Episode 7: The Calm Before the Storm

If you study history long enough, you’ll start to see that all the great turning points in the past, those events that completely flip an existing order on its head and mark a pivot into a new era, they never come out of the blue.  Whether its wars, or revolutions, or assassinations, or shock elections, or economic catastrophes, these hinge events are almost always the product of a series of factors, some big, some small, all of which must transpire for these game-changing shifts to take place.  Often these events even have to unfold in a particular order, too, to the point where, if you go back and rerun these chapters again with just one of these factors left out of the sequence, it’s likely history would have unfolded differently. 

Sometimes these massive paradigm shifts are deliberate and the product of careful planning and coordination. Sometimes, though, and more often than not, these “turning point” events sort of happen unintentionally, or they take place out on the periphery or many months or years in advance of the monumental shift that the people they’re actually affecting don’t really notice them at first.  Natural disasters, assassinations, and plagues have been implicated throughout history, where they hit a civilization and unleash a series of events that completely destabilize the ruling order and erode power centers in ways that end in collapse.   

Sometimes it’s a seemingly innocuous political decision like the election of someone who turns out to be a tyrant many years later, or it can even be a technological development that’s the culprit. The invention of the cotton gin in the early 1800s comes to mind. This seemingly harmless technology was designed to improve the efficiency of processing raw cotton and its overall quality, but it had a massive domino effect by making cotton farming more profitable.  This incentivized farmers across the American South to plant more of it, which in turn necessitated a much greater demand for slaves, which expanded the slave trade, which increased Southern resolve to protect the institution of slavery, which led to greater confrontation with Northern states who were determined first to end slavery in newly added states in the west and eventually outlaw it everywhere, which, of course, led to the election of a Northerner, the anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln, which convinced the Southern States that abolition was imminent, which led to the secession of the southern states and the American Civil War. The war was likely inevitable without the cotton gin, but this certainly helped hasten its arrival.  

One of the reasons the clash between the Aztec and Spanish empires is so unique among the many paradigm shifting moments in history is that it encompasses all these themes.  It’s both the result of a long, deliberate series of events by both the Spaniards and the Aztecs that we spent the first few episodes setting up, AND it’s the nearly accidental consequence of an unintentional series of developments and almost out-of-the-blue lightening bolts of good luck from Cortes’ point of view.  It’s also the story of technology, of plague, of diplomatic intrigue and cunning on the part of the Spanish, and comical strategic errors born of a mix of hubris and ignorance on the part of the Aztecs. 

There are many myths, conflicting narratives, and outright lies that have infused the history of the conquest over the years, But despite the existence of legitimate controversy over some of the details of the story born from everything from the limitations of sources and point of view, to the pendulum swings of political, religious and racial biases through different eras, to advances in knowledge gained from archeology and other discoveries – despite all of this, I believe there is a true version of this story, and that’s what we’re going to attempt to tell here.


This episode takes us through the politics surrounding the appointment of Hernan Cortés to lead the expedition that would end with the conquest of the Mexica capital city of Tenochtitlan. We also get into the origins of the many rivalries and personality clashes that will be front and center as the clash of civilizations begins in earnest. Lastly, we’ll grapple with many of the contractions inherent in the way the Aztecs responded to the Spaniards in these early stages of encounter and dispel some myths along the way.

Juan de Grijalva

Juan de Grijalva is chosen to lead the second expedition to Yucatan. He makes contact with hostile Mayans and friendly Nahuatl-speaking cities further west and north. He also meets an emissary from the Aztec emperor,

The Totonacs

The Totonacs were a distinct ethnic group native to an area in and around the modern-day Mexican state of Veracruz. In the late 1400s they came under Mexica domination and were incorporated into the Aztec-led trade and tribute system.

The Great Escape

Cortes set sail on February 18th, 1519 from the port of Santiago de Cuba with 11 ships, nearly 600 men, and at least 16 horses. Officers sent by Governor Velazquez to arrest him arrive at the port just in time to see his fleet in the distance sailing out of the harbor.

Success After Failure

Juan de Grijalva’s expedition is a corking success and included an encounter with the Totonac people, who would prove instrumental to Cortés when he lands there a few months later to begin his march to the Aztec capital – and his date with destiny.

Pedro de Alvarado

Cortés’ most controversial lieutenant will play a central role in one of the most tragic and horrific chapters of this story. We meet him in this episode as he accompanies Grijalva and is sent back to Cuba to report to Velasquez.