Maya Conquistador

The Spanish conquest of the Maya homeland in southern Mexico and Central Mexico, writes historian Matthew Restall, had three major episodes: the arrival of reconnaissance parties soon after Cortez's first landing in 1520, the subsequent arrival of conquistadors and their newly subjugated Aztec allies, and finally, the arrival of Spanish colonists. These episodes have been related in official Spanish documents. Now, with Restall's translation of hitherto unknown Maya codices, they are related through the eyes of the Maya themselves, who recount, for instance, the advent of "Castilian men [who came] to ask for the way to Uloa, to the land where gold and plumage and cacao come from." Such reversed-perspective documents abound in Aztec literature, but this is the first discovery of similar accounts from the Maya, and it makes an important contribution to the ethnographic and historical literature. --Gregory MacNamee