What do you think?
Rate this book
Maya Conquistador
Exploring firsthand accounts written by Maya nobles from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries-many of them previously untranslated-Restall offers the first Maya account of the conquest. The story holds surprising twists: The conquistadors were not only Spaniards but also Mayas, reconstructing their own governance and society, and the Spanish colonization of the Yucatan was part of an ongoing pattern of adaptation and survival for centuries.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 1998
1 person is currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Restall
33 books81 followersMatthew Restall is a historian of Colonial Latin America. He is an ethnohistorian and a scholar of conquest, colonization, and the African diaspora in the Americas. He is currently Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies, at the Pennsylvania State University. He is President of the American Society for Ethnohistory, a former editor of Ethnohistory journal, a senior editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review, editor of the book series Latin American Originals, and co-editor of the Cambridge Latin American Studies book series.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 16, 2023
This is an amazing book about the colonial Maya of the Yucatán and how they perceived the conquest. The author has selected 8 sets of colonial texts and provided them with context to help the reader understand what is going on.
Chapter 1 reviews the names and dates of the Spanish-centered conquest narrative (Cortés, Montejo, etc.), and then critically analyzes this narrative by explaining the purpose of Spanish documents and how that impacted their perspective.
Chapter 2 introduces the corpus of Maya texts through three themes.
Calamity - Maya texts sometimes reference calamities, but the Spanish are not specifically posited as the cause of all their woes. Rather, the Spanish are part of a conga line of complaints that can include miscarriages, disobedient children, climatic issues, and sometimes the "foreign" invaders are implied to be rival Maya polities.
Continuity - Maya texts also sometimes maintained continuity. This legitimated colonial-era political dynasties and also created a continuity between the pre-colonial past and the present.
Conquistador - Some Maya nobles posited themselves as conquistadors who assisted the Spanish in their conquest of the Maya. While bizarre at first glance, this highlights just how important it is to really engage with the Maya perspectives. In this case, the nobles really did ally with the Spanish against rival polities, and these texts served to reinforce that connection to the Spanish colonial government.
All subsequent chapters deal with the texts themselves.
Chapter 3: This is a Chontal title emphasizing continuity and recounting the history of the community.
Chapter 4: The Annals of Oxkutzcab mix Christian and Maya calendars and imitate a possible pre-colonial historical genre.
Chapter 5: The Calkini Acount is another title that references the history of the region from the pre-conquest times until the late 16th century, which contains accounts of Spanish-Maya diplomacy and violence.
Chapter 6: The Pech accounts of Chicxulub and Yaxkukul are two nearly identical documents which are a mix of eyewitness views as well as much later colonial perspectives.
Chapter 7: Several excerpts from assorted Chilam Balam are lists of calamity and woe with occasional references to the Conquest.
Chapter 8: This is the only Spanish-language text and was written by Anontio Gaspar Chí, a Maya noble who was educated by Franciscans and spent his life working with the Spanish as an interpreter.
Chapter 9: Letter from the Batobab to the King is a collection of 3 letters regarding the career of Diego de Landa when he was a friar in the 1560s. Interestingly, 2 letters here (and 9 out of 10 total) were positive of the Franciscan friar who was famed for his killing, maiming, and torture; only 1 - the account from Mani, where the friar centered his anti-idolatry campaign - is critical. The author explains some of the political considerations and divisions that contributed to these perspectives.
Chapter 10: Petitions includes several petitions from Maya persons asking for confirmation of privileges, including the only text in the book specifically authored by a woman (Doña Catalina Cime of Yaxakumche).
May favorite passage from the author is a selection from pages 42 - 43 about time.
"While such a perspective is certainly one part of the picture, there is also a risk in emphasizing the contrasts between Maya and Western concepts of time - that the Mayas thereby become exoticized as the Other, romanticized along the lines of the early Mayanists' vision of a peace-loving people ruled by star-gazing time-priests. There are certainly differences between Maya and Western views of time and the past - indeed the contrast between Maya and Spanish perceptions of the Conquest era is a central theme of this book - but the fact remains that both Mayas and non-Mayas saw time as both linear and cyclical, rather like a multidimensional corkscrew. Depending on how the corkscrew is viewed, different perceptions of time become dominant; thus the differences are one of emphases.
The Mayas themselves perceived the parallels between their temporal corkscrew and that of the Spaniards. The Annals of Oxkutzcab, for example, reveal an interest in correlating native and Spanish linear chronologies, and the Books of Chilam Balam, particularly that of Tizimin, demonstrate a Maya appreciation of the multiple cycles of the Christian calendar. May notions of temporal cyclicity were not only not unique, they were also not absolute; as argued earlier, the descriptions in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel of the misery inflicted by the Itza/Spaniards do not reflect the Maya acceptance of conquest as ordained by the cyclical calendar so much as the perception of regrettable continuities in Maya life."
And from the texts themselves, I will include a selection from the Chilam Balam of Mani:
"The statement of the priest Xupan Nauat . . . There will come nine nights tied together, nine of them before the coming too of much madness, much lust - the time for the plumeria to open. Children will be conceived late; old women will conceive them; old women of the plumeria; and old men shall conceive sons, old men of the plumeria. This will be possible because there will be no youth. Children will now come to take notice of this, to speak about it; our sons, you will be shipwrecked; you will be at sea, your ship will list to the side, waterlogged, powerless with only two or three oars, and it will turn over. One will be asked to go without sandals, to have sore feet, to get used to bruises that are not small; one will be asked to immediately stop wearing Maya-style trousers, to burn the trousers; we will be asked to have no more of them . . . "
If those selections pique your interest, then give this book a try!
