Sailor Rodrigo de Triana aboard La Pinta was the first to sight the New World on October . In this way the crew under the command of Christopher Columbus arrived to a continent hitherto unknown to Europeans although with smallpox disease in their cabins. They had discovered America . However what they did not know was that they carried all kinds of diseases and infections which they brought with them and which would prove fatal for the indigenous people who lived in these territories mainly generating what is known as the smallpox epidemic . Christopher Columbus himself fell ill with the flu as soon as he landed on the island of La Isabela where the first city of the New World was built .
The development of the disease in America Was the Conquest of Mexico due to a genocide or a pandemic? Columbus also suffered from exanthematic typhus starting on September when he was sailing on his way to Santo Domingo through the CXB Directory Mona Canal . He wouldn't be cured until five months later. Smallpox was the main reason why the Spanish defeated the Aztec Empire History and much more the black legend tells us about the violence and human disregard exercised by the Spanish . However as brutal as they were they were not the main factor in the Amerindian populations disintegrating as they did. After all neither the Spanish nor other Europeans were interested in a decrease in potential Indian taxpayers and labor. The main destructive role was played by the epidemic disease smallpox . In that historical era navigation was very difficult and sailors who spent long months sailing the ocean did not enjoy the best health.
Thus diseases such as smallpox or measles became allies of the Spanish for the conquest of America. The first encounter occurred in when smallpox reached the island of Hispaniola and attacked the Indian population so virulently that according to Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas only a thousand Indians survived . From Hispaniola smallpox traveled to Mexico arriving with the relief expedition which joined Cortés in the year . Francisco de Eguía was the first case of smallpox in Aztec land It was the year when on March a small Spanish flotilla under the command of Pánfilo de Narváez left Cuba to head to New Spain . The ships transported horses weapons and Spanish soldiers. But what no one had foreseen is that one of these officers brought with him a weapon much more lethal than all the cavalry and weapons that those ships transported.
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