Through a detailed analysis of Carta IX of Jose Cadalso’s Cartas marruecas, this article examines Cadalso’s engagement with Enlightenment disputes over America and challenges previous readings of Carta IX as an unqualified apologetic defence of Hernan Cortes’s conquest of Mexico. It is suggested that Carta IX may be read not only as a satire on the atavistic, partisan accounts of Spain’s ‘apologistas’ during the eighteenth century but also as a critique of Spain’s American conquest on moral and economic grounds. Moreover, by re-reading Carta IX in the context of the Cartas marruecas as a whole, it is demonstrated that despite the seemingly contradictory viewpoints expressed by the text’s trio of narrators on America, the Cartas marruecas ultimately provide a more critical and nuanced perspective of Spanish American conquest than many critics have previously acknowledged.