[walden]

"* Mexico actually once was a major world power, with its own (almost certainly indigenous) written language. Mexico City was an impeccably clean and splendid city, and easily among the most populous in the world. Then Cortes brought smallpox and cocolitzi erupted."

It may have been clean, but that was the Aztec Empire you are talking about, where they practiced HUMAN SACRIFICE. Cortes did Mexico a HUGE favor, and attempts to rewrite history to prove otherwise are intellectually dishonest.

[dufekin]

I certainly do not doubt the virtues of Christianizing the Aztecs (and cocoliztli, perhaps the worst epidemic in world history, appears to have been a drought-induced native [non-European] disease). But we shouldn't ignore the achievements of an empire that managed to feed 22 million people on 15th-century maize farming technology (in some ways less advanced than elsewhere, and almost without domesticated animals).