Do you think the Spanish Conquest has any impact on Mexico today?

Question

The Spanish came to Mexico in the 1500s and they attacked the Indians and stole their gold. Do you think, because of that conquest, that Mexico is still impacted today by that event?

Answer 1

What a strange question! You may perhaps not have noticed that Mexicans speak Spanish and are racially a mixture of Indian and European (largely Spanish.) Most are at least nominally Roman Catholics, bullfighting enthusiasts, and have "inherited" many Spanish customs and tastes, modifying them to suit.

Answer 2

Financially, as pertaining to your note about the gold? No. The amount of gold that the Spanish took was nothing, primarily because the Inca, Aztec, and Mayans really weren't aware of how much it was worth due to the Spanish being their only other contact.

They resumed financially the same way without it as they could have with it. It isn't like they could have opened trade with the British; they didn't have the technology such as primitive guns to fight back, so the gold would have been forced from them in the future, by the Spanish or otherwise.

Without people believing the dollar is worth something, it is just a piece of cotton with ink on it. All the gold was to the native Mexican civilizations was shiny yellow metal.