But while Europe benefited from this arrangement, Latin America suffered tremendously. It is estimated that Mexico had a population of up to 30 million indigenous inhabitants before the arrival of the Europeans. The Andean region had a similar number. Central America is thought to have supported around 13 million. The numbers vary by source to some extent, but scholars agree that in 1492 the Latin American region had a combined population of between 50 and 100 million.15 By the middle of the 1600s, however, the continent’s population had been slashed to 3.5 million.16 In other words, around 95
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