Writing as Resistance: Maya Graphic Pluralism
and Indigenous Elite Strategies for Survival in
Colonial Yucatan, 1550–1750
John F. Chuchiak IV, Missouri State University
Abstract. This paper ofers a revisionist viewpoint on the nature of colonial Maya
literacy, showing that the colonial Yucatec Maya elite utilized both the traditional
hieroglyphic script and the new alphabetic writing skills taught by the Franciscan
friars. By adapting and utilizing both styles of writing, the colonial Maya elite created a system of graphic pluralism that enabled the Maya nobility to better defend
their elite interests in a manner consistent with both pre-Columbian and colonial
forms of writing, address, religion, and government administration.
In late October 1567, a Maya prophet (chilan) named Chilan Couoh
preached the supremacy of the traditional ways and prophesied a war of
religions around the Spanish settlement of Bacalar.1 Educated and taught
the alphabetic script by Franciscan friars in the western Yucatan, Chilan
Couoh spurned the teachings of the friars and their alphabetic literacy
as inferior to the old ways of writing in ancient characters.2 With a large
following, the Maya prophet began to bring together numerous surviving hand-painted Maya hieroglyphic codices, creating a library of ancient
knowledge that he argued was superior to the scribbling of the Franciscans
and the Spaniards.3
As armed resistance increased around the settlement of Bacalar, the
Spaniards asked the provincial capital of Merida for aid in quelling the rebellion. The Maya priest and his followers quickly became bold enough to raid
Christian Maya settlements outside the walls of the Spanish villa of Bacalar.
In one instance, a large number of apostate Maya under the leadership of their
prophet captured the entire population of an encomienda town, reportedly
taking their captives into the jungles and sacriicing them to their gods.4
Although he spoke openly against the Spanish religion and writing,
Ethnohistory 57:1 (Winter 2010) DOI 10.1215/00141801-2009-055
Copyright 2010 by American Society for Ethnohistory
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John F. Chuchiak IV
ironically the Maya prophet wrote letters in Maya utilizing the alphabetic
script to call Maya chieftains from other regions to arms.5 Finally, in late
March 1568, the Spanish sent a military expedition into the region. For
almost a year, the expedition’s captain Juan Garçón and his men scoured
the southeastern Yucatan peninsula, searching for the rebel leader.6 An
important discovery occurred in spring 1569, when the Garçón expedition
came across a large temple containing a massive stone Maya idol and several hundred smaller ceramic idols. Along with these idols, the Spaniards
uncovered a sizable library of Maya hieroglyphic books and codices “written in their ancient characters.”7 They quickly smashed the idols and burnt
the books in a massive bonire. Three days later, a band of Spaniards under
the command of Lieutenant Juan Díaz found the Maya prophet who had
begun the rebellion.8 After arresting Chilan Couoh, Garçón pleaded with
him to repent and return to the Christian religion. The Maya priest scofed
at Garçón’s pleas and maintained his stance on the superiority of the Maya
script and his own traditional religion. Finally, Garçón sent the Maya priest
under armed guard to the bishop Fr. Francisco de Toral in Merida, hoping
that the bishop would make an example of him.
The Maya prophet had begun a war of religions, but the most surprising aspect of the afair was the evidence of the survival of the Maya hieroglyphic script and the prophet’s concurrent usage of alphabetic literacy.
The fact that the prophet used both written scripts made it clear that the
Maya elite as early as the late 1560s had come to use both written traditions.
As the Spanish authorities and clergy uncovered other major instances of
idolatry, they conirmed the continued existence and use of the traditional
Maya script throughout the rest of the colony.9 An apparent system of
graphic pluralism existed among the Maya elite even several decades after
the Spanish conquest. Moreover, in the case of their old hieroglyphic script,
the Maya elite and its traditional priesthood continued to use their ancient
writing as a means of resistance to both Catholicism and the Spanish colonial system.10 This paper will examine the nature of this example of colonial
graphic pluralism and the use of traditional Maya writing as resistance.
Writing as Conversion: The Franciscan Missionaries’
Role in Establishing Colonial Maya Alphabetic Literacy
In 1542, the Spaniards inally established their capital in Merida. However,
even before that time, Franciscan friars had attempted to convert the natives
in the region around Campeche. The irst friars, under the leadership of
Fray Jacobo de Testera, entered the Yucatan peninsula in 1535 after the irst
attempt at conquest had failed. However, the friars soon abandoned the
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Yucatan, returning in 1547 to found the irst permanent Franciscan mission
in Merida, under the leadership of Fray Luis de Villalpando. Villalpando
was the irst friar to study the Maya language and to apply to it the Latin
system of grammar. The Franciscan historian Bernardo de Lizana wrote
that Villalpando “learned many of the terms of the language by memory,
along with their meanings, looking for the means of conjugation of their
verbs, and the variety of their nouns and the Lord helped him so much so
that in a brief amount of time he reduced the language to a series of rules
and wrote an Arte of the language.”11 Villalpando requested the caciques
(chiefs) to “send their children there to Mérida, and there he would teach
them the Christian doctrine as well as teach them to read and write in Castillian characters.”12
One of Villalpando’s companions, Fray Juan de Herrera, began the irst
school for the sons of the Indian nobility in Merida. Apparently, the Maya
caciques sent more than a thousand children to Merida during this period.13
Among Herrera’s students were illustrious Maya such as the irst cacique
who converted to Christianity, Diego Na. Diego learned Latin through the
Franciscans’ schools and became a translator for the friars. In the words
of another friar, this irst generation of Maya would become “very good
scribes and choir masters . . . and those Maya [who came to these schools]
were later placed into the positions of caciques and governors and thus they
gained the lordship.”14
Villalpando and Herrera adapted the Latin alphabet to the Maya language so that the Maya could write their language using the Latin script.
Nevertheless as another later linguist and Maya scholar, Fray Diego de
Landa, wrote, the early friars discovered that the Maya did not need some
of the Latin letters and that special characters were needed:
And it was found out that they did not use six of our letters, which
are: D, F, G, Q, R, S. . . . But they are obliged to double others and
to add others in order to understand the varied signiicance of certain
words. . . . And considering that they had diferent characters for these
things, there was no necessity of inventing new forms of letters, but
rather to make use of the Latin letters, so that the use of them should
be common to all.15
This “common use of the Latin alphabet” which Landa referred to was a
reality by the middle of the 1550s. The initial school of “Latin and Maya”
grammar established by Herrera expanded quickly with the establishment
of Franciscan missions in the outlying regions. Each of the missions had a
school for the Indian nobility where the Indian children were taught how to
“read and write, as well as sing and pray.”16
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John F. Chuchiak IV
The Franciscans succeeded impressively in instructing the Maya in
Latin letter-based literacy. Natives were writing Maya in Latin script as
early as 1552,17 and by 1557 land documents were being recorded in alphabetized Maya.18 Knowledge of the Maya’s phonetic pre-Hispanic script,
which was limited to the Maya nobility, no doubt led to the easier adoption
of Latin syllables and letters, and the same noble Maya who knew how
to read the glyphs became the irst Maya instructed in the Franciscans’
schools. The Maya nobility thus continued to dominate literacy and Maya
politics into the early colonial times. The friars, at least at irst, believed that
their new converts’ rapid adoption of alphabetic literacy would lead to the
quick obsolescence of their pre-Hispanic glyphic script. The reality, however, was that the Maya continued to maintain graphic pluralism. Evidence
from their Latin-based literacy points to the preservation, propagation, and
pluralistic use of both writing systems long into the colonial period and, in
some regions, into the dawn of the nineteenth century.