Chapter 1 reviews the names and dates of the Spanish-centered conquest narrative (Cortés, Montejo, etc.), and then critically analyzes this narrative by explaining the purpose of Spanish documents and how that impacted their perspective.
Chapter 2 introduces the corpus of Maya texts through three themes.
Calamity - Maya texts sometimes reference calamities, but the Spanish are not specifically posited as the cause of all their woes. Rather, the Spanish are part of a conga line of complaints that can include miscarriages, disobedient children, climatic issues, and sometimes the "foreign" invaders are implied to be rival Maya polities.
Continuity - Maya texts also sometimes maintained continuity. This legitimated colonial-era political dynasties and also created a continuity between the pre-colonial past and the present.
Conquistador - Some Maya nobles posited themselves as conquistadors who assisted the Spanish in their conquest of the Maya. While bizarre at first glance, this highlights just how important it is to really engage with the Maya perspectives. In this case, the nobles really did ally with the Spanish against rival polities, and these texts served to reinforce that connection to the Spanish colonial government.
All subsequent chapters deal with the texts themselves.
Chapter 3: This is a Chontal title emphasizing continuity and recounting the history of the community.
Chapter 4: The Annals of Oxkutzcab mix Christian and Maya calendars and imitate a possible pre-colonial historical genre.
Chapter 5: The Calkini Acount is another title that references the history of the region from the pre-conquest times until the late 16th century, which contains accounts of Spanish-Maya diplomacy and violence.
Chapter 6: The Pech accounts of Chicxulub and Yaxkukul are two nearly identical documents which are a mix of eyewitness views as well as much later colonial perspectives.
Chapter 7: Several excerpts from assorted Chilam Balam are lists of calamity and woe with occasional references to the Conquest.
Chapter 8: This is the only Spanish-language text and was written by Anontio Gaspar Chí, a Maya noble who was educated by Franciscans and spent his life working with the Spanish as an interpreter.
Chapter 9: Letter from the Batobab to the King is a collection of 3 letters regarding the career of Diego de Landa when he was a friar in the 1560s. Interestingly, 2 letters here (and 9 out of 10 total) were positive of the Franciscan friar who was famed for his killing, maiming, and torture; only 1 - the account from Mani, where the friar centered his anti-idolatry campaign - is critical. The author explains some of the political considerations and divisions that contributed to these perspectives.
Chapter 10: Petitions includes several petitions from Maya persons asking for confirmation of privileges, including the only text in the book specifically authored by a woman (Doña Catalina Cime of Yaxakumche).
May favorite passage from the author is a selection from pages 42 - 43 about time.
"While such a perspective is certainly one part of the picture, there is also a risk in emphasizing the contrasts between Maya and Western concepts of time - that the Mayas thereby become exoticized as the Other, romanticized along the lines of the early Mayanists' vision of a peace-loving people ruled by star-gazing time-priests. There are certainly differences between Maya and Western views of time and the past - indeed the contrast between Maya and Spanish perceptions of the Conquest era is a central theme of this book - but the fact remains that both Mayas and non-Mayas saw time as both linear and cyclical, rather like a multidimensional corkscrew. Depending on how the corkscrew is viewed, different perceptions of time become dominant; thus the differences are one of emphases.
The Mayas themselves perceived the parallels between their temporal corkscrew and that of the Spaniards. The Annals of Oxkutzcab, for example, reveal an interest in correlating native and Spanish linear chronologies, and the Books of Chilam Balam, particularly that of Tizimin, demonstrate a Maya appreciation of the multiple cycles of the Christian calendar. May notions of temporal cyclicity were not only not unique, they were also not absolute; as argued earlier, the descriptions in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel of the misery inflicted by the Itza/Spaniards do not reflect the Maya acceptance of conquest as ordained by the cyclical calendar so much as the perception of regrettable continuities in Maya life."
And from the texts themselves, I will include a selection from the Chilam Balam of Mani:
"The statement of the priest Xupan Nauat . . . There will come nine nights tied together, nine of them before the coming too of much madness, much lust - the time for the plumeria to open. Children will be conceived late; old women will conceive them; old women of the plumeria; and old men shall conceive sons, old men of the plumeria. This will be possible because there will be no youth. Children will now come to take notice of this, to speak about it; our sons, you will be shipwrecked; you will be at sea, your ship will list to the side, waterlogged, powerless with only two or three oars, and it will turn over. One will be asked to go without sandals, to have sore feet, to get used to bruises that are not small; one will be asked to immediately stop wearing Maya-style trousers, to burn the trousers; we will be asked to have no more of them . . . "
If those selections pique your interest, then give this book a try!
Read
October 2, 2015Another of Restall's incredible works detailing the cultural persistence of the Maya. Notable for its remarkable usage of rare source material.
Read
June 11, 2011I had to read this book for school and i must say i was sorely disappointed. i love the Maya, but this book was horribly written and even worse I feel like the translations were poorly done.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews