{"podcast":{"title":"The Conquistadors: Exploration, Greed, and Destruction — Fexingo History","slug":"the-conquistadors-exploration-greed-and-destruction-fexingo-history-7864470","podcast_index_feed_id":7864470,"rss_url":"https://feeds.fexingo.com/history/the-conquistadors.xml","website_url":"https://www.fexingo.com/history/the-conquistadors/","image_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/history/the-conquistadors/cover.png","author":"Fexingo","episode_count":182,"summary":"From the moment Hernán Cortés burned his ships on the Veracruz shore to the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the Spanish conquistadors remade the Americas through a volatile mix of courage, cruelty, and greed. Lucas and Luna guide listeners through the brutal collision of two worlds, examining not only the well-known figures—Cortés, Pizarro, Moctezuma, Atahualpa—but also the indigenous allies, enslaved Africans, and forgotten women who shaped the conquest. Each episode dissects a specific campaign or cultural encounter: the siege of Tenochtitlan, the conquest of the Inca Empire, the protracted Maya resistance, and the lesser-known expeditions into Florida and the Amazon. They explore the legal and moral debates of the Valladolid Controversy, the devastating impact of Old World diseases, and the encomienda system that bound native peoples to Spanish lords. The show also confronts the long legacy: how conquest myths were constructed, how indigenous memory survives, and how modern movements grapple with statues, repatriation, and historical memory. This is not a simple story of heroes or villains—it is a search for understanding amid the rubble of empires. Can we truly grasp the scale o…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-29T06:20:17.143281+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-conquistadors-exploration-greed-and-destruction-fexingo-history-7864470"},"episode":{"title":"Cortés's African Companions: The Unseen Conquistadors","slug":"cort-s-s-african-companions-the-unseen-conquistadors","published_at":"2026-07-23T15:36:02+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-conquistadors-exploration-greed-and-destruction-fexingo-history-7864470/cort-s-s-african-companions-the-unseen-conquistadors","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-conquistadors-exploration-greed-and-destruction-fexingo-history-7864470","url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/history/the-conquistadors/episode-0172.mp3","audio_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/history/the-conquistadors/episode-0172.mp3","summary":"When we picture the Spanish conquest of Mexico, we tend to imagine armored Europeans and their Indigenous allies. But among Cortés's small army were men whose stories have been almost entirely erased: African conquistadors, both free and enslaved, who fought, built, and died alongside the Spaniards. This episode follows figures like Juan Garrido, a free black conquistador who crossed the Atlantic, participated in the siege of Tenochtitlan, and later became the first known wheat farmer in New Spain. We also examine Estebanico, an enslaved Moroccan who survived the disastrous Narváez expedition and became one of the first Africans to explore the North American Southwest. Through their eyes we see the conquest from a different angle — not as a black-and-white story of European vs. Indigenous, but as a complex web of race, class, and survival in the early colonial world. Drawing on Spanish legal records and early chronicles, we recover the lives of men who were both oppressors and oppressed, and ask why their place in history has been forgotten. #JuanGarrido #Estebanico #AfricanConquistadors #BlackConquistadors #HernánCortés #Tenochtitlan #NarváezExpedition #NewSpain #Cíbola #AfricanDiaspora #ColonialMexico #ConquestOfMexico #Mesoamerica #History #FexingoHistory #ForgottenHistory #RaceAndEmpire #16thCentury Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo","meta_description":"When we picture the Spanish conquest of Mexico, we tend to imagine armored Europeans and their Indigenous allies. But among Cortés's small army were men w…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":524,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-conquistadors-exploration-greed-and-destruction-fexingo-history-7864470/episodes/cort-s-s-african-companions-the-unseen-conquistadors/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-conquistadors-exploration-greed-and-destruction-fexingo-history-7864470/cort-s-s-african-companions-the-unseen-conquistadors.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}