Writing as a Subversive Tradition: The Maya Nobility
and the Survival of the Traditional Hieroglyphic Script
According to the early chroniclers of Yucatan, during the pre-Hispanic
period the Maya held their lords and priests in extreme respect because
they held the “power of writing,” while the majority of the people could
not decipher their characters. The irst noble Maya trained as scribes in the
Franciscan schools perpetuated the pre-Hispanic nobility’s monopoly on
education. At the same time, during this early contact period, the Maya
nobility openly showed the Spaniards and the clergy their hieroglyphic
codices. Many of the Spaniards were amazed and curious about their hieroglyphic script. The encomenderos from the city of Merida wrote in amazement, “They had letters with which they wrote and understood themselves,
these were types of characters of which each one was made of parts and by
means of them they understood each other like we do with our own letters . . . and these they did not teach to anyone but noble persons and all of
the priests who were the principal people among them.”19
The Maya openly revealed their codices to the irst Spaniards without
evident fear. Even Landa mentioned in his Relación that earlier the Maya
cacique Don Juan Cocom had shown him “a book which had belonged to
his grandfather” containing a history of his people.20 Apparently, many of
the Maya codices that the Spaniards had seen earlier contained historical
information. According to Lizana, writing in 1633, the only historical information available on the pre-Hispanic origins of the Maya came from several surviving Maya hieroglyphic codices: “The history and authors that we
Writing as Resistance
91
can allege [concerning this topic] are several [books] of ancient characters,
very poorly understood with many written glosses made by several ancient
Indians who were sons of the priests of their gods, and they were the only
ones who know how to read them and use them for divination.”21
More than a decade after the Conquest, many Spaniards viewed
bark-paper hieroglyphic codices shown to them by the Maya nobility. The
encomenderos from the Valladolid region, for example, described several
codices in 1579, saying that they were made “from the bark of a certain tree
on which they write and drew igures of their days and months with great
igures and images, and there they wrote them. Unfolded, these books were
longer than six brazas, some more and some less.”22 A few clergyman and
Spaniards even inquired as to the meaning of the codices and some friars
and priests studied the Maya script contained within their pages.23 However, examining these codices in detail, the Spanish clergy realized that the
Maya priests mainly used their codices to perform sacred ceremonies. The
codices were so important to the Maya priestly profession that Landa noted
that the priests were “buried with their books of ancient characters when
they died.”24
By the decade of the 1560s, the Spanish clergy came to have a better
understanding of the hieroglyphic content of these “books,” and an important change occurred in Spanish perceptions of the Maya codices. No longer
did they view the codices as harmless curiosities containing innocuous
historical information. Instead, the church authorities began to view the
codices as a subversive inluence on their Maya converts. By the seventeenth
century, the clergy began to describe Maya codices as “books of the devil.”
For instance, in 1608, Gregorio Sánchez de Aguilar described three codices
coniscated by his cousin, Dr. Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar, as “three books of
their paganism and idolatry which were written on bark paper and on them
were igures of demons which these said Indians worshipped.”25 As Lizana
wrote in 1633, the clergy believed that the destruction of the codices would
“cure and cauterize the pestilential cancer [of idolatry] that was eating away
at the Christianity that [the friars] had planted with such great efort.”26
By the end of the sixteenth century, the church focused its eforts on
the total eradication of the Maya codices and glyphic literacy in general
in order to destroy the continued practice of idolatry. The Catholic clergy
uncovered increasing numbers of Maya nobles practicing ancient rites
and perpetuating the use of the old glyphic script. Even more alarming,
the clergy discovered that some nobles who had been trained in alphabetic
writing continued to utilize both the ancient glyphic form of writing and
the new alphabetic script as a means of preserving traditional indigenous
ritual knowledge. Fearing the continued existence of this type of graphic
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John F. Chuchiak IV
pluralism, the clergy stopped training the sons of Maya nobility, preferring
to educate the children of Maya commoners in alphabetic literacy because
they assumed that the latter would not have previous knowledge of the
ancient script.27
This attempt to limit the Maya nobility’s domination over alphabetic
literacy served as only the irst attempt at limiting the power and prestige of
the traditional Maya nobles. A second step would focus on the removal of
the traditional elite from their positions of political power as the leaders
of their communities. The Spanish reorganization of Maya town government would serve as a second attack against the power and privileges of the
Maya nobles.
Writing and Government: The Changing
Nature of Colonial Government and the
Maya Nobilities’ Attempts at Survival
When the Spanish conquerors initially encountered the Maya nobility, they
accepted their hegemony, and at irst made them important components
of the colonial regime after 1542. But, as early as 1552, Spanish oicials
moved to displace the traditional elite lineages. During the period from
1560 to 1590, the Spanish authorities had discovered that a large number
of the traditional Maya elite maintained an allegiance to their old religion
and helped to perpetuate what the clergy viewed as “idolatry” among their
commoners.28 Fearing their continued resistance, the Spanish authorities
decided to begin to remove the traditional elite from their privileged political positions. Although it took about ifty years, the Spanish did succeed
in displacing the traditional Maya ruling elite and creating the república de
indios system of town governments.
This reorganization of local indigenous government ofered few opportunities for the Maya nobility to maintain their dominance. Although the
Spaniards replaced the regional rulers, or halach uinic, with the symbol of
the Spanish provincial governor, at the local level things changed very little
at irst.29 The Spaniards relied on the local caciques or rulers (batabob in
Maya, batab, sing.) for the collection of tribute and the administration of
justice at the local level. However, by the later sixteenth century, the conquerors introduced the Spanish system of municipal government based on
the cabildo, or town council. The traditional Maya caciques remained in
power initially, but several other village oices were introduced as older
Maya oicials were removed from local government.30
The three main types of oicials introduced by this new república
de indios system of town government were alcaldes, regidores, and, most
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93
importantly for our study, escribanos (scribes). The alcaldes (mayors or
magistrates), regidores (aldermen), and another group of oicials, alguaciles (constables), were elected each year.31 These posts of alcalde, regidor,
and alguacil were partially opened to commoners. The positions of batab,
maestro de escuela (school master), and escribano, however, were selected
exclusively from the Indian nobility, at least at irst.32
Eventually, the position of batab became occupied by Maya who did
not necessarily belong to the Maya nobility. Removed from hereditary positions of power, the traditional Maya elite had to develop new strategies
for survival in the rapidly changing colonial administration. In many cases,
they utilized their knowledge of writing to ensure their continued dominance. For instance, a detailed study of a large number of Maya town oicials from a selection of twenty-two Maya towns with a large corpus of
extant documents reveals that in most cases, even when a town’s batab was
not selected from the traditional elite, a town’s escribano continued to be
selected from the Maya nobility throughout the colonial period.33
By royal decree in 1584, this república system became the sole system
of indigenous government in Yucatan. The highest legally recognized oicial in the new towns was now called the gobernador, “governor.” In the
Maya concept of the evolving nature of colonial government, the post of
batab and gobernador became conlated. Thus, at irst, the traditional local
Maya batabob came to occupy the new positions of gobernador. Similarly,
the pre-Hispanic Maya regional or provincial governments once controlled
by the halach uinicob, the traditional Maya provincial rulers, quickly began
to disintegrate and eventually disappear. In the mid-sixteenth century, the
halach uinicob usually concurrently held the new political oice of gobernador as well as their previous positions as regional lords. The oice of
local cacique remained hereditary, while that of legally recognized gobernador was elective or appointive, and the oice holder thus was more malleable to Spanish demands. Under increasing legal attacks, traditional Maya
caciques found themselves removed from access to the highest levels of oicial government in these new town councils. Due to their gradual loss of real
political power, the ruling Maya elite needed to ind some means to maintain their traditional hegemony. The new positions of scribe and maestro
de escuela soon came to ofer the Maya nobility the continued means of
dominance by continuing their control over sacred knowledge and enabling
them to dominate multiple literacies in the evolving graphic pluralism of the
colonial Maya world.
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John F. Chuchiak IV
Writing as a Means of Survival: The Importance
of Writing and the Post of the Village Scribe in
Elite Attempts at Survival
Although many Maya may have learned to use Latin literacy earlier than
1550, it was not until the later 1550s, when the traditional elite’s power was
challenged by the Spanish system, that they began to produce documents in
mass. In 1552, there was already a Maya scribe in the village of Yaxkukul,
and he was a member of the traditional elite.34 By 1557, land documents
were being recorded and written in Maya, and the privileges, lineages, and
genealogies of the traditional elite were recorded in alphabetical script.
At the same time, from the 1550s through the 1560s, the regional halach
uinicob and other nobles found their actual political inluence (the ability
to collect tribute, draft labor, and impose local leaders) slowly shrinking
away. One example of this loss of privileges, and the creation of new nonnoble oicials, occurred as early as 1565 in Tekanto, when the ruling elite
lineage of the Poot was removed from the holding of the town governorship.35 Although the Poot family continued to hold the hereditary position
of cacique, they had efectively lost their political power through the placement of nonelite Maya in the rotating position of town gobernador.36 Similarly to the situation of the Poot clan in Tekanto, many of the traditional
Maya elite were removed from holding political power by the end of the
sixteenth century.37 Having earlier gained Latin letter–based literacy, after
the decade of the 1590s these traditional nobles attempted to dominate the
position of village scribe, turning it into a hereditary oice, despite royal
Spanish prohibitions against this practice.
