Still, much of their base culture survives in meso-America. We see it in beheadings along the border.
Blood lust.
Heads on pikes, drawing and quartering, impalement, crucifixion along the Apian Way...such are the tools of terror which can keep a resistant population cowering in their hovels rather than fighting in the streets. No one wants to end up like that, so they tend to be quiet--until the killing gets out of hand.
How many political adversaries (and their entire clans) have been sold into slavery or slaughtered, only to have the reason painted as a sacrifice to some God or otherwise whitewashed?