Catholic colonizers blame the devastation of smallpox on an African enslaved person.
Date: 1519
Spanish colonizer Pánfilo de Narvaez asserts that smallpox was brought to Aztec and Inca communities by an enslaved African man, resulting in the devastation of multiple Indigenous communities in Mexico. This story will continue to be told well into the 19th century, and is used to justify enslavement and anti-Black racism by projecting the violent idea of Black bodies as dangerous and carriers of disease.