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The Cholula Massacre: Cortés's Calculated Terror
Description
In October 1519, just months before the march on Tenochtitlan, Hernán Cortés and his indigenous allies carried out a brutal preemptive attack on the religious center of Cholula. This episode examines the Cholula massacre not as a random act of violence, but as a calculated political strategy. We explore the city's significance as a center of Quetzalcoatl worship, the complex factional politics that led to the massacre, the conflicting accounts of whether a Cholulan plot actually existed, and how the massacre sent a chilling message across Mesoamerica. Drawing on native accounts from the Florentine Codex and Lienzo de Tlaxcala, as well as Spanish chronicles by Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Cortés himself, we unpack what really happened at Cholula and why it matters for understanding the conquest.