They also weren't all the same. Not everyone goes around enslaving people and using their life to seek riches and fame. I don't think anyone complains about historical figures who, flaws and all, fought for higher ideals like personal liberty.

Well that's what you get when you go about enslaving and committing genocide against your neighbours for centuries prior. Cortes didn't even have to try - all the neighbouring nations eagerly joined the Spanish to wipe out the Aztecs. Even after that, the Aztecs weren't wiped out - they were just converted hard to Christianity and assimilated into Spanish society, even though they even had their own divisions in the armed forces. They eventually culturally assimilated the rest of the meso-Americans and gave us what Mexican culture is today.

Now what happened to the Maya is a tragedy. Books burnt, people enslaved and relegated to the lowest rung even today.

I wouldn't call the Aztecs genocidal either, despite the ritual sacrifices, brutal treatment of other peoples, and everybody in mesoamerica who came to know them hating them so much that they preferred the uncertain fate of joining the white bearded men from the east.

Pedantic to say that Columbus subjugating entire people groups with mass murder doesn't qualify here. The manpower skew was huge, so how exactly did they subjugate the Tainos without genocide? 7M tainos died when all was said and done.