The vast colony of New Spain has…

The vast colony of New Spain has replaced the suzerainty of the Aztecs and the Mayas.

The settlement of the Yucatan and western Mexico, begun by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, continues, often with fierce and determined resistance by the native populations, with the establishment of the cities of Campeche, Morelia, Merida, Guadalajara, Acapulco, and Zacatecas, together with the first university in North America.

Spain has divided Central America into the five provinces of the Viceroyalty of New Spain: The Islands, Guatemala, New Spain proper (southern Mexico) and New Galicia (northwestern Mexico), where, in the 1540s, the Spanish discover silver in quantity.

These deposits, combined with appropriated native gold and even richer silver deposits in the Viceroyalty of Peru, begin to enrich the Spanish nation under Charles V of Habsburg, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Carlos I of Spain, of the Spanish Empire from 1516.