Mexico's smallest state capital — the alliance that brought down the Aztec Empire
Tlaxcala is the capital of Mexico's smallest state, 120km east of Mexico City in the highlands, and one of the most historically significant yet overlooked cities in the country. The Tlaxcalans were the great rivals of the Aztec Triple Alliance — never conquered despite centuries of warfare — and their alliance with Hernán Cortés in 1519 was the decisive factor that enabled the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlán. The city has a perfectly preserved colonial centre with the oldest church in continental America still in continuous use (the Basilica of Our Lady of Ocotlán), extraordinary Baroque ti…
The Tlaxcalans were a loose confederation of four city-states in the Tlaxcala valley who maintained their independence from the Aztec Empire through a combination of military resistance and deliberate isolation — the Aztecs conducted the 'Flower Wars' (ritual battles to take sacrificial captives) against Tlaxcala for decades without ever conquering it. When Cortés arrived in 1519 with a few hundred Spaniards and was initially defeated by Tlaxcalan forces, he negotiated an alliance that proved fatal to the Aztecs — the Tlaxcalans provided 100,000+ warriors for the siege of Tenochtitlán. As rew…