Abstract The author presented a draft of this essay as a presidential address at the 2012 meeting of the society in Springfield, Missouri. The theme of the meeting was “the apocalypse,” referring to a popular belief that the Mayan calendar predicted a cataclysmic event to occur in that year. The address proposed that the apocalypse had already occurred in the sixteenth century, when the Maya and many other Indigenous groups of the Americas were devastated by diseases brought by European immigrants. The author examined how the destruction was documented in Spanish surveys called the Relaciones geográficas, which were completed after a major epidemic devastated the Indigenous population of Mesoamerica. The author did not submit the paper for publication at the time. The current pandemic has lent some modest perspective to the many epidemic diseases that have swept through the Americas since the late fifteenth century. The author submitted this revised version of the original essay after editing the content, adding notes, and citing relevant works published since 2012.

中文翻译：

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总统致辞：基督徒来到墨西哥和危地马拉之前美好时光的回忆

摘要 作者在密苏里州斯普林菲尔德举行的 2012 年学会会议上提交了这篇文章的草稿，作为主席致辞。会议的主题是“启示录”，指的是一种普遍的看法，即玛雅历法预测当年将发生灾难性事件。该演讲提出，世界末日已经发生在 16 世纪，当时玛雅人和许多其他美洲土著群体被欧洲移民带来的疾病所摧毁。作者研究了西班牙一项名为 Relaciones geográficas 的调查是如何记录破坏的，该调查是在一场重大流行病摧毁了中美洲土著人口后完成的。作者当时没有提交论文发表。当前的流行病为 15 世纪末以来席卷美洲的许多流行病提供了一些适度的视角。作者在对内容进行编辑、添加注释、引用自 2012 年以来发表的相关著作后，提交了此原论文的修订版。