The Lost City of the Monkey God

by Douglas Preston

The fall of Tenochtitlan, the general collapse of native populations everywhere, and the continuing waves of pandemics allowed the Spanish to quickly crush Indian resistance throughout most of Central America. Compare this to the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, which occurred at the same time. The Spanish were just as ruthless there, but the conquest was not aided by disease: Filipinos were resistant to Old World diseases, and the islands experienced no mass die-offs or population crashes. As a result, the Spanish were forced to accommodate and adjust to coexistence with the indigenous people of the Philippines, who remained strong and retained their languages and cultures. Once the Spanish left, the Iberian influence largely faded away, along with the Spanish language, which is today spoken by few.