Aztec realm, centered on the island city of Tenochtitlan, was a powerful tributary empire led by the Mexica people and their allies. Its demands for tribute and captives had created many resentful subject peoples.

After landing on the Gulf coast, Cortés founded the town of Veracruz, partly to claim legal authority independent of Velázquez. He gained an interpreter and negotiator in Malintzin, known to the Spanish as Doña Marina, an indigenous woman who became central to his dealings with local rulers. Marching inland, he fought and then allied with the Tlaxcalans, longtime enemies of the Aztecs, whose warriors would form the bulk of his fighting force. In November 1519 the Spaniards entered Tenochtitlan, where the ruler Moctezuma II received them. Accounts differ on his motives, and the popular idea that he believed Cortés to be a returning god is doubted by many modern historians.

Relations soon collapsed. Moctezuma was taken into Spanish custody and died in 1520 under circumstances that sources describe differently. During a violent uprising the Spaniards were driven out of the city with heavy losses, an episode often called the "Sad Night." Cortés regrouped with Tlaxcalan and other allies, and besieged Tenochtitlan in 1521. Smallpox, newly introduced to the Americas, ravaged the population, along with famine and fighting. The city fell in August 1521.

The consequences were profound. Spain established the viceroyalty of New Spain, with Mexico City built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. Indigenous populations suffered catastrophic losses from epidemic disease, forced labor, and upheaval. Over the following centuries, Spanish and indigenous traditions blended into the mestizo culture central to modern Mexico. Historians now stress that the conquest was not simply the work of a few hundred Europeans, but a campaign in which indigenous allies played a decisive role.