The signiicance of the village scribes and their understanding of alphabetic literacy made the position of scribe the second most powerful position
in Maya village government after the gobernador. The position of escribano, introduced by the Spaniards, had a pre-Hispanic equivalent in the
ah dzib. In the books of Chilam Balam, he is called Ah Dzib Cah, “The
Town Scribe.”38 Even into the colonial period, some scribes preferred to
use the title of ah tzib hun, or “he who writes the document.”39 This was an
appointed, not elected, position, and the scribes’ term in oice lasted for the
life of the appointee or until he decided to leave it for another oice.
Scribes played a major position in local politics within the Maya local
hierarchy. However, in Spanish colonial administration, the scribe was the
lowest ranking member of the cabildo, and his signature always appeared
last, at the end of the list of oicial signatures. This diferent emphasis of
importance placed on the oice of scribe in the two systems reveals the central signiicance of the ability to write and its connection to power in local
colonial Maya government.
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95
The dominance of the Maya nobility over the position of scribe was
made perpetual because those Maya nobles who had learned to read and
write were able to hand pick their own successors. Although the Crown
had passed regulations against the perpetual occupation of the position
of scribe by one person or family, by the later seventeenth century scribes
appeared to have held the position for life, or until one of their relatives
or friends were able to take over the oice.40 Thus, the Maya themselves
undertook the education of this select group of scribes and notaries, who
most often were the only literate members of the village. Larger towns (such
as Sotuta) had a greater number of scribes, but most smaller towns had only
one.41 In cases of multiple scribes, one of them served as “senior scribe” and
the others were apprentices or “hired hands” (muken kab).42
The connection between literacy, political power, and social prestige
is evident in the Maya concept of the apparent hierarchy of these oices.
The positions of scribe and maestro de escuela were the only two posts that
required literacy and they were also the only two full-time posts awarded
a salary from community revenues.43 Scribes also collected special fees
from the Maya who wished to draw up a will, send a letter, or authorize
some other type of document. Thus, their incomes could be substantial and
depended on their scribal activities during any given period. Regardless of
their actual earnings, it is evident that colonial Maya scribes exercised a
great deal of power through their knowledge of writing.
Writing as Power: The Domination of the Traditional Maya
Nobility over the Post of Escribano and the Increasing
Prestige of Multiple Literacy among Colonial Maya Scribes
Pre-Hispanic Maya concepts linked the power over writing and the gods of
knowledge to the nobility. Nevertheless, colonial Spanish realities meant
that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities attempted to limit the power
of the traditional Maya elite. This meant that Maya who were not members of the nobility came to control political power. During this period
of transition, the pre-Hispanic ruling families switched their attempts at
keeping local power from maintaining the position of batab or gobernador
to consolidating their control over the position of town scribe. It was the
scribe who held the responsibility of certifying all oicial documents, tribute censuses, petitions, and other correspondence and account books. In
many instances, the scribe became equal in importance with the batab,
and in some instances, as we will see later, he was even more important
than the local gobernador. Nevertheless, in the Spanish colonial administration, the scribe was the lowest ranking member of the cabildo, and his
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John F. Chuchiak IV
Table 1. Spanish and Maya Views of the Prestige and Hierarchy of Cabildo
Oicials, 1550–1750
Cabildo Hierarchy in Spanish Law
Cabildo Hierarchy in Maya Practice
1. Gobernador
2. Alcaldes [2]
3. Regidores [4 or 6]
4. Alguaciles [4 or 6]
5. Escribano
1. Gobernador and Escribano
2. Alcaldes [2]
3. Regidores [2 or 4]
4. Alguaciles [4]
Figure 1. Maya batab (Juan Can) and escribano (Agustin Xul) from Tihotzuco
sign a petition together, separate from the alcaldes and regidores. Source: Petición
del pueblo de Tihotzuco, 24 de Junio, 1669, Archivo General de Indias, Seville,
Spain (hereafter AGI), Escribania de Camara, 315B
signature always appeared last, at the end of the list of oicial signatures
(table 1).
This diferent emphasis of importance placed on the oice of scribe in
the two systems reveals the central signiicance of the ability to write and its
connection to power in local colonial Maya government (ig. 1).
In Maya documents, the scribe and batab usually signed the document
together, either before the other oicials of the cabildo (see ig. 2) or in the
center of the page, with the lesser oicials’ signatures of to the right- and
left-hand sides (see ig. 3).
Thus, it appears that the positions of scribe and batab were emphasized as hierarchically more important by the Maya than the positions of
alcaldes and regidores.
Nevertheless, Spanish law required that the scribe’s signature should
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Figure 2. Cristobal Cituk (scribe) signed irst along with the batab, Don Clemente
Kuyoc from Chikindzonot. Source: Petición del pueblo de Chikindzonot, 23 de
Junio, 1669, AGI, Escribania de Camara, 315B
Figure 3. The escribano (Felipe Tulul) and batab (Don Francisco Camal) from
Ekpedz signed together in the center of the page. Source: Petición del pueblo de
Ekpedz, 20 de Mayo, 1669, AGI, Escribania de Camara, 315B
be the last one on any oicial document. This obvious slighting of Spanish
notarial law no doubt was undertaken in order to emphasize the prestige
and political power of the village scribe.44
Similarly, it appears that the old pre-Hispanic ruling clans and families
were able to continue political dominance through their continued exercise of the position of village scribe, enabling them to continue their preHispanic tradition of being the “voice of the elite” throughout the colonial period. Throughout colonial Maya towns like Ebtun, where we have
a long series of records, it appears that “the governors and town scribes
seem to have been restricted to a smaller number of lineages.”45 During the
sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in Ebtun, for example, only seven lineage
names appear to have held the governorship.46 Among those names were
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John F. Chuchiak IV
several early governors from families whose patroynms belonged to the traditional pre-Hispanic ruling elite like the Camal family. Perhaps it is not a
coincidence that “the town had a cacique when the Spaniards arrived who
was captain general of all this province and he was called Batab Camal.”47
Nevertheless, these elite families apparently did not dominate the holding
of this political oice exclusively. Several of the occupants of the position of
gobernador appear to have been Maya commoners.
More importantly for this study, only four families appear to have
almost exclusively controlled the important post of town scribe. Of these
families, three, the Camal, Huchim, and Dzul families, representing the
native pre-Hispanic ruling elite, held the oice of scribe for the longest
period of time. Only three nonelite families (the Noh, Cen, and May families) were able to occupy the position of town scribe in Ebtun, even briely.
Apparently, more than 67 percent of the Maya who held the position of
scribe in Ebtun belonged to families that represented the pre-Hispanic
ruling elite (ig. 4).
What is more interesting is that the title of “Don,” a Spanish symbol of
nobility usually given to those who occupied the position of town governor,
was given to only two out of the seventy-ive people the scribes labeled as
“al mehenob,” or individuals who belonged to the traditional Maya noble
lineages in Ebtun.48 Apparently, the Spanish title of Don was not given to
recognize Maya traditional nobility, and the Maya in their documents did
not always recognize those with the title Don as nobles.
Similarly, even in well-documented towns such as Tekanto, only a
small percentage of those labeled as Indios Hidalgos and given the Spanish
title “Don” are also referred to in the documentation as belonging to the al
mehenob.49 Across the twenty-two towns sampled, less than a third of the
Maya recognized as “elites” by the Spanish colonial world were considered
traditional nobles by the Maya themselves. Apparently, the Spanish world
and the Maya world held two diferent and diametrically opposed opinions
as to who belonged to a truly noble class.
This apparent rift in social prestige and noble status is evident in the
writings of the colonial escribanos, who almost always attributed to themselves the title of al mehenob, and who 78 percent of the time (from the
twenty-two-village sample of documents) came from the families with the
traditional patronyms of the preconquest rulers of their regions (ig. 5).
In contrast, only 29 percent of traceable governors of the twenty-two
towns sampled are described as al mehenob or have traditional Maya patronyms of the ruling preconquest elite of their regions. Apparently less than a
third of the governors sampled belonged to traditional noble families from
1600 to 1780, but 68 percent of the scribes in the western part of the penin-
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Noh
Cen
5%
11%
Dzul*
39%
May
17%
Camal*
Huchim*
11%
17%
Elite Maya Families
controlled 67% of
the scribal positions
in Ebtun from
1600 to 1800
Figure 4. Source: Ralph L. Roys, Titles of Ebtun, Carnegie Publication #505 (Washington, DC, 1939), 47–49
sula descended from members of the traditional Maya elite, according to
their patronyms (table 2).
