Spanish Conquest

Name: Ariel Maldonado

Course: Noveno G

School: Tecnico Saleciano

Teacher: Karina Arias

Matter: Estudios Sociales

School year: 2021-2022

Spanish conquest in America

In 1493, Alexander VI officially declared that “Indias” was "discovered" by Spain, so nobody could travel without the permission of the Spain Monarchs. Spain came first, but England, France, Belgium, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, and Russia soon followed.

Caribbean conquest

The Canarias and the Española island (the Dominican Republic and Haiti) were places where Spanish began to practice their conquest and colonization. Also, at that moment, local institutions named as town halls were created. They worked as control institutions of wealth. Also, it was imposed that 20% of gold found to need it to be given to the Spanish Kingdom.
However, Europeans brought with them a disease knew as smallpox. Europeans had never experienced catastrophic proportions of the disease. Therefore, when the disease was brought over by the Europeans, the native people had no immunity to it and no chance to prepare for this disease that was so strange to them, so it represented the extermination of thousands of people. Smallpox was first brought over to the New World by a ship from Spain in 1518. The disease was transferred among aborigines. Overall, this disease represented a devastating rate of 95% of people of the pre-Columbian indigenous population.

Diego de Vasquez, governor of Cuba, sent Hernan Cortes to Mexico. In 1519, Hernan Cortes’s ships reached the Mexican coast at Yucatan. At Tabasco, Cortés was met with resistance from natives. He quickly overpowered them, and the natives surrendered. They provided the Europeans with food, supplies, and women, including an interpreter called Malintzin, also known as “La Malinche” or “Doña Marina”. She became Cortes’s translator, spouse and intermediary with the natives and helped him to send messages to Emperor Moctezuma. Cortes obtained help from Tlaxcalans and Totonac native allies and governor Moctezuma to enter in Tenochtitlán after Veracruz establishment, declared independent from Velasquez Governor. While Cortés held Tenochtitlán through Montezuma, a Spanish force from Cuba landed on the coast of Mexico. They had been sent by Diego Velasquez to unseat Cortés. When Cortés heard of this, he took a garrison of Spanish and Tlaxcalan soldiers and marched on the Spanish.

Conquest in Mexico

Night of Sorrows

In 1520 there was an important event during the Spanish conquest of Mexico, wherein Hernan Cortes and his army of 1.300 Spanish men, 100 horsemen, and 2000 native allies fought their way out of the Mexican capital at Tenochtitlan. Moctezuma dies. The Spanish referred to the escape as "The Night of Sorrows" because Mexicans killed 900 Spanish and 1000 allied Indians. July 1, 1520, the Spanish men occupying Tenochtitlan decided to escape from the city, as they had been under heavy attack for several days.
Cortés regrouped 300 Spanish and 15.000 native allies, so he attacked Tenochtitlan in full force in April 1521 by sea and land. These attacks lasted 75 days. Finally, in August 1521 the city was destroyed. Montezuma’s successor, Cuauhtemoc, was arrested and tortured. More than 3 million Aztecs died from smallpox, and with such a severely weakened population, it was easy for the Spanish men to take Tenochtitlán.

Conquest in other parts of America

In other parts of the continent, the tactic of Cortes was repeated. For example, in 1532 the Inca Empire was conquered by Francisco Pizarro, whose men kidnapped Emperor Atahualpa in exchange for a ransom of gold and silver.