American Beliefs: What Keeps a Big Country and a Diverse People United by John Harmon McElroy compares and contrasts the colonialism of England, France, Portugal, and Spain. I discussed that in this reply on an FR thread:Spain found bronze-age civilization, and conquered them in a conventional manner as they would have liked to have done in Europe, especially England. Since they found a going concern their only interest was in dominating and exploiting it, rather than creating it. So the only people they sent to their colonies were soldiers and gentlemen to be in charge. No Spanish peons need apply.
In short..they were a bunch of thieves. But, I must admire the English. They let them steal everything from the natives, and then took it away from the Spanish.
Maybe we ought to learn from the Brits history and do the same to the drug cartels. Steal their money. Just a thought.