The 1562 Tragedy at Mani (Part Two)

In the final analysis, ancestors provide a bridge between generations for the benefit of the descendants’ standing in their community, because ancestors are invoked to legitimize and bring order to daily family and communal existence. De Landa and his friars dismissed the significance of these icons on grounds of idolatry, which in their view was merely a means of escape from the new religion. But was it the only motive, or were the friars in partnership with local unscrupulous encomenderos and mestizo colonists who were then able, through burning the only indigenous “property record,” to seize “undocumented” land?

Pic 1: 16th century canvas

In the appendices of the 1959 edition of the Relación are testimonies of the collusion between secular and religious members of the Yucatan administration in Merida, albeit not for the same reasons. This collusion cannot be understood without bringing forward the Tax List of 1549. This list fixed the levies to be paid by each of the 175 towns in Yucatan and 10 in Tabasco, as well as in other towns of the crown to its encomenderos to defray the cost of government control over an extensive administrative, military, and religious infrastructure.

Pic 3: Levies in kind... (detail of mural by Diego Rivera)

The tributes had to be delivered to encomenderos in the city of Merida at the rate of one-third every four months, with pack animals or carts for transportation supplied by the colonists. Indigenous communities had to help the colonist in the task with four Indian workmen for this service, to be fed and housed by him, and taught the doctrine of Christianity. Material and products were also assigned to the crown and religious orders. For the following years, the levies varied with the size of towns, which steadily grew by reason of the forced resettlement, or repartimiento de indios of indigenous villages, when houses were burned to the ground, to prohibit return and further the policy of exerting better socio-economic and religious control.

Pic 5: Yucatan, 16th century house

The 1563 report describes the events that took place at Mani, Sotuta and other towns and villages. In Mani, flogging, and burnings at the stake by the friars were directed by de Landa, assisted by friars Miguel de la Puebla, Pedro de Ciudad Rodrigo, and Juan de Picaro, referred to as “ordinary inquisitors” of the Inquisition. Mayor Diego Quijada also attended the dramatic events together with colonists. When convicted of lesser charges, Indians had their heads shaved and were sent into forced labor for ten years or less, as indentured servants in the haciendas of encomenderos and the mestizo colonists’ friends of the mayor.

Pic 7: Indentured labor...

The secular-temporal collusion in the region, if not always as extreme as at Mani, was the result of the tri-partite failure between the local governments, the encomenderos, other colonists and the religious order, each with their own agenda. This relationship went astray as such relationships often do and was highly damaging to the Yucatan socio-economic stability under the mayor and his accomplices. The friars, sanctioned by their custodian, ignored the mandate of the Holy Inquisition to cease forced conversion and maltreatment of the local people, while the mayor and his associates were driven by greed.

Pic 9: Collusion... (Diego Rivera mural)

The damning 1563 report was supported two years later by another on March 25, 1565, from Merida again, addressed to the Viceroyalty of New Spain in Mexico City, and to the Council of the Indies in Spain by the Royal Notary, Sebastian Bazques. This second report confirmed the first regarding long lasting abuses of power, that resulted in serious economic damage to the province while inciting dangerous restlessness within the indigenous communities. Supplications for relief notwithstanding, the destruction of many idols collected during idolatry trials by the Inquisition in the Yucatan, was widespread and is found to have occurred in every entrada (entry) of every chronicle, well into the seventeenth century.

Pic 11: Distrust and anger...

When he first set foot on the peninsula in 1549, de Landa’s initial zeal to convert was driven not only by faith but also by an inquisitive mind genuinely interested in the land and its people. He crisscrossed most of the Yucatan barefoot and made valuable notes that went beyond the indigenous people’s beliefs and religious practices, and into all aspects of their lives. His first-hand observations embraced community and family organization, children’s education, burial practices, architecture, planting techniques and cycles, the calendar and numbering system, harvested products storage and distribution, the symbology of their writing, justice, hospitality and other relevant facts on communal and family life.

Pic 13: Friars seeking souls...

Among his invaluable notes, one stands out: his record of the Maya writing system based on information collected in towns and villages from spiritual and secular elders that phonetically and graphically helped him match glyphic symbols with the Spanish alphabet. Glyphs and letters did not always match, however, resulting in inconsistencies and duplicates that could not be resolved. Not until 1952 did the Soviet linguist and epigrapher Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov (1922-1999) realize that the transcription was not that of an alphabet but the ideograms of a syllabary (such as Egyptian hieroglyphs). It was a momentous breakthrough in Maya glyphs decipherment.

Pic 15: Maya-Spanish rendition

After consultation with the Council of the Indies and Franciscan elders, the king approved the appointment of Diego de Landa in 1572 as the second bishop of Yucatan, succeeding Bishop de Toral, who died in Mexico City in 1571. The second bishop landed in Campeche, Yucatan, in early 1573, together with a retinue of thirty Franciscan friars granted to the Merida bishopric by Phillip II to further ecumenical work. After serving the Franciscan order for thirty-eight years, most of this time in Yucatan, Diego de Landa died at fifty-five of natural causes on April 29, 1579; he is buried in Merida’s cathedral.

Pic 17: The Great Maya Museum, Merida