Herman J. Viola & Carolyn Margolis, eds., Seeds of Change:a quincentennial commemoration, (Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), pp.33, 39, 41:

"In the year 1519, Hernán Cortés set out from Cuba with eleven ships and 550 men from Spain. He brought with him an additional 200 islanders from Cuba, several blacks, and a few Indian women. He also had on board the fleet sixteen horses.

"On the island of Cozumel off the coast of Yucatán, Cortés met with a Spanish castaway who would provide invaluable assistance to his efforts. Jerónimo de Aguilar had been shipwrecked some eight years earlier, being taken as a slave by the people of Yucatán. During his servitude he had become fluent in Yucatec Mayan. ...[Also on the way] they landed near the town of Potonchán, now called Champotón, in the state of Campeche. There, Cortés would have a second stroke of luck - the gift from the chief of the woman called Malinche ....[who] had been sold into slavery by ... allies of the Aztecs, to the Mayas of Potonchán. [She also served as a translator.]

"Given the Aztecs’ less deadly approach to warfare, combined with European firepower, the frightening vision of the horse and the devastation wrought by [European] disease, it is not difficult to explain how several hundred Spaniards in league with about twenty thousand Tlaxcalans could have vanquished a nation of nearly a million people.

"The population of the Valley of Mexico in 1500 has been estimated at between 1,500,000 and 3,000,000 people; by 1600 there were approximately 70,000 .The poets of the Aztec nation mourned the loss of their world:

"Broken spears lie in the roads;
we have torn our hair in our grief.
The houses are roofless now, and their walls
are red with blood.
Worms are swarming in the streets and plazas,
and the walls are splattered with gore.
The water has turned red, as if it were dyed,
and when we drink it, it has the taste of brine.
We have pounded our hands in despair
against the adobe walls,
for our inheritance, our city, is lost and dead.
The shields of our warriors were its defense,
but they could not save it.
(León-Portilla, 1962)"

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