Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4. It looks today like the most brutal and the most complete

replacement of one culture by another that you could possibly imagine. As you stand in the Zocolo, the main square of Mexico City,

the palace of the Spanish Viceroy stands on the very site of the demolished palace of Montezuma.

Along the street you can see the ruins. of the Demolished Palace of Mozzizuma.

Along the street you can see the ruins of what was once the Aztec temple, and the sacred Aztec precinct

is now largely taken up by the huge Spanish Baroque Cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

From here it looks as if the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521 was in every way cataclysmic for indigenous traditions and that is how the story

has often been told. The reality however was more gradual and perhaps more interesting.

The local people kept their own languages,

they also kept their own land for the most part,

although the hideous consequences of the disease

that the Spanish had brought with them unwittingly

meant that much land was freed up for the new settlers from Spain.

Apart from disease, the most significant new aspect of Mexican life under the Spanish was their religion.

Catholic missionaries came with the conquerors in the 1520s

and they transformed the spiritual landscape.

Now 500 years later, over 80% of the population of Mexico is Catholic.

In the process, the physical landscape changed too.

The invaders crushed temples and raised churches all over the Aztec Empire.

And the object that we're looking at now shows us exactly how that process was carried out. Any visitors to Mexico will immediately realize you can't really get away from Catholicism.

It's everywhere. It's pretty overwhelming.

Many of these Mexican churches are built right on platforms of old pagan temples.

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