Even more importantly, the percentage of scribes from the traditional
nobility (al mehenob) appears to be even higher in those towns that lay in
the eastern part of the Yucatan peninsula (average of 81 percent), a region
less afected by direct Spanish control (table 3).
Moreover, it was the domination and control over the sacred knowledge of writing that quickly came to separate the true noblemen (i.e., Maya
village scribes who held close contacts to the traditional Maya elite and
priesthood) and the Maya town gobernadores, often pawns or agents of
Spanish colonialism, who came from the commoner or macehual class and
therefore were seen as “usurpers of the mat.” What separated the true Maya
nobility from the new colonial usurpers apparently was the true nobility’s
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John F. Chuchiak IV
100
Map Key
= Maya Scribe
Chel
= Maya elite Patronym
1579-1649 = Dates of extant
scribal documentation
(7 out 9) = Number of Maya scribes
with traditional elite
Patronym in documentary
record
Yobain
Conkal
Pech
1595-1639
(7 out of 16)
Motul
Pech
1606-1669
(8 out of 19)
Mérida
Chel
1595-1669
(11 out of 15)
Dzonotake
Tizimin
Huchim
1611-1722
(9 out of 12)
Valladolid
Maxcanu
Na
1610-1669
(8 out of 11)
Tzeh/Pech
1623-1739
(17 out of 21)
Nabalam
Cupul
1598-1676
(13 out of 15)
Sotuta
Canul
1599-1653
(7 out of 9)
Cocom
1611-1707
(22 out of 27)
Cozumel
Calkini
Canul
1579-1649
(11 out of 14)
Campeche
Chancenote
Pat/Malah
1589-1637
(7 out of 8)
Mani
Xiu
1607-1713
(16 out of 22)
Peto
Pot
1603-1672
(12 out of 16)
Figure 5. Colonial Maya scribes who continued to come from the traditional preHispanic ruling elite family patronyms, 1570–1739
ability to control and dominate multiple literacies.50 Both the alphabetic
script and the traditional Maya glyphs became the sacred knowledge of this
apparent noble scribal class. Moreover, almost inadvertently, many colonial
scribes left behind linguistic evidence of their ability to manipulate the multiple literacies of the colonial world.
Writing as Resistance: Evidence for the Later Colonial
Coexistence of Hieroglyphic and Alphabetic Maya
Texts in Resistance to Spanish Colonialism
A parallel examination of Spanish and Maya petitions reveals that the
Maya, even as early as the sixteenth century, had developed a unique “Maya
formulary” that used some aspects of Spanish documentary style and format, but nonetheless did not meet the requirements of Spanish law.51 The
Maya did not disregard Spanish rules of document style and legal formulas
out of ignorance. They instead adapted them to their own Maya rules of
style and formal address, which, through diferent from the Spanish formulary, added weight and validity to the document in the eyes of the local
Writing as Resistance
101
Table 2. Percentage Distribution of Maya Noble Lineages Holding the Position
of Escribano in Western Yucatan Peninsula, 1570–1750
Western
Peninsula
Town
Calkini
Maxcanu
Conkal
Motul
Yobain
Sotuta
Mani
Peto
Average
Patronym of
Traditional
Pre-Hispanic
Nobility
Canul
Canul
Pech
Pech
Chel
Cocom
Xiu
Pot
Last Recorded
Year Traditional
Noble
Patronym
Controlled the
Governorship
Years of
Identiiable
Scribe
Positions
Represented
in Document
Corpus
Percent of
Traditional
Noble
Patronym
Holding
Position as
Scribe
?
1570
1610
1610
1590
1610
1612
1600
1579–1649
1599–1653
1593–1639
1606–1669
1595–1669
1611–1707
1607–1713
1603–1672
79%
78%
44%*
42%*
73%
81%
73%
75%
68%
* = Relative shorter distance and proximity between these Maya towns and the Spanish capital
of Merida may have afected the ability of the traditional Maya elite to continue to dominate
the position of village scribe unopposed in these towns.
Source: Collection of several hundred documents from identiied towns found in AGI: Audiencia de México, Audiencia de Guatemala, Contaduria, Escribania de Camara, Indiferente General, Justicia, and Patronato; Tulane LAL-Vice-Regal Ecclesiastical Mexican Collection: Yucatan Collection; Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de Yucatán, Merida, Mexico (hereafter
AHAY): Asuntos Terminados, Concursos a Curatos, Decretos y Ordenes, and Visitas Pastorales; Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City (hereafter AGN): Bienes Nacionales, Bienes
Nacionalizadas, Bienes de Comunidad, Indiferente Virreinal, Indios, Inquisición, and Tierras;
Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán, Merida, Mexico (hereafter AGEY): Colonial, Diezmos, and Varios; Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Spain (hereafter AHN): Inquisición
and Visitas; Archivo General de Simancas (hereafter AGS); Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación
Histórica de Yucatán (hereafter CAIHY); Princeton University, Harvard University; Brigham
Young University; Michel Antiochiw Private Collection; and Chuchiak Private Collection.
Maya. Thus, in keeping with the Maya oral and written tradition of the
pre-Hispanic period, the colonial Maya scribe “conquered” Spanish documents, forcing them to it into their unique Maya cosmovision.
Moreover, Maya titles, measurements, numerals, and their classiiers
were still used in many cases even though they had the option of using Spanish equivalents. Especially in the eastern Yucatan peninsula, the survival
of pre-Hispanic terminology and the use of Maya concepts and terms for
already established Spanish loan words is more prevalent. An examination
of extant petitions from throughout the peninsula illustrates that even as
late as the 1660s to 1670s, Maya scribal knowledge of Spanish orthogra-
John F. Chuchiak IV
102
Table 3. Percentage Distribution of Maya Noble Lineages Holding the Position
of Escribano in Eastern Yucatan Peninsula, 1570–1750
Eastern
Peninsula
Town
Tizimin
Dzonotake
Chancenote
Nabalam
Cozumel
Average
Patronym of
Traditional
Pre-Hispanic
Nobility
Huchim
Na
Tzeh
Cupul
Pat
Last Recorded
Year Traditional
Noble
Patronym
Controlled the
Governorship
Years of
Identiiable
Scribe
Positions
Represented
in Document
Corpus
Percent of
Traditional
Noble
Patronym
Holding
Position as
Scribe
1580
1608
1570
1600
1570
1611–1722
1610–1669
1593–1739
1598–1676
1589–1637
75%
73%
81%
87%
88%
81%
Source: Collection of several hundred documents from identiied towns found in AGI: Audiencia de México, Audiencia de Guatemala, Contaduria, Escribania de Camara, Indiferente
General, Justicia, and Patronato; Tulane LAL-Vice-Regal Ecclesiastical Mexican Collection:
Yucatan Collection; AHAY: Asuntos Terminados, Concursos a Curatos, Decretos y Ordenes,
and Visitas Pastorales; AGN: Bienes Nacionales, Bienes Nacionalizadas, Bienes de Comunidad, Indiferente Virreinal, Indios, Inquisición, and Tierras; AGEY: Colonial, Diezmos, and
Varios; AHN: Inquisición and Visitas; AGS; CAIHY; Princeton University; Harvard University; Brigham Young University; Michel Antiochiw Private Collection; and Chuchiak Private
Collection.
phy, Spanish language, and Spanish terminology was weak in the eastern
part of the peninsula.
Especially in terms of Spanish loan words, there is an evident rift in
scribal knowledge of and familiarity with Spanish language and terminology. Only in the towns of the western peninsula, where successive contact with Spaniards and Spanish was constant since the 1530s, did the Maya
correctly use Spanish orthography in their use of Spanish loan words. In
simple Spanish words such as señor (sir, lord), a great diference is observed
in the nature of scribal spellings and scribal knowledge of proper Spanish
orthography and pronunciation (ig. 6).
In the east, until the eighteenth century and changing Bourbon regulations on residency patterns, even Maya village scribes had little knowledge
of proper Spanish orthography, grammar, or even terminologies. As a general rule, the farther east from Merida, the more garbled the Maya scribal
understanding of Spanish orthography and the less frequent the usage of
Spanish loan words.
