860 resistance and dissent: Asia and the Pacific and political elites, perhaps because of drought and hunger, no longer had authority over the lower classes These peasant and worker revolts would not have erupted simultaneously throughout the Mayan region; rather, they would have broke out sporadically in different places and at different times, progressively weakening the culture over a period of perhaps 300 years Further, some historians hypothesize that isolated peasant groups may have allied themselves with neighboring kings, and such groups may have taken part in plots to assassinate their own rulers These theories, though, remain theories They are not directly supported in the written record, and many historians see the Classic Maya collapse as the end point of numerous social, agricultural, and climatic factors Also in Mesoamerica, the Aztec repeatedly faced the need to put down rebellions The Aztec Empire was ruled by the so-called Triple Alliance of three Aztec city-states in central Mexico: Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tlacopán These three states formed the backbone of the empire, and they drove the empire’s expansion through military conquest As long as an outlying state paid tribute to the Triple Alliance and remained docile, its own ruling dynasty could remain in place However, when one of these states began to flex its own muscles and resist domination by the Triple Alliance, an army would be dispatched to bring the rebellious state under submission This happened with such frequency that the names of various Aztec rulers’ conquests are often repeated, for rebellious states often had to be subdued on more than one occasion An example of the type of revolt the Aztec Empire had to put down occurred in 1487, when the Huastec people of the Gulf coast region La Huasteca rebelled by refusing to pay tribute to the new Aztec emperor, Ahuizotl (r 1486–1503), who dispatched an army to bring the Huastec under submission Ahuizotl had assumed the throne on the death of his brother, Tizoc, and some evidence suggests that Tizoc may have been poisoned by the royal family after a reign of about five years in 1486 Despite having been regarded as a weak ruler, he suppressed rebellion in the Toluca Valley by the Matlatzincan people, along with expanding the empire through conquest After the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century, the Aztec rebelled against Spanish rule One of the most noteworthy instances of revolt against the Spaniards occurred during the reign of Cuitlahuac, who ruled Tenochtitlán for just 80 days until his death in 1520 During a festival Hernán Cortés, one of the conquistadors who had subdued the Aztec, was away from the city In his absence, the man he had placed in charge of the city, Pedro de Alvarado, attacked and massacred a number of Aztec nobles in the city’s main temple Incensed, the Aztec rose up in rebellion—not only against the Spanish but in large part against the city’s ruling class who were regarded as too submissive to the Spanish The rebels besieged the royal house and replaced the king, Montezuma II (r 1502–20), with Cuitlahuac The Spanish attempted to flee the city, but on the night of July 1, 1520, the Aztec rebels successfully ambushed the Spanish force Tenochtitlán was back in Aztec hands, at least for a while In South America the Inca Empire dealt with rebellion and dissent so ruthlessly that few kingdoms dared to rebel The Incan army was large and efficient, and the network of roads that connected all parts of the empire was so vast that armies could be readily dispatched to quell dissent The Inca, however, often employed a softer touch Dissenters and rebels were forced to move into areas that were loyal to the empire, and loyalists were often forced to move into dissenting areas In this way, it was believed that rebels could be dissuaded from their beliefs and, in effect, rehabilitated Similarly, it was a common practice among the Inca to subdue resistant leaders of subject kingdoms by sending spies to the area, offering gifts and convincing people of influence that they would be materially better off under the rule of the empire Additionally, marriages were encouraged as a means to cement relationships and ensure the loyalty of interlinked families Asia and the Pacific by Kirk H Beetz Among the peoples who explored the Pacific and migrated to new lands during the medieval era motivations probably varied In some places people exhausted the food supply and then moved on to new islands In some cases they probably yearned to explore and relished the challenges of settling unknown places But in other cases what was involved was factionalism, violent conflict, and exile On settled islands, those who lost contests for power sometimes had no choice but to move away The Easter Islanders had a story of Hotu Matu’a, who lost a contest for power in an archipelago to the west and then led his followers on a voyage that found Easter Island, sometime before 690, probably in the 400s An island that was rich in vegetation, it was slowly denuded of trees over hundreds of years, eventually leaving too little wood for building boats When there were factional conflicts, the losers had nowhere to go Apparently, there was a ruling elite, called Long-ears by archaeologists, and there was a working class, called Short-ears by archaeologists No one seems to know exactly when, but there were conflicts between the groups, including uprisings by the Short-ears This may have resulted in the two factions segregating themselves to different areas of the island Archaeologists disagree about exactly what happened, but near the end of the medieval era, the Long-ears