New edition updated and revised by the author. In The Conquest of Mexico, a catastrophe of the original peoples, Enrique Semo presents an original approach to the conquest and the foundation of what was New Spain, while analyzing how the development of the conquest determined the extinction of many indigenous peoples, victims of deadly wars, of deadly epidemics and of different extreme forms of exploitation that annihilated their cultures and religions.

The author presents first the four main actors of this event: the Amerindians in their communal societies of kinship, their headquarters and their tax formations; the Europeans of mercantile capitalism, merchants, lenders and privateers; the Spaniards fresh out of the Reconquista, conquistadors, friars, officials and settlers, as well as the Africans who arrived, to their regret and in the condition of slaves, to take part in the foundation of the new society. Then we are narrated the conquest proper, not only of the Mexica empire, but of the entire territory and population of what was New Spain and then the independent Mexico: the Anáhuac with its vital center in Tenochtitlan; the Great Septentrion, land of the Chichimeca warriors and the South-Southeast, headquarters of Maya, Zapotecs and Mixtecs that presented a persistent resistance to the invasion.

This new edition of The Conquest of Mexico, a catastrophe of the original peoples, carefully revised and synthesized by the author, is a work accessible to all: academics, students and history enthusiasts.