Making Sense Of Chaos In The Yucatán

Making Sense of Chaos: What Happened in the Yucatán

During early times of exploration and conquest, political power Spain maintained a reputation for inflexible, vicious conquests that led to the quick expansion of their empire. However, upon discovery of the Yucatán Peninsula in the early 1500s, the Spaniards were slow and relatively unsuccessful in the peninsula’s conquering. While the Spanish explorers might indeed have been the first foreign body to penetrate the Yucatán, control within the peninsula was desired by many, and complex relationships between groups denied easy Spanish victory. Dominance of the Yucatán wasn’t a simple task; the next many decades would prove to be a long and chaotic struggle between Spaniards, natives, and
The Franciscans pushed for religious conversion, the natives, while subject to this, wished to remain mostly steady in their old ways, and the Spaniards desired a peaceful autonomy and control. Although variant in their goals, the groups of the Yucatán did, for some time, come to an agreeable and sustainable balance of living. Coexistence might not have been harmonious, but it was tolerable: “one or two conquerers did marry Indian women…their children would have Mayan as their first tongue, and be tended through their first years by Indian hands” (pg. 44). Not only did the natives and the Spaniards connect on a social level, but partnerships between the two groups were also political and economic. Indians would come “regularly into the Spaniards’ towns and houses, bringing in their tribute and serving out their labor obligations” (pg. 43). Learning the language and ways of the other group was necessary for cooperation and understanding, and the natives and Spaniards did it well. However, while these groups were isolated on the peninsula, political control from the Spanish Crown was still instituted from a distance. This control was not only illogically removed from the Yucatán itself, but detrimental in the different voices of authority that it created. Messengers and friars sent from Spain, such as Lopez Medel, Hernandez, and Quijada, were eager to position themselves as
Yet we can see from Clendinnen’s writings that the history of the Yucatán isn't a simple event. We know that the times surrounding the Spanish Inquisition were a horrible, chaotic, and complex mess, but that mess cannot be contributed to one group, as it often is in our history textbooks. We could indeed blame the Spanish for conquering a land that didn't need to be conquered. However, could we also blame the incompetence and disgusting religious blindness of the Franciscan friars? Although uncomfortable, could we also blame the Mayans for their improper conversion to Christianity? There was no one instigator, and no one problem, in the tragic mess that was the Yucatán, but rather there existed an all-encompassing misunderstanding between every group–– multiple misunderstandings that, at the time, might have seemed small scale, but then ultimately led to the dissolving of a people and their culture, and the cementing of this period into the history books of