La casta divina- the divine caste, that old fucking spaniards who felt superior to anyone else- did not arm the mayans. In fact, they intended to join the united states, but the war had already ended by then. The mayans got the weapons with the english, trought the bordier with Belice.

Same thing happened in the Sierra Madres in 1935. Between Ciudad Chihuahua and Los Moches on the coast, all the little towns have a town hall, a basketball court, and a Pemex along the Highway, also along the spectacular railroad through the Barrancas de Cubre (Copper Canyons). The Mayans or the Raramuri could shut down the highways without much real problem, the Mexican army could push their way through to where the bridges would be cut. The tax collectors are seldom seen. There are approx. 400 miles of impassible mountains on either side of the Copper Canyons, and no good harbor except at Guaymas, a couple hundred miles north of Los Moches.

And of course, in the 75 years since 1935, civilization has made great inroads. Almost all the Indios speak Spanish now, and wear pants and shirts or dresses. Even 40 years ago I saw Mayan men and women wearing only grass skirts, and many Raramuri (Tarahumara or ‘runners’ to those who watch TV documentaries) wearing only loincloths, haven’t seen that much lately, although still occasionally when I travel inland.

Great blog. I keep running across it. It’s on my list now.

From 2-6 years old I lived in Bogata Columbia. At 6 my father moved the family back to that Hell hole called Ohio. As we traveled back (via Constellations, 1956) we stopped off for a week in Guadamaula. We eventually got by car to Chi Chi Castinango where as a child I got to see the Maya living there every day lives, market days and holey days. I can remember that poor Cathedral and the Maya walking to it from outside of town on their hands and knees, bowing with each step. But I just an ignorant child back then without even a conscience.

“Indigenism” was the name that Castro decided to put to the new Communist variant after the USSR colapsed on the first Foro de Sao Paulo.

And who was Chavez before the 1992 coup? An Army guy on a subversive communist militant groups leaded by former guerrila fighter Douglas Bravo.

Now, do the US of A has supported dictatoships? Yes. And fuck them for that. But anybody that thinks that turning all Latin-American countries on fucking Cuba is a good thing can fuck off. So you can choke on your Che Guevara shirt. And on a barrel of cocks after that.

Don’t know about that, War Nerd. Don’t know if you’re aware of this:

-That whole “take the countryside, surround the cities” thing was invented by another communist general. Mao just pretended it was his once he was in power.

-The communists ran from the Japanese army and left the Kuomintang to defend the country. When they belatedly fought, it was mostly other communist generals, not Mao, until much later. But he would pretend later that he had arranged with the KMT to defend the country together.

-He even abandoned his own side to get rid of rivals. When another communist generals asked for aid, attacked by the Kuomintang, Mao had his forces on the other side of the mountain, but refused to help him. He wanted the other general to die so he wouldn’t be a threat. This was a pattern for Mao: “If I can’t rule China, I don’t care if my side loses, or if the Japanese take the country.”

And aside from that he killed 20 million Chinese, he starved the country by centralizing the industry and thereby destroying it, he launched nation-wide terror in the name of Cultural Revolution to weaken other communist leaders when they tried to reinstore some semblance of economy to the country. He was the worst disaster that had ever befallen China. When he died, prisoners and exiles gathered by exile Deng Xiaoping could take over and save the country from Soviet-like ruin by introducing a market economy. If they had had that all the time, they would have stood for about 50 percent of world GDP by now.

But Mao had to have his little fun first. As a ruler he could order his soldiers to bring in girls from the peasants and towns and rape them in the thousands, giving them syphilis – he believed raping virgins would lengthen his life.

“Statism”… “Communist” labels make it easy to say nothing and believe you said something. If you look at who was being massacred before these people came into office, and who is not being massacred now, maybe you will see the connection. During the Reagan years, under the direction of U.S backed dictators 200,000 Mayan villagers in Guatemala, 80,000 in El Salvador and 50,000 in Nicaragua were slaughtered by the U.S backed and supplied Contra forces, because they were “communists”. Don’t you think their neighbors noticed?

Again, labels make it easy to dehumanize and demand no thought. I thought about what I said, but it doesn’t sound like you thought much about what you said.

You are a fucking idiot.

Chavez isn’t some avenger of the indian tribes, he’s a military communist. And Morales just pays lip service to his “indigenism”, when is about simple Statism.

Your precious indian tribes just get ignored by their goverments and used as human poker chips by the local mafias.

So they kinda didn’t want to “unite” behind the Aztecs.”

I am aware.
They were all doing. I think it was more of the demanding tribute and slaves thing.
This is just speculation. In the end the Spaniards won. I just speculated an alternate history.

The conquest of New Spain – Bernal Díaz del Castillo (which should be taken with a grain but is still as close as we will get to the truth) explains the Spaniards precarious situation quite candidly.

I suggest you look into some of the offerings hex & chit wargaming has made in the 70ies. Albeit SciFi, Bloodtree Rebellion would be right up your alley:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6921/bloodtree-rebellion

SPI also produced some very interesting, innovative designs that are a bit ahrd to track down though.

On a tangential note, I still think Stephen Donaldson, wargame designer of classics such as:

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4436/cityfight-modern-combat-in-the-urban-environment

would deserve some eXiled treatment. He, Donaldson was also an activist known as “Donny the Punk”.

From the glory days of the enlightened 70ies, wargaming took a hardware-heavy Reagan-era turn it never really recovered from.

Miniature games are bascially all rather silly anyways.

The other problem was that the Aztecs were always a paper tiger. They were great at attaching disorganized tribes and paramount chifedoms, but whenever they fought a real army they got their ass handed to them. Just research the Battle of Taximaroa, it was said that you could walk across the field 40 YEARS afters without stepping on the ground simply by walkng on the bones of the dead Aztecs…