Writing as Resistance
103
Motul
Dzodzil
Mérida
Valladolid
Uman
Maxcanu
Tixcacal
Sotuta
Ekpedz
Mopila
Calkini
Dzonotchel
Ichmul
Campeche
Uaymax
Map concept by Dr. John F. Chuchiak IV
Figure 6. Eastern and western peninsula examples of the rendering of Spanish
loan words by Maya scribes, 1666–70. Sources: AGI, Escribanía de Cámara,
318A: Petición de Pedro Cantun del pueblo de Dzodzil, 1666, Cuentas del repartimiento del gobernador del pueblo de Dzodzil, 1666, Petición y relación del
pueblo de Humun con una lista de cera y paties pagados en el repartimiento,
1666, Petición y Relación de los repartimientos de los oiciales de Sotuta, 1669,
Petición y cuentas de los repartimientos del pueblo de Tixcacal, 1669, Petición
del pueblo de Uaymax, 1669; AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, 315B: Petición de los
indios del pueblo de Ichmul, 1669, Petición de los indios del pueblo de Chikindzonot, 1669, Petición de los indios del pueblo de Ekpez, 1669, Petición de los
indios del pueblo de Tixcacal, 1669, Petición de los indios del pueblo de Sotuta,
1669, Petición de los indios del pueblo de Mopila, 1669, Certiicación de don
Francisco Canul, batab del pueblo de Ekpez, 1669
Continued Dual Literacies as Resistance
in the Eastern Peninsula?
In the eastern part of the peninsula, the garbled Spanish loan words may
reveal that the Maya scribes there preserved an understanding of the phonetic Maya script longer than the Maya scribes in the west. Many of the
corruptions of Spanish loan words in the eastern peninsula reveal a sophisticated understanding and type of regularization in the writing and use of
neatly parsed syllables (table 4 and ig. 7).
John F. Chuchiak IV
104
Table 4. Maya Scribal Syllabic/Phonetic Renderings of Spanish Loan Words and
Their Relationship with Possible Continued Knowledge of Hieroglyphic Script,
1600–1800
Spanish
Loan Word
Western Peninsula
Scribe
Eastern Peninsula
Scribe
Example of Most
Common Phonetic
Order of Maya Glyph
Blocks (With Four
Phonetic Syllables)
*
Información
*
*=The most common form of Maya hieroglyphic inscription that was rendered into phonetic
or syllabic glyphs was made up of four readily separable phonetic syllables. These examples
show how the most common Maya glyph block of four syllables could be divided and “read.”
It is interesting to note that no matter how many true syllables a Spanish loan word had, the
Maya of the eastern peninsula almost always attempted to break it down into four parsed
syllables so that it it into their understanding of a proper writing system. For instance, the
Spanish loan word in-for-ma-ci-on (ive syllables) was rendered in the Maya concept in clumsy
four-separated-syllable corruptions. The irst example ignores the extra “cí” syllable and the
second example lumps the fourth and ifth Spanish syllables together to make a neat foursyllable construction.
Sources: AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, 318A: Petición de Pedro Cantun del pueblo de Dzodzil,
1666, Cuentas del repartimiento del gobernador del pueblo de Dzodzil, 1666, Petición y relación del
pueblo de Dzonotchel, 1666; AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, 315B: Petición de los indios del pueblo
de Ekpez, 1669, Certiicación de don Francisco Canul, batab del pueblo de Ekpez, 1669, Petición
del pueblo de Uaymax, 1669, Peticion y certiicación de los oiciales del pueblo de Maxcanu, 1669,
Petición del pueblo de Calkini, 1669.
As we have seen from the argument above, the traditional Maya nobility
in the eastern peninsula maintained a stronger control over the positions of
village scribe. Moreover, as table 4 and igure 7 illustrate, traditional elite in
the east not only dominated alphabetic writing, but there also are clues that
they may have preserved the hieroglyphic script longer than in the western
peninsula, where the elite were under close watch.
According to Victoria Bricker, other important internal linguistic
evidence exists in the early colonial documents and manuscripts written
Writing as Resistance
105
Dzodzil
Mérida
Valladolid
Maxcanu
Mopila
Ekpedz
Calkini
Dzonotchel
Campeche
Uaymax
Map concept by Dr. John F. Chuchiak IV
Figure 7. Eastern and western peninsula examples of the rendering of Spanish loan
words by Maya scribes, 1666–1670. Sources: same as for table 4
in alphabetic script that reveals that Maya scribes maintained a vibrant
knowledge of the ancient hieroglyphic script.52 This linguistic evidence,
pointed out earlier by Bricker in several early Maya Chilam Balam books,
and the more syllabic corruptions of Spanish loan words evident in the large
corpus of documents from the seventeenth century may point to the fact
that eastern scribes continued to use and write with the Maya hieroglyphic
script (table 4).
Conclusion: The Continued Use of Hieroglyphics and the
Spread of Alphabetic Script—Noble Strategies for Survival
As many examples attest, the colonial Yucatec Maya nobility continued to
consult hieroglyphic codices in their ceremonies. Similarly, as more codices
were uncovered, the surviving Maya priesthood had to produce new ones
to replace them. Idolatry trial evidence suggests that many Maya priests
continued to make new idols and paint new codices throughout the colonial
period. In their commissions and orders to the local ecclesiastical judges,
the bishops of Yucatan and their assistants especially requested that the
106
John F. Chuchiak IV
judges “seek out and destroy all books of their ancient characters . . . both
the old ones and the ones that they still produce.”53
With increased pressure from extirpators, and fearing a loss of this
sacred knowledge, many colonial ah kins (traditional Maya priests) and their
assistants began to adopt Latin letter–based literacy. They wrote Maya with
Latin letters in order to preserve their legends, ritual formularies, and other
religious material.54 Maya ritual knowledge from the codices survived to
some extent by transforming into these books of Chilam Balam.55 Adding
necessary allusions to Christianity and Christian concepts, these books in
efect “fooled” the parish clergy and extirpators into believing that they
contained simple histories and other stories without religious signiicance.
The Maya also prudently obscured much of the pagan content within these
colonial texts by using riddles and metaphor.
The books of Chilam Balam, though heavily inluenced by European
concepts, still attest to the colonial use of the codices and the continued
knowledge of the glyphs.56 The colonial ah kins and noble scribes apparently
made the extant copies in the seventeenth century from earlier versions that
were later rewritten. These books of Chilam Balam contain many allusions
to the continued existence of several codices that escaped the ecclesiastical
extirpators. In the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin, the scribes refer to a
pagan ceremony that occurred in the Maya year that corresponded to 1607,
saying that it occurred “according to what is in the arrangement of the writing and glyphs.”57
However, as increased Spanish vigilance occurred in the western
Yucatan, and many noble scribes and prominent Maya principales were
denounced for idolatry and possession of hieroglyphic texts, a continued
knowledge of the Maya glyphic script became dangerous (ig. 8). Moreover, as the igures show for the western portion of the peninsula, increased
numbers of traditional scribes from towns where surviving glyphic codices
were uncovered were removed and replaced by Maya commoners who only
understood the alphabetic script.
Apparently those surviving Maya noble scribes decided to make the
switch to writing traditional Maya religious and ceremonial materials in
alphabetic texts and manuscripts in order to better preserve them from the
prying eyes of the Catholic clergy, who kept a vigilant eye out for their
“books of ancient characters.” By the second decade of the seventeenth
century, traditional Maya nobles and scribes in the western peninsula had
given up on their continued use of these prohibited hieroglyphic texts in
favor of recording the information once contained within them in manuscripts written with alphabetic texts (ig. 9).
Although these alphabetic texts and ritual material remained equally
prohibited by the Catholic clergy, these types of manuscripts were easier
Writing as Resistance
107
Map Key
= Hieroglyphic Maya Codex Coniscated
= Alphabetic Maya Ritual Text Coniscated
Dzonotake
1589
Yobain
1586
Telchac
1561
Motul
1587
Tizimin
1584
Conkal
1583
Valladolid
Tixcacal
1585
Nabalam
1595
Tixmukul
1583
Xocen
1583
Maxcanu
1573
Campeche
1584
Cehac
1598
Chancenote
1592/1597
Tikuche
1592
Mérida
Calkini
1574
Tixcancal
1597
Ppole
1598
Tahmuy
1589
Dzama
1592/1599
Cozumel
1584
Mani
1563/1568/1572/1575/1585
(Multiple Codices)
Peto
1595
Calotmul
1589/1592
Champoton
1579
Bacalar Region
1567-1570
(12 Codices)
Figure 8. Coniscations of Maya hieroglyphic codices and Maya ritual texts in
alphabetic script, 1560–1600
to hide and dissimulate into the routine paperwork of the village scribes
and nobles. From the decade of the 1620s onward, ecclesiastical extirpators
uncovered increasing numbers of these Maya alphabetical texts would be
uncovered in the towns of the western peninsula (ig. 9).
As the igures show, a decreasing number of Maya codices were uncovered in the western half of the Yucatan peninsula after 1650 (table 5).
