There’s a small monument in a square in modern-day Mexico City that commemorates the spot of the final battle between the Spanish and the Aztecs, and it reads, “On 13 August 1521, the City of Tlatelolco, so heroically defended by Cuauhtémoc, finally fell into the hands of Hernán Cortés. It was neither a victory nor a defeat, but the painful birth of Mexico and all Mestizo people.”

Reign of Blood is the story of this ‘painful birth,’ an epic that history has recorded as the Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs. It’s the seminal drama of the modern world, and 2021 marks the 500th anniversary of its culmination.

It’s the story of the collision of two remarkable civilizations, each ascendant iterations of the ancient religious, political, and economic institutions of their respective continents. It’s the story of the flawed men and women fated to negotiate this collision – their lofty ambitions, their petty personal rivalries, and their struggles to overcome the limits of their own imaginations. And it’s the story of blood – the blood that Mesoamerican peoples believed was a gift from the gods, and what those same gods demanded back through human sacrifice to keep their universe in balance; the blood flowing through Spanish veins that they believed made them superior to their New World adversaries; the blood of Christ so central to the Catholic faith that zealous Spaniards and a ruthlessly righteous church sought to spread across the continent; and the oceans of blood that were spilled during this “painful birth of Mexico and all Mestizo people.”

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