New Spain
The conquest of the New World was not just given finance and authority by the monarchy of Spain, it was also given permission by the Catholic Church as a way to accummulate both new fortune and souls.

It coincided with the successful reconquest of Moorish Spain, Granada being the last stronghold to fall. This gave missionaries in the new world greater freedom to convert the indigenous population.

The Spanish first arrived on the shores of southern Mexico in 1511. But it wasn’t until the arrival of Hernán Cortés in 1519 that they achieved a swift takeover of city-states. He formed alliances with native warriors, fought their enemies, then turned against those same allies. The Aztec Empire fell in just two years with the capture of its last emperor, Cuauhtémoc, in Tenochtitlan. The defeat marked the beginning of 300 years of colonization of “New Spain.”

The ruins of Teotihuacan outside of Mexico City

The Mayans
The defeat of the Maya, however, took much longer. Mayan kingdoms stretched from the Yucatan peninsula, along Belize and Guatemala, to as far south as El Salvador and Honduras. They were fierce warriors, using bows and arrows, spears and swords with obsidian blades, wore padded armor and had intricate shields for protection. They regularly trained for warfare in between battles and hired full-time mercenaries. They took down Spanish cavalries in surprise ambushes and with pits filled with wooden stakes. And they were highly skilled at close-contact combat. It took the Spanish over 200 years to quell their revolts.

Tikal in Guatemala, a 4th century BC Mayan settlement that had a population of over 10,000

The Mayans also had a very advanced civilization. They had a complex trade network, placed a high value on art and learning, were masters of mathematics and astronomy, and developed their own calendar and writing system. Ceremonial sites that date back to 1000 BC suggest they were used to observe the winter and summer solstices. They built monumental architecture in beginning in the 7th century BC, developed the Maya script in the 3rd century BC, and intricate mythological paintings from 100 BC have been uncovered.

The ruins in Tulum, which was built to face the sun.

Human Sacrifice
When the Spanish arrived, they were stunned by the local custom of human sacrifice. These sacrifices were offerings to gods for better harvests, made in honor of new kings, celebrated victories or marked specific events. The Aztecs and Mayans saw it as a necessary practice tied to their mythological beliefs in creation and rebirth. This made them seem barbaric to the newcomers despite their advanced civilizations. Cortés had attempted to ban their religious practices right away but was unsuccessful. In 1524, he requested the Spanish monarch to send missionaries.

Franciscan friars were soon sent to the Yucatán. The first years yielded peaceful conversions, mostly from educating children of native leaders and relying on them to help convert their subjects. A few friars learned the native languages and preached directly.

But once again, the Mayans were more resistant. The friars, seeing themselves as the only religious authority, began to convert by force. They imprisoned those who resisted and inflicted physical punishment by stripping and flogging them. Because of the practice of human sacrifice, they felt converting the natives would save innocent lives. Ironically, they murdered many of those who refused.

What resulted were even more Mayans revolts. The Mayans specifically targeted missionaries but brutally killed all Spaniards alike, burning them alive in their homes and hanging women and children. The Spanish retribution was just as violent. They took the natives, cut off their noses, drowned the women and stabbed their children to death.

In Valladolid, the rebelling Mayans killed the Spanish, their loyal converts, even their livestock. Friar Diego de Landa was sent from Spain to help convert and tame the natives, and was given monopoly over all of Yucatán.

De Landa was appointed to Izamal and built this convent atop a Mayan temple.

Spanish Inquisition
In the midst of the Spanish Inquisition (in which the Franciscan order were appointed leaders), a tribunal was also set up in Mexico. In the Yucatán, de Landa used torture tactics such as suspending subjects with bound hands while attaching weights to their ankles. He targeted the Mayan nobility and jailed them indefinitely to scare the rest of their subjects into submission.

When he continued to find evidence that human sacrifice was still widely practiced, even among those who claimed to have converted to Catholicism, he ordered an Inquisition in Mani, just south of Mérida, and ordered all Mayan books and images of idolatry gathered and destroyed.

Codices
These books were in the form of codices, flat layers of folded bark paper that recorded many aspects of Mayan lives. They were written by the few literate holy scribes hired to document every aspect of life – from family histories, agricultural productivity, and technical manuals to mythological beliefs and astronomical observations.

An example of a Mayan codex and translation, Museo Palacio Canton, Merida

According to de Landa, 27 books and over 5000 cult images were destroyed on July 12, 1562.

Though the history of the Maya has been extensively studied, there are gaps in our understanding. The civilization peaked around 800AD until many of the cities were mysteriously abandoned. These sites were left intact with engravings on the structures and stelae. But many cannot be completely deciphered.

Stelae displayed in Museo Palacio Canton, Merida

Ironically much of what is known today of the Mayan culture comes from de Landa’s own accounts. He learned their language and had two noble scribes transcribe the Mayan symbols with corresponding letters in the Spanish alphabet.

He catalogued everything in Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, including observations on their religion and everyday lives. But the surviving publications of de Landa’s book are only abridged versions and certainly not equal to the first-hand accounts the burnt codices would have provided in solving the mysteries of Mayan history.

Four codices survived, probably because they were sent out of Mexico before the burning. Named after the cities where they are kept – The Dresden Codex being the most complete – they helped decipher, along with de Landa’s records, some of the ancient script. However, it took archeologists over a century to do so.

The observatory at Mayapán, the last capital before the Spanish conquest where the surviving codices are believed to have come from.

Ongoing excavations have unearthed paper inscriptions, mostly in tombs, but they are rotted and illegible, kept with the hope that future technology might restore them. Today, the ruins of Mayan sites still stand impressively, but the mysteries of where the Mayans came from and what caused them to abandon their own beautiful cities remain.

The ruins of Ek Balam, one of the later Mayan settlements mysteriously abandoned.