At the same time, evidence from the scribal production of towns in
the eastern peninsula reveals a diferent picture. Noble scribes in the east
continued to use the Maya hieroglyphic script and utilize it in conjunction
with their rudimentary knowledge of Maya written in the alphabetic script.
Apparently, however, the noble scribes of the east continued to prefer the
use of the glyphic script and their traditional codices in their rituals and
ceremonies, since no real quantity of Maya ritual texts in alphabetic script
was ever coniscated in the eastern peninsula until very late in the eighteenth
century (table 6).
On the other hand, hieroglyphic texts continued to be coniscated and
destroyed in the towns of the eastern peninsula throughout the late eighteenth century (ig. 10).
What the preliminary investigation of these sources reveals is the tan-
John F. Chuchiak IV
108
Map Key
= Hieroglyphic Maya Codex Coniscated
= Alphabetic Maya Ritual Text Coniscated
Dzindzantun
1603
Mérida
Uman
1621
Timucuy
1609
Maxcanu
1627
Calkini
1635
Tizimin
1608
Valladolid
Campeche
Dzama
1618
Cozumel
1625
Tihotzuco
1610/1642
Peto
1605
Tekax
1610
1608/1609
Ppole
1607
Tahmuy
1607
Yaxcaba
1611/1643
Mani
1612
Oxkutzcab
1611
Chancenote
1603/1606/1612
Nabalam
1603/1640 Tixmukul
1607
Xocen
1603
Hocaba
1606
Pustunich
1610
Cehac
1607/1609
Tixcancal
1614
Tikuche
1607
Cacalchen
1632/1636
1609
Dzonotake
1603
Yobain
1606
Baca
1637 Motul
1634
Conkal
1621
Ichmul
1602/1640
Calotmul
1615/1643
Champoton
1609/1611
Sahcabchen
1612
Tipu
1618
Bacalar
1619
Figure 9. Coniscations of Maya hieroglyphic codices and Maya ritual texts in
alphabetic script, 1600–1650
Table 5. Geographical Distribution of Coniscated Codices (1560–1750)
Years
1560–1600
1600–1650
1650–1750
Totals:
Eastern
Peninsula
Western
Peninsula
Bacalar
Region
Peten
Region
22
27
9
58
16
21
1
38
12
2
1
15
0
0
10
10
Source: Speciic information on the coniscation of Maya codices is found in John F. Chuchiak IV, “The Images Speak: The Survival and Production of Hieroglyphic Codices and Their
Use in Post-Conquest Maya Religion, 1580–1720,” in Maya Religious Practices: Processes of
Change and Adaption, Acta Mesoamericana, vol. 14 (Markt Schwaben, Germany, 2004),
71–103.
Writing as Resistance
109
Table 6. Geographical Distribution of Coniscated Maya Alphabetic Texts
(1560–1750)
Years
Eastern
Peninsula
Western
Peninsula
Bacalar
Region
Peten
Region
0
0
3
3
0
8
15
23
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1560–1600
1600–1650
1650–1750
Totals:
Source: Speciic information on the coniscation of Maya codices is found in Chuchiak, “The
Images Speak,” 71–103.
Map Key
= Hieroglyphic Maya Codex Coniscated
= Alphabetic Maya Ritual Text Coniscated
= Apparant linguistic divide in terms of
survival of Maya Hieroglyphic Script
Dzindzantun
1711
Dzonotake
1727
Yobain
1659
Conkal
1739
Mérida
Motul
1724
Tizimin
1717
Cacalchen
1656
1734
Uman
1735
Valladolid
Nabalam
1703
Chancenote
1732
Ppole
1665
Hocaba
1715
Maxcanu
1745
Yaxcaba
1672
Calkini
1749
Mani
1672
Oxkutzcab
1664
Campeche
1661
Tihotzuco
1679
Peto
1663
Tekax
1660
Ichmul
1707
Champoton
1663
Sahcabchen
1675
Bacalar
1680
Figure 10. Evidence of continued graphic pluralism in both hieroglyphic and
alphabetic scripts in the eastern Yucatan peninsula, 1650–1750
110
John F. Chuchiak IV
talizing probability that Maya hieroglyphic script and the knowledge of the
glyphs lasted much longer into the colonial world than previously believed.
Even probable evidence exists in the mundane record of scribal production
that many scribes, especially those living in the eastern portion of the Yucatan peninsula, continued to understand, write, and create written ritual
texts in Maya glyphs as a means of resistance to the exclusive nature of
Spanish Catholicism and religious conversion.
Through their manipulation of the continued existence of graphic
pluralism and their domination of multiple literacies, the Maya elite of both
sides of the linguistic/cultural divide in the Yucatan peninsula used writing
(both alphabetic and glyphic scripts) as a means of colonial resistance to
Spanish rule. Not only a means of resistance, as this paper has attempted
to show, this continued graphic pluralism also served the Maya nobility as
a successful elite strategy of survival in the constantly changing colonial
world.
Notes
1 A large number of Maya rebellions throughout the Yucatan peninsula were
motivated by religious reasons or had religious conlict as one of their root
causes. For more instances of similar rebellions with religious roots, see John F.
Chuchiak IV, “Cuius Regio Eius Religio: Yucatec Maya Nativistic Movements
and the Religious Roots of Rebellion in Colonial Yucatán, 1547–1697,” Ketzalcalli 2004, no. 1: 44–59.
2 Relación breve de lo que Juan Garçón hizo por mando de Don Luis de Céspedes
de Oviedo, Gobernador y Capitán General por su Majestad en estas provincias de
Yucatán, en socorro de los vecinos de la provincia de Bacalar, 20 de Abril, 1569,
Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain (hereafter AGI), Patronato, 69, Ramo
10, 6 folios.
3 Ibid., folio 3r–v.
4 Carta del Cabildo de Bacalar, 4 de enero, 1569, AGI, Patronato, 69, Ramo 10,
3 folios.
5 Apparently writing letters in Maya with alphabetic script by rebellious Maya
who wanted to eradicate the Spaniards was not atypical. During the 1560–62
Maya idolatry trials conducted by the Franciscan Provincial Fray Diego de
Landa, it appears to have been argued that the major idolaters and conspirators
called other Maya to their ceremonies using letters written by Maya scribes in
the alphabetic script. See France V. Scholes and Eleanor Adams, Don Diego Quijada: Alcalde mayor de Yucatán, 1561–1565, vol. 1 (Mexico City, 1938), 109. For
a further discussion of Maya usage of alphabetic literacy in similar instances see
Caroline Cunill, “La alfabetización de los Mayas Yucatecos y sus consecuencias
sociales, 1545–1580,” Estudios de Cultura Maya 31 (2008): 163–92.
6 Relación breve de lo que Juan Garçón hizo.
7 Testimonio de Juan Rodríguez, Alguacil Mayor, a la interrogatorio de la probanza
del Capitán Juan Garçón, 6 de Abril, 1569, AGI, Patronato, 69, Ramo 10, folios
17v–20r.
Writing as Resistance
111
8 See Testimonio del conquistador Juan Díaz a la interrogatorio de la probanza del
Capitán Juan Garçón, 6 de Abril, 1569, AGI, Patronato, 69, Ramo 10, folios
15r–17r.
9 For a more in-depth look at the colonial survival of Maya hieroglyphic texts and
their use in continued Maya ceremonies, see John F. Chuchiak IV, “The Images
Speak: The Survival and Production of Hieroglyphic Codices and Their Use in
Post-Conquest Maya Religion, 1580–1720,” in Maya Religious Practices: Processes of Change and Adaption, Acta Mesoamericana, vol. 14 (Markt Schwaben,
Germany, 2004), 71–103.
10 For further information on the connection between the Maya glyphic script
and the surviving Maya priesthood (ah kinob), see John F. Chuchiak IV, “PreConquest Ah Kinob in a Colonial World: The Extirpation of Idolatry and the
Survival of the Maya Priesthood in Colonial Yucatán, 1563–1697,” in Maya Survivalism, Acta Mesoamericana, vol. 12, ed. Ueli Hostettler and Matthew Restall
(Markt Schwaben, Germany, 2001), 135–60.
11 Fr. Bernardo de Lizana, Historia de Yucatán: Devocionario de Ntra. Sra. de Izamal y conquista espiritual (Mexico City, 1893), 46. Villalpando was the irst one
to write several books on the Maya language. He produced texts that would
be used by later friars to teach their indigenous converts and themselves how
to read and write Maya. For more information on Franciscan works in Maya
linguistics, see Ralph L. Roys, “The Franciscan Contribution to Maya Linguistic Research in Yucatan,” The Americas 8 (1952): 417–29, and Manuel Castro
y Castro, “Lenguas indígenas transmitidas por los Franciscanos del s. XVII,”
Archivo Ibero-Americano 48 (1988): 485–527.
