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>>149547779
The Mexica of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan were absolutely hardcore expansionistic conquerors, but the idea that they were widely hated oppressive tyrants who terrorized the "tribes" they ruled over and that led to Cortes getting allies against them is mostly nonsense

For starters, there are basically no "tribes" involved. Mesoamerica had cities, writing etc going back thousands of years, see pic. The only "tribes" were groups at the fringes of the region and dweren't encountered by the Cortes expedition. Ironically though the Mexica and other Nahua/"Aztec" groups have their origins in nomadic chichimeca tribes from the northwest which migirated into Central Mexico and adopted local civilization and their practices... including sacrifices, which is my next point: Everybody in Mesoamerica did sacrifices, not just the Mexica who as I just said if anything got it from other more established groups.

Next, is simply that the Mexica didn't directly govern the places they conquered: Mesoamerica's lack of draft animals and difficult terrain made hands on adminstration difficult and most kingdoms and empires tended to be hands-off. The Aztec Empire wasn't an exception here and when it conquered a state it generally left local kings in power with existing customs, laws, etc: They usually just had to pay taxes of economic goods (sacrifices/slaves were not generally a tax demand: those were collected DURING conquests, not usually from existing subjects) and follow some other basic obligations. But that setup also left subject states with their own political identity, interests/ambitions, and agency to make descisions, so it enabled opportunistic secession, side-switching, backstabbing etc as a political strategy.

That's basically the main reason most of the states that allied with Cortes (and to be clear, only like a dozen did so, out of many hundreds)

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