Mexico was always there, America’s southern neighbor, ever since the first Western states were admitted into the union (and even before that, when the first settlers landed on Plymouth Rock). But Mexico wasn’t always the Spanish-speaking country we know it as today. Until the Spanish conquistadors arrived, the natives in the region were more a cross between the American Indians and the pyramid-building Egyptians. That all changed with the landing of the great Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes.

On this day, March 4, in 1519, a Cortes-led military expedition, after conquering much of South America (save for modern-day Brazil), landed in Mexico, in a town they named Veracruz (New Cross). Cortes did not know much about the natives yet, but what he soon found out encouraged him and his successors to eventually take over all of Mexico.

Cortes’ great ships and horse-mounted men were taken for gods by the overawed natives, and received with great splendor by their leader Montezuma, in the nation’s capitol, Mexico City. From there it was relatively simple, through a combination of trickery and brute force, to achieve control over the entire region of Mexico. His exploits are the reason why so much of South and Central America today speaks Spanish.