12 Lizana, Historia de Yucatán, 50.
13 Cunill, “La alfabetización de los Mayas Yucatecos,” 170–71.
14 Ibid., 50; also see Diego López de Cogolludo, Los tres siglos de la dominación
española en Yucatan, o historia de esta provincia, vol. 1 (Graz, Austria, 1971),
350.
15 Landa well knew about these orthographic problems, for he perfected Villalpando’s grammar and wrote sermons and other works in Maya. See Alfred M.
Tozzer, trans., Landa’s relación de las cosas de Yucatan, Papers of the Peabody
Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, vol. 18
(Cambridge, MA, 1941), 74–75. For information on other colonial Franciscans’
contributions to Maya linguistics, see France V. Scholes, “Franciscan Missionary Scholars in Colonial Central America,” The Americas 8 (1952): 391–416,
and Francesc Ligorred, “Literatura maya: De los jeroglíicos al alfabeto latino,”
Boletín Americanista 38 (1988): 189–207.
16 For an excellent recent study of this early attempt at missionary education, see
Caroline Cunill’s excellent recent article “La alfabetización de los Mayas Yucatecos,” 169–74.
17 In 1552, there was already a Mayan scribe in the village of Yaxkukul. See Sergio
Quezada, Pueblos y Caciques Yucatecos, 1550–1580, (Mexico City, 1993), 117.
18 See Ralph L. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan (Washington,
DC, 1943), 400; also see Ralph L. Roys, Titles of Ebtun, Carnegie Publication
#505 (Washington, DC, 1939), 8–21.
19 See Mercedes de la Garza Camino, “Relación de Mérida,” in Relaciones histórico geográicas de la gobernación de Yucatán: Mérida, Valladolid y Tabasco, vol. 1,
(Mexico City, 1983), 73. The encomendero from the town of Chunhuhub and
112
20
21
22
23
24
25
John F. Chuchiak IV
Tabi, Pero Garcia, added that the Maya “had letters and that each letter was a
syllable and they understood each other by using them” (De la Garza Camino,
“Relación de Chunhuhub y Tabi,” Relaciones histórico geográicas, vol. 1, 164).
Tozzer, Landa’s relación, 45–46.
See Fr. Bernardo de Lizana, Devocionario de Nuestra Señora de Izamal y conquista
espiritual de Yucatán, Facsímile Edición de René Acuña (Mexico City, [1633]
1995), 60. Writing in 1633, Lizana is most probably referring to the codex coniscated in 1610 near the Campeche/Champoton region and then “transcribed”
or “annotated” by several old Maya from the region, most probably ah kins, or
sons of ah kinob. For more information, see John F. Chuchiak IV, “The Images
Speak: The Survival and Production of Hieroglyphic Codices and Their Use in
Post-Conquest Maya Religion, 1580–1720,” in Maya Religious Practices, vol. 14,
71–103.
See Mercedes de la Garza Camino, “Relación de la Villa de Valladolid,” in Relaciones histórico geográicas, vol. 2, 38. As for the actual makeup of the codices,
the best study of the paper of which the codices are made was conducted by
the German scholar Rudolf Schwede. See Rudolf Schwede, Über das Papier der
Maya-Codices u. einiger altmexikanischer Bilderhandscriften (Dresden, 1912).
Several friars and secular clergy in the diocese of Yucatan studied the Maya’s
hieroglyphic script and their legends, myths, and religion. Landa was one of the
irst friars to study the Maya script and culture by examining codices and interviewing surviving Maya nobles. Another of the earliest, and a contemporary of
Landa, was Fr. Gaspar de Nájera, one of the irst friars to examine and study
the codices in order to understand their ritual and historical content. Later came
Fr. Alonso de Solana, who is also credited with having written several other
works on Maya culture and history, including Vocabulario muy copioso en lengua
Española e Maya de Yucatán [1580]; Sermones de dominicas y santos en lengua
Maya [sixteenth-century manuscript, now missing]; Apuntaciones sobre las antigüedades Mayas o Yucatecas [sixteenth-century manuscript, now missing]; Estudios históricos sobre los Indios [sixteenth-century manuscript, now missing]; and
Apuntes de las santas escrituras [sixteenth-century manuscript, now missing].
See Alfred Tozzer’s discussion of his bibliography of works written in Alfred M.
Tozzer, A Maya Grammar, (New York, 1977), 267–68. The secular clergyman
Dr. Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar coniscated several codices and would later write
about their content in his own book, published in 1618 and entitled Informe
contra idolorum cultores. During the late seventeenth century several other
friars joined the renewed interest in studying Maya myth and religion through
codices and interviews. Most notably were Fr. Bernardo de Lizana, Fr. Joseph
Maria Ortiz, Padre Joseph Conde, and Fr. Andres de Avendaño. Avendaño also
wrote several important manuscripts that are now lost, according to Roys, “The
Franciscan Contribution,” 425–26, including Diccionario botánico y médico conforme a los usos y costumbres de los Indios de Yucatán; Diccionario de nombres de
personas, ídolos, danzas y otras antigüedades de los indios de Yucatán; and a work
speciically on Maya prophecies, Explicación de varios vaticinios de los antiguos
indios de Yucatán.
Tozzer, Landa’s relación, 130.
Testimonio de Gregorio de Aguilar, presbítero en la información presentado por el
Dr. Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar, 6 de diciembre, 1608, AGI, Audiencia de México,
299, 8 folios.
Writing as Resistance
113
26 See Lizana, Devocionario de Nuestra Señora de Izamal, 182.
27 The initial prohibitions against ordaining an indigenous clergy came with the
irst and second Provincial Mexican Councils. See Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, Concilios Provinciales Primero y Segundo, celebrados en la muy noble y muy
leal Ciudad de México, presidiendo el Ilmo. Y rmo. Señor Fray Alonso de Montúfar
en los años de 1555 y 1565 (Mexico City, 1769). For a full discussion of the issue
of ordaining indigenous clergy, see Staford Poole, “Church Law on the Ordination of Indians and Castas in New Spain,” The Hispanic American Historical
Review 61 (November 1981): 637–50.
28 For more information on the role of the colonial Maya elite in the perpetuation and continued existence of Maya “idolatry,” see John F. Chuchiak IV, “La
inquisición Indiana y la extirpación de idolatrías: El castigo y la reprensión en
el Provisorato de Indios en Yucatán, 1570–1690,” in Nuevas perspectivas sobre el
castigo de la heterodoxia indígena en la Nueva España, siglos XVI–XVIII, ed. Ana
de Zaballa Beascoechea (Bilbao, Spain, 2005), 79–94.
29 This replacement of the pre-Hispanic halach uinic with the king, the viceroy,
and the provincial governor is evidenced in early colonial documents that call
the governor the halach uinic or ahau. However, the local Maya halach uinicob
continued to maintain their titles into the second half of the sixteenth century.
For example, see the case of Don Francisco de Montejo Xiu, who in 1557 was
still addressed as halach uinic of Mani. See the 1557 Mani Land Treaty, Yucatan
Collection, Box 1, Folder 1, Latin American Library, Tulane University, New
Orleans.
30 For an excellent description of this transitionary period, see Quezada, Pueblos y
Caciques, 127–56.
31 Ordenanzas que el Doctor Palacio manda guardar entre los naturales de las provincias de Yucatan, 1584, AGI, Indiferente General, 2987, folio 2. For an example
of election records in Maya from the year 1690 from Tekanto, see Matthew B.
Restall, “The World of the Cah: Postconquest Yucatec Maya Society,” PhD
diss., University of California, 1992, Appendix A, document #4, 455.
32 See Ordenanzas que el Doctor Palacio manda guardar, folio 5. García Palacio’s
orders stated that “cada año eligen 2 alcaldes, 4 regidores, 4 mayordomos,
4 alguaciles . . . los cuáles sean la mitad principales y la otra mitad maceguales.”
Also see Francisco de Solano y Pérez Lila, “Autoridades municipales indígenas de Yucatán (1657–1677),” Revista de la Universidad de Yucatán 17, no. 102
(1975): 75.
