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xv Introduction Lilia Fernández Historians debate when Latino history begins and how far back they should start narrating events. For our purposes, we start with the indigenous ­peoples of the Amer­ i­cas, and the Spanish explorers who first came into contact with them, as the colo- nization pro­cess unleashed the demographic transformations that would produce the populations we call “Latinos” ­ today. We then trace the events that followed in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The 20th ­ century understandably has the great- est amount of coverage, as this period has been more thoroughly researched than any other and it is most familiar to us ­because it is the recent past. Overall, the events are classified into nine distinct periods. Pre-­Colonial Period through Spanish Empire, 250 CE–1810 Before the arrival of the Spanish in the area that would become known as “the Amer­ i­cas,” dozens of native civilizations and hundreds of tribes inhabited the long stretch of continent from the northernmost reaches of the hemi­sphere to its south- ernmost point. The Olmec, Zapotec, and other ­ peoples lived in the territory that Eu­ro­pe­ans described as “Mesoamerica”: what is now present-­day Mexico. The Maya also had a rich civilization that traced its beginnings back centuries before the Spanish first entered their lands. The Mexica (Aztecs), however, ­ rose to power much more recently, only a few hundred years before Hernán Cortés’s arrival in 1519, and they had managed to exert their force over many smaller tribes in Cen- tral Mexico. When Cortés approached their capital city, Tenochtitlán, the Tlaxca- lan ­ people, who had long chafed ­ under Aztec rule, ­ were willing to help defeat the empire. While native ­peoples accommodated the presence of Spanish colonizers, who usually took over by force, many revolted and rejected Spanish domination. In present-­day New Mexico, the Pueblo did just that, successfully expelling the col- onizers and keeping them at bay for a dozen years.