S3E144 - The Cholula Massacre: Cortés's Calculated Terror

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 Tl...