Episode
Cortés's Indian Allies: The Indigenous Conquest of Mexico
- Published
- Jul 9, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 403
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Summary
When Hernán Cortés marched on Tenochtitlan in 1519, his Spanish army was tiny. The real fighting force was tens of thousands of Indigenous allies — Tlaxcalans, Totonacs, Huexotzincans, and others who saw the Spanish as a weapon against Aztec domination. This episode examines the complex alliances that made the conquest possible: the motives of each Indigenous group, the role of Cortés's interpreter Malintzin in forging these pacts, and the long-term consequences for allied communities who expected freedom but got colonial rule instead. We look closely at the Tlaxcalan-Xicotencatl family's internal debate over allying with the strangers, the Totonac revolt at Cempoala that opened the door, and how the Spanish used divide-and-conquer tactics to pit Mesoamerican peoples against each other. The conversation also touches on the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, a post-conquest pictorial manuscript that shows the conquest from the Tlaxcalan perspective. Far from a simple story of European victory, the fall of the Aztec Empire was an Indigenous civil war, and the 'conquistadors' were just the tip of the spear. #Cortés #Tlaxcala #Malintzin #Xicotencatl #Cempoala #Totonac #Huexotzinco #AztecEmpire #Mesoamerica #ConquestOfMexico #LienzoDeTlaxcala #IndigenousAlliances #SpanishConquest #HernánCortés #MoctezumaII #divideandconquer #History #FexingoHistory Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo