The outbreak is considered one of the deadliest epidemics in human history, approaching the Black Death bubonic plague that killed 25 million people in western Europe in the 14th century — about half the regional population. European colonisers spread disease as they ventured into the new world, bringing germs local populations had never encountered and lacked immunity against.
The cocoliztli pestilence in what is today Mexico and part of Guatemala came just two decades after a smallpox epidemic killed an estimated million people in the immediate wake of the Spanish arrival. Even at the time, physicians said the symptoms did not match those of better-known diseases such as measles and malaria.
Scientists now say they have probably unmasked the culprit. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice.
Oxford Handbooks Online. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Alan R. Sandstrom Alan R. The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs. Read More. But on the whole, like most humans, they preferred to laugh and dance and do the decent thing. They knew that all peoples had something special to offer, and the markets of their great city were stocked with proof of this—the products of the widest possible reach, created by talented artisans from across the land.
Later, in the s, s and s, some of their descendants now mixed with Spaniards returned north and settled the area from California to Texas. This migration only stopped when the United States invaded their country in the s and defeated them in war, suddenly claiming the region as their own.
Likewise, the people of Central America, who once existed on the edges of the Aztec empire, find themselves facing poverty and violence and look to the north with hope. If they were here today, they would probably see a certain irony in the situation.
That instead of traveling south, Mesoamericans now journey north, reversing the steps taken by their ancestors so many years ago. And that even in the face of American hostility and outright violence, they still find hope, energy and resilience, much like their Aztec ancestors in the shadow of their Spanish colonizers. When people from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala travel to other parts of the country, they are sometimes insulted as traitors by their compatriots.
They are also revising the accusation of treachery, arguing that Tlaxcalans and other city states were in fact fighting a war of liberation against the oppressive Mexica as the Aztecs were known. The conquest is a singular event in Mexican history, seen both as a moment of national trauma and the founding act of the nation — and it remains deeply controversial.
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