On Ambivalent Conquests

This is a great study of the conquest of Yucatan. Unlike the Aztec portions of Mexico, the Mayan south lacked a strong state and was much more diffuse, making it harder (if not impossible) for the Spanish to truly “conquer” the region—Mayan culture, language, and traditions continue to remain more distinctive than that of the Mexica, which have largely been subsumed by Spanish traditions, producing a syncretic Mexican culture.

This text is really centered on the campaigns against Mayan idolatry and human sacrifice in the mid-late sixteenth century. Clendinnen here argues that Mayan people largely viewed Christianity and the Spanish conquest as a temporary phenomenon. Nevertheless, they were quite receptive to Christianization, so long as it was on their own terms. They developed a syncretic tradition where some continued the age-old practice of human sacrifice, but they added “Christian embellishments,” theoretically making it palatable within the Christian faith. However, in 1562, Franciscan friars clamped down on the practice, strengthening the position and institutionalizing the position of Spanish colonizers. At the same time, there was a profound tension between secular settlers and religious authorities, who sought to advocate on behalf of the Maya (something that settlers did not) while bringing them into the fold of what the Spanish saw as respectable European practices. By the end of the period, many Maya sought to maintain their Christian faith while creating a strong Mayan state.

Two-thirds of this text is a study of the Spanish in Yucatan, the first four chapters on secular settlers and the second four on religious authorities. The remainder of the text is about the Maya. In her preface, Clendinnen points out that her dissertation consisted of the Spanish segments, and it was only afterwards that she added material on the Maya (thanks to methodological innovations by anthropologists like Clifford Geertz). However, this is a bit of a weakness, as the chapters on the Maya do feel like a mere addition. That’s a shame, because those chapters, in my view, were the most interesting part of the whole book. I wonder if there is some way that the author could have organized the book differently to offer a more coherent approach—perhaps, instead of dividing chapters into “Part 1: Spaniards” and “Part 2: Indians,” Clendinnen could have done more to directly integrate the indigenous material into the “Spaniards” chapters instead of artificially separating the two groups.

Most of my knowledge of the colonial Spanish Americas is about the conquest, with some tidbits about the rest of the colonial period. This is a great book that shows how the conquest gave way to the institutionalization of Spanish rule—a topic that I hadn’t read much about elsewhere. It’s a must-read for those interested in colonial Latin American history.