Bit of a tangent, but the fact that scifi rarely ever takes note on the indigenous side of colonialism to portray how our interaction with advanced aliens would be like, but instead uses the imperialist "virgin land" expansionist colonization narrative is a proof how incredibly fashy the genre is. There's Vilcabamba but that's it.
Maybe cuz you read mainly anglo authors. Unlike me, that I don't read sci-fi at all.
Check Liliana Bodoc book series
This is the biggest cultural tragedy that has ever occurred, and not only for the Mesoamericans. Think about the explosion of culture and thought that happened when when Europe and Eastern art, literature and philosophy met. The Spanish burned one of the great wellsprings of human thought and endeavor, impoverishing the entire world. Gets me every time I think about it.
It also gets me that if there were horses in America civilizations would have been really fucking advanced
There's a sci-fi book called The Years of Rice and Salt, which is about a world in which 90% of Europe is wiped out by the Black Death. In that alt history, the Chinese are the first to reach Mesoamerica, and because they're not making a concerted effort to murder everything in sight, the indigenous people have time to organize and present a united front.
