So interchangeable were Muslims and Indians in the conquistador’s minds that they called Indians ‘Muslims’ and Indian temples ‘mosques.’ At one time, according to Bernal Diaz’s account, the Spaniards even considered naming the first city they saw as Great Cairo. Aztecs were often associated with the Moors, so much so that when battling the Indians, ‘the Spaniards often invoked the aid of holy figures such as the Virgin Mary or St. James, known in Spanish as Santiago Matamoros, patron saint of Spain against the Moors’ (rechristened Mata-indios to better suit his new or renewed role).

XREF: Connects to the framing of the Reconquista being transposed onto the New World, a pattern also seen in other colonial encounters.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 585