e of a barbarian people, interesting only because it was amazingly rich. None of his written memoirs show the slightest wish to understand the Indians; in reality, he condemned them before having known them even in the most superficial manner. By the time when Moctezuma II, the last Aztec emperor (also known as Montezuma or Motecuhzoma), became king in 1502 the city of Tenochtitlan, together with its neighbor Tlatelolco, counted with more than 60 000 houses and had a population over 300 000 inhabitants; in other words it had a size 5 times than London in the times of Henry VIII. Throughout the first seventeen years of Moctezuma's reign, the empire was plagued with constant uprisings of peoples who had been harshly subjugated by the Aztecs and wished to escape the tributes required of them. Moctezuma had left the consolidation of the empire up to his generals while he devoted his time to wordily pleasures and religious duties in Tenochtitlan. Across the Atlantic Ocean, another great empire had recently accomplished s consolidation of its own. Spain had successfully completed the Reconquista. I think that to better understand the reasons for the conquest of Mexico and the elimination of its civilizations we should mention the process of the settlement of New Spain. Finding a solid Muslim wall to the south, in Northern Africa and the powerful French kingdom to the north, the only direction that the Spanish saw in which to expand was to the west. The popes had intentionally given sovereignity over any new lands discovered to Portuguese; but with advent of Columbus' discovery, the Spanish wished to end this legacy of Portuguese favoritism in the Vatican. The new pope, Alexander VI, issued a series of four bulls that established the papacy as an adamantly pro-Spanish power. These bulls gave the Spanish title to Columbus' discoveries and any non-Christian western lands discovered as long as the native populations were converted to Christianity...