33 The corpus of Maya documents (petitions, certiications, letters, election
records, wills and testaments, notarial records, and other documents in the
Yucatec Maya language) used for analysis in this paper consists of close to
seven hundred documents that come from the period 1565–1821 from twentytwo representative Maya towns that have a large enough extant collection of
documents and scattered cabildo records to reconstruct a fairly accurate picture of the nature of the colonial scribal oice and its relationship to the surviving traditional Maya elite and their continued colonial attempts to maintain
municipal power and prestige. The Maya towns under examination include an
equal number of towns from both the eastern and western Yucatan peninsula,
which have a similar depth of surviving historical documentation. These towns
include Calkini, Maxcanu, Mani, Sotuta, Tecal, Peto, Conkal, Motul, Mopila,
Sinanche, and Yobain in the western peninsula and Tizimin, Nabalam, Chance-
114
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
John F. Chuchiak IV
note, Dzotzil, Dzonotchel, Dzonotake, Ekpedz, Uaymax, Tixcacal, Ichmul,
and Cozumel in the eastern peninsula. The documents themselves collected in
this database come from a wide range of archival collections, both public and
private, in Spain, Mexico, the United States, and other European repositories:
AGI: Audiencia de México, Audiencia de Guatemala, Contaduría, Escribanía
de Camara, Indiferente General, Justicia, and Patronato; Archivo Histórico
Nacional, Madrid, Spain: Competencias, Inquisición, and Visitas; Archivo
General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), Mexico City: Bienes Nacionales, Bienes
Nacionalizadas, Bienes de Comunidad, Clero Regular y Secular, Correspondencia de Varias Autoridades, Diezmos, Indios, Inquisición, Indiferente Virreinal,
Justicia Eclesiástica, Obispos y Arzobispos, Provisorato, Reales Cedulas, Real
Fisco de la Inquisición, Templos y Conventos, and Tierras; Archivo Histórico
del Arzobispado de Yucatán, Merida, Mexico: Asuntos Terminados, Concursos
a Curatos, Decretos y Ordenes, and Visitas Pastorales; Archivo General del
Estado de Yucatán, Merida, Mexico: Asuntos Eclesiásticos, Colonial, Diezmos,
and Varios; AGS; CAIHY; Princeton University, Harvard University; Brigham
Young University; Michel Antiochiw Private Collection; and Chuchiak Private
Collection.
Quezada, Pueblos y Caciques, 117.
Apparently, in 1581, an unnamed Poot who was Nacom Poot’s nephew and
cousin of the cacique served as the last pre-Hispanic ruling elite to hold the
position of governor. The irst holder of the position of gobernador in 1565, Juan
Ake, may symbolize the irst unsuccessful attempt of Nacom Poot and his clan
to ensure the continued dominance of their clan over the local village afairs.
Although Philip C. Thompson states that Ake may have been a commoner,
this remains speculative due to a lack of information. See Philip C. Thompson,
Tekanto: A Maya Town in Colonial Yucatán, Middle American Research Institute, Publication 67 (New Orleans: 1999), 40.
In Tekanto from this period onward, nonelite and nonnoble Maya commoners
with the patronyms Ake, Tun, and Dzib alternated in the position of gobernador throughout the rest of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For more
detailed discussions of the development of this type of early dual government,
see Thompson, Tekanto, 40–43.
For the most recent study of the nature of the removal of the traditional Maya
elite from their exercise of political power and their attempts to hold onto their
political control during the last decade of the sixteenth century and the irst
decade of the seventeenth century, see Argelia Segovia Liga, “Los indios del
Mariscal: Revisión de un manuscrito yucateco del siglo XVII,” Thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2008.
Munro S. Edmonson, Heaven Born Merida and Its Destiny: The Book of Chilam
Balam of Chumayel (Austin, TX, 1986), 134.
This term was often used by Maya scribes. See “Petición de Augustina Pox del
pueblo de Dzan, 2 de octubre 1700,” Documentos de Tabi (1569–1821), Yucatán
Collection, Latin American Library, Tulane University, vol. 1, folio 2r. In this
document, the scribe signed as “Antonio Canpach, Ah Dzib Hun.” In another
case in 1669, the scribe of the village of Ekpez signed as “Ah Dzib”; see Petición
de los indios del pueblo de Ekpez, 1669, AGI, Escribanía de Cámara, 315B.
The Crown attempted to correct abuses of perpetual occupation of the position of village scribe in a cedula issued irst in 1592 and then again in 1634. The
Writing as Resistance
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
115
Crown saw that the perpetual occupation of the position of scribe would only
cause “ocasion para que entre si tengan diferençia y pleitos . . . dañoso seria a
los dichos indios haver entre ellos escrivanos propietarios.” See Antonio de León
Pinelo, Recopilación de Leyes de Indias, vol. 2 (Porrúa, Mexico, 1992), book 7,
title X, law 25, p. 1833.
Philip C. Thompson, “Tekanto in the Eighteenth Century,” PhD diss., Tulane
University, 1978, 363–66.
See Restall, “The World of the Cah,” 37–38.
Nancy Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of
Survival (Princeton, NJ, 1984), 184.
See José Joaquín Real Díaz, Estudio diplomatico del documento indiano (Seville,
Spain, 1970), 140–52.
Roys, Titulos de Ebtun, 47.
Ibid.
Ibid., 47n63.
Ibid., 48–49.
Apparently many of those who held the title of Indio Hidalgo were not even
racially Maya by the eighteenth century. For a more detailed explanation, see
Thompson, Tekanto, 44–46, 155–71.
This noble obsession with ensuring that their colonial leaders and governors
held the cultural knowledge and ability to understand the hieroglyphs can be
seen in several of the colonial books of Chilam Balam and in an enigmatic
arcane metaphorical language known as Lenguaje de Zuyua, which was used to
ensure that candidates for the governorship held the proper cultural knowledge.
This metaphorical language and these Chilam Balam books were the product
of these noble-scribes who continued to attempt to preserve their cultural and
political hegemony throughout the later colonial period. For a fascinating recent
discussion and interpretation of this Lenguaje de Zuyua, see Segovia Liga, “Los
indios del Mariscal,” especially 19–28, 93–169.
For a detailed discussion of the uniquely Maya nature of colonial petitions, see
John F. Chuchiak IV, “‘U hahil ca than yalan juramentoil’: Maya Scribes, Colonial Literacy, and Maya Petitionary Forms in Colonial Yucatán,” Human Mosaic
36 (2006): 77–91.
Bricker points out that traces of the logosyllabic principals of consonant insertion, vowel insertion, and consonant deletion appear in the aberrant spellings
and abbreviations of Maya words in the books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel
and Chan Kan. These unusual spellings of words in colonial Maya manuscripts,
she argues, are evidence of scribal syncretism, not of ignorance of alphabetic
writing conventions. See Victoria R. Bricker, “The Last Gasp of Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing in the Books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel and Chan Kom,” in
Word and Image in Maya Culture: Explorations in Language, Writing, and Respresentation, ed. William Hanks and Don S. Rice (Salt Lake City, UT, 1989), 48.
For information on the clergy’s fear and discovery of the continued production
of hieroglyphic codices during the colonial period, see the various Comisiones
de la Ydolatria, AGI, Audiencia de Mexico, 282–305, 311; AGI, Indiferente General, 190–223.
Bricker, “The Last Gasp of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing,” 48–49. Bricker believes
that the orthography and grammar of these colonial texts show that the colonial
scribes kept the knowledge of the hieroglyphs alive long after the Conquest.
116
John F. Chuchiak IV
Similarly, several Inquisition documents have references of the continued use
of “hieroglyphic books of ancient letters” well into the seventeenth century. See
AGN, Inquisición, Tomo 290, Exp 2.
55 For a recent description of this process, see Bruce Love, The Paris Codex: Handbook for a Maya Priest (Austin, TX, 1994), 3–7.
56 Recent scholarship has reexamined the books of Chilam Balam in comparison
to contemporary Spanish and European sources. Modern scholars now ind that
many of the passages of the Chilam Balam books were heavily inluenced by
European sources, especially in terms of astronomical and calendrical material.
Victoria R. Bricker and Helga-Maria Miram most recently examined several
passages and images in the Chilam Balam books in terms of their European origins. They discovered that even certain images before believed to be Maya were
in fact based on European designs. See Helga-Maria Miram and Victoria R.
Bricker, “Relating Time to Space: The Maya Calendar Compasses,” in Eighth
Palenque Round Table, 1993, ed. Martha J. Macri and Jan McHargue (San Francisco, 1996), 393–402.
57 Munro S. Edmonson, The Ancient Future of the Itza: The Book of Chilam Balam
of Tizimin (Austin, TX, 1982), 97.