The virus, unintentional gun of the Conquest

When Hernan Cortes decided to undertake an expedition of conquest to the east, sailed from Santiago de Cuba, on November 15 of 1518 - with eleven boats and just over 700 men. The governor Velazquez, with whom he had struggles, only authorized him to explore those lands. But he was going to get not only glory and to increase the domains of the Spanish crown, but also favors, land and a territory to govern. In addition to horses, this small army that is insubordinate a few months later and founded the first Spanish establishment in Mexican lands, was accompanied by a few indigenous natives of the Caribbean islands, which belonged to the ethnic taina, and some black slaves and firearms. How many weapons could upload these small boats? How many of his men were armed? Seems to lie that, with so few resources, these climbers refer to achieve a strong empire that dominated most of the central section of what is today our country.


Certainly, they must have had an important role weapons, horses, the confrontation of ideas and ideology of the settlers of the land, but the triumph of the Conquest was also due to a factor with which the conquerors did not own: the Microbes that they were carrying, against whom the Americans had not developed any natural defenses.
According to the most widespread theory, the settlers of America had reached nineteen thousand years earlier, on foot, from the northwestern part of the huge mass of the Asian continent. These were small nomadic groups, extended families who over the centuries, following the migratory routes of the big game, were spreading to the south, in a territory where they were the first inhabitants of the human species. For generations to adapt to this environment, were developing defenses against biological myriad viruses and bacteria that were surely on their way, not to be functional defenses that their ancestors had developed Asian continent in its original, these antibodies have evolved or lost.

However, records and testimony that there is about the lives of people in America before the arrival of the Spanish let us know of epidemics that were attacking the people Toltec, Maya, totonacas and Mexico. For example, one of the reasons that contributed to the collapse of the once powerful Tula was probably a great plague occurred in the year 7 Rabbit, during which, according to the chronicles, "the parties Toltec thousand nine hundred died." Among many of those recorded in the annals of old, the Chalco Sunday Chimalpahin (born to 1579) recounts the case of an epidemic in Chalco, which virtually depopulate the place in 1456. Epidemics typically arise when large frost or drought caused famine, bringing the population did not have enough protein to confront infections. There has been speculation that the illnesses that plagued the pre-Hispanic populations could be the typhus or severity of respiratory diseases, particularly when acontecían after frost. The valuation of the information transmitted from those days has identified that in the American continent suffered typhoid, tuberculosis, leishmaniasis, salmonella infections and amoebas, and Chagas' disease.
Thus, the arrival of the Europeans, the Americans were unprotected against new microbial strains that traveled with them from the Old Continent, or from the Caribbean islands or Africa. Historians differ as to the density of population in America at the beginning of the sixteenth century, certainly the position of the most conservative among them sheds low population figures, as this would justify the legitimacy of the occupation of "unpopulated" land for Americans Part of the conquistadors and European settlers and would imply a lower mortality of people from these lands. Paleodemográficos work at mid-twentieth century, however, have been clearing the information based on the appreciation of the material remains in archaeological excavations in the descriptions left by early European explorers and also based on the productive capacity of the lands.
These studies tell us that the American continent, there were tens of millions of people; only for the current national territory are estimated between 25 and 30 million inhabitants, which brings us back to the original question: how did Cortes, with less than thousand men, who dominate the empire had controlled this vast amount of people? He was helped by a huge demographic catastrophe, due in large part to epidemics for which this town was not ready.
"The European population had contacts during many centuries before the conquest of America, with Asia and Africa, both as invasions by trade," said Mauricio Schoijet. "His greatest resistance to multiple pathogens have been caused by these contacts as by the fact that coexisted along with thousands of domestic animals that transmit diseases."
If the arrival of the diseases are added religious beliefs and the way in which the building was maintained social Mesoamerica, with a dominance hierarchy and tax, you can understand how it was possible the imposition of strenuous forms of work through the indigenous of the parcels. The overexploitation of the workforce, which is kept working hard and poorly nourished, encouraged that the bodies were exhausted and even depressed easy prey to the germs that produced smallpox, measles, typhoid and cold. Bernardino de Sahagun said the smallpox epidemic of 1545 claimed ten thousand souls in Tlatelolco.
Unleashed epidemics were known under the generic name of "pestilence" had been originate in Europe and Africa, as the first Caribbean islands colonized after the arrival of Christopher Columbus the indigenous population was decimated by disease and ill-treatment; chroniclers of the time, as Oviedo, who raised one million people in a dozen years had been reached to reduce the original population to less than one thousand inhabitants. For this reason, the importation of African slaves began more than a decade before the issue of Cortez conquering. With African slaves arrived malaria, worms or parasitic worms, dysentery and diarrhea among other deadly diseases.
Not yet concluded the period of conquest when a black slave arrived with Panfilo de Narvaez, ill with smallpox, the disease was spreading in these lands that had never been seen. Consequently, the Indians are infected with Banaban frequently, according to the Spanish worsened the disease and died. The demographic catastrophe was also a result of the imposition of customs different, as is very clear on the testimony of Antonio de Herrera, conqueror in Tabasco:
Before he had a multitude of Indians, but many diseases and pestilence that exist in that region have dropped in large quantities, and also because when you are sick of measles, smallpox, colds, blood flow and strong fevers, usually swim in the rivers without wait until the disease has abated, and so die. And according to Christian doctrine, they are not allowed more than one woman, whereas before they could take ten or twelve, and therefore can not increase the number of Indians, especially among Chontales (...)
According review on its history of the case of Spanish in the islands and shore of the sea ocean, in four decades since the year 1492 up to 1531, published in Madrid in 1720.
Faced with the onslaught choose epidemics were unleashed in a vicious circle, famine, since having so many patients, there was nobody to make them bread, ie not gather the crops, are not traded or cooked. The local medicine was not aware of the remedies for these new diseases, responsible for medical care were still few in comparison with the bulk of the population, there were no hospitals or trained personnel to care for sick people. Several of these remedies came little by little social together with better organization of government and society Colonial. However, in the sixteenth century were recorded in New Spain several major epidemics of smallpox cited the already very early, the second to 1531, measles, which in Nahuatl was appointed záhuatl tepiton, leprosy or girl. Around 1545, was broadcast some kind of virus co-bleeding, epidemic that was repeated in 1576, this wave of illness is estimated that should have taken the lives of 800 thousand people throughout the territory. Outbreaks occur regularly in what has been identified as typhus, which the Spanish called tabardillo and indigenous people, matlazáhuatl.
Mandujano Sanchez, Camarillo and Mandujano state that:
The first book of medicine that is published in Mexico, the Opera medicinalia Francisco Bravo, is largely devoted to the disease, with periodic outbreaks, decimating the Mexican population. The most apparent symptom of typhoid or tabardillo is the rash petequial. The codices are indigenous to these patients with skin covered with brown spots.
It is not surprising to learn that epidemics are cebaron in those sectors of society that suffered worst living conditions: labor exploitation, overcrowding, poor diet and unhealthy living and without incentives, which was not addressed only a matter of lack of antibodies. That was how the diseases have become a weapon in the unintentional that looks like, from a distance, not a gesture of conquest that proved fatal.