In 1492, when Columbus arrived in the New  World, the Aztec empire was strong and growing. By 1519, the year a Spanish explorer named Hernan Cortes landed at Cozumel with a band of 550 sailors, the  empire controlled vast lands stretching from the Yucatan Peninsula to the Pacific, with at least 370 individual nations subject to their capital city,  Tenochtitlan, and forced to pay heavy tributes. Not surprisingly, Cortés and his  men did not find it too difficult to recruit some of these Indian communities to  join in their assault on the capital.

Post-conquest chroniclers tell us 1519 was also the year Quetzalcoatl had promised to return from the east. When strange-looking men came dressed in heavy armor, riding animals never seen before, speaking a strange tongue, and riding in huge houses that moved on the water, their light-skinned leader was believed to be the returning Quetzalcoatl.

After two years and the loss of many lives,  especially among the Indians, who were decimated by the smallpox germ imported  by the conquistadors, the Spaniards defeated the Aztecs under their last ruler,  Cuauhtemoc, and 300 years of colonial rule began.