The conquests of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and New Spain. Wars and alliances between Castilians, Mexicas and Tlaxcalans

Abstract

The article aims to show that considering the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan as a fundamentally Castilian accomplishment and equivalent to the conquest of the territories that would constitute New Spain disregards the diverse range of political forces and Amerindian agents that participated in this historical process. Based on the analysis of Nahua sources, such as the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, Lienzo de Cuauhquechollan and the Códice Vaticano A, it will be shown that the wars and alliances realized between Castilians and Mesoamerican cities to carry out the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan (1519-1521) laid the political and military bases for the Castillian-Nahua conquest and colonization in the following decades of much of the territories that would become New Spain. Thus, the conquest of these territories neither happened automatically with the fall of the capital of the Mexica, nor was it achieved by Europeans only. Following this line of argument, the article reveals that considering the political forces and the Amerindian agents while analyzing these conquests results in explanations quite distinct from the ones found in historiographical lines which could be called history of the vanquished and history of miscegenation.

Keywords: conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Nahua historical sources, indigenous colonial history.