Demographic catastrophe and its causes: viruses, Black Legend and the social context of epidemics
Alonso de Zorita (~1565): “...and it is certain that from the day that D. Hernando Cortes, the Marquis del Valle, entered this land...the natives suffered many deaths, and many terrible dealings, robberies and oppressions were inflicted on them, taking advantage of their persons and their lands, without order, weight nor measure; ...the people diminished in great number, as much due to excessive taxes and mistreatment, as to illness and smallpox, such that now a very great and notable fraction of the people are gone, and especially in the hot country.”