Massacre in the Great Temple, 1520
The Massacre in the Great Temple, also called the Alvarado Massacre, was an event on May 22, 1520, in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan during the Spanish conquest of Mexico, in which the celebration of the Feast of Toxcatl ended in a massacre of Aztec elites In 1552, the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas published the BrevÃsima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies), an account of atrocities committed by landowners and officials during the colonization of New Spain, particularly in Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Las Casas, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, described Columbus's treatment of the natives in his History of the Indies. His description of Spanish savagery was used by writers of Spain's rivals as a convenient basis for attacks on Spain which would later be referred to as The Black Legend. Las Casas was one of the first advocates for the indigenous people. He spent 50 years of his life fighting slavery and the colonial abuse of indigenous peoples, by trying to convince the Spanish court to adopt a more humane policy of colonization. Engravings appeared in Narratio regionum Indicarum per Hispanos quosdam deuastatarum verissima by Theodore de Bry in 1598.
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