The Aztecs and Mayans are a thorn in the side of both (1) psych-head hippies who insist that if only everyone dropped acid, we'd live in a peaceful utopia,(2) history-revising anti-imperialists, who insist that the white race is a uniquely oppressive cancer that decimated a pacifist indigenous population.There was a funny thing I noticed where most American sources tried to down play the amount of ritual sacrifice going on and then when actually in Mexico everyone goes 'oh ya we we really fucking people up!'
In reality, Mesoamerica was ruled by brutal imperialist regimes, and their extinction is not a tragedy (although certainly the destruction of their cultural artifacts, and the deaths of individual natives in slavery or disease, are tragedies). History is a long sequence of big fish getting eaten by even bigger fish. Degrowth and disarmament aren't stable equilibria, someone will always defect and seize power. Wield power or be disempowered.