Episode Details
Back to Episodes
The Tlaxcalan After the Siege: Allies, Settlers, and the Cost of Conquest
Description
The Tlaxcalans were indispensable to Cortés's victory, but what happened to them after Tenochtitlan fell? This episode follows the Tlaxcalan allies through the later decades of the 16th century, as they received encomiendas and privileges from the Spanish crown — while also becoming instruments of colonial expansion into the north. We look at the Tlaxcalan settlements in San Miguel de Allende, the Chichimeca frontier, and the bitter irony of their own descendants being drawn into the same systems of tribute and labor they helped impose. Drawing on the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, indigenous legal petitions, and the Relaciones Geográficas, we explore how the Tlaxcalans navigated their new place in the colonial order — as conquerors, as subjects, and as a people whose alliance bought survival but not equality.