Mexico City marks 500 years of Spanish siege of Tenochtitlán, the capital of Aztec Empire – Firstpost

It was one of the few times an organised Indigenous army under local command fought European colonisers to a standstill for months, and the final defeat helped set the template for much of the conquest and colonisation that came afterward. Here the Emperor Cuauhtemotzin was taken prisoner on the afternoon of 13 August 1521.’ Image via The Associated Press/ Eduardo Verdugo Mexico City’s current mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, put it this way: “The fall of México-Tenochtitlán started a tale of epidemics, abuses and 300 years of colonial rule in Mexico.” That was to become the rule throughout the hemisphere over the next three centuries. Image via The Associated Press/ Eduardo Verdugo Carlo Viesca, a medical historian at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, said at least 150,000 of the city’s 300,000 inhabitants probably died before the Spaniards were able to reenter the city, and when they did, he quoted one Spaniard as saying, “We were walking on corpses.” In the end, Viesca says, Cuauhtemoc — the last Aztec emperor — “had few troops with the strength left to fight.” Medical anthropologist Sandra Guevara noted that smallpox assumed a form so virulent among Indians not previously exposed to it — and with no immunological defenses against it — that even those who survived were probably blinded or developed gangrene in their feet, noses and mouths. Image via The Associated Press/ Eduardo Verdugo Emperor Cuauhtemoc — Cuauhtemotzin to the Aztecs — took over and fought on and skillfully led the Aztec resistance in the 1521 siege. *** Banner image: An ancient Aztec temple, a Spanish colonial church and a modern government office constructed in the 1960s in the Plaza of Three Cultures in Mexico City.