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The Conquest Tradition of Mesoamerica1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Richard N. Adams
Richard N. Adams*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
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Extract

To observe that events are determined by historical antecedents is hardly informative. What is difficult about history is that it is rarely equally easy to find out how the past shapes the future. Central America presents an interesting case in which indigenous cultures and Spanish conquest have succeeded in reproducing old geographical patterns while the cultures and societies therein have changed in extraordinary ways. The present paper suggests how it is that some of these cultural and social relational continuities, perhaps difficult to understand apart from this long tradition, may have continued down from the pre-Columbian period to the present. A key element in the process seems to lie in the ethnic relations, those relations that have been retained between Ladinos and the state on the one hand, and the highly populous Indian population of Guatemala.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , October 1989 , pp. 119 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1989

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Footnotes

1

This essay has been presented in a slightly different form as a paper at the University of Wisconsin, Smith College, Académia de Geografia e História de Guatemala, the Latin American Studies Association, and Harvard University, as well as serving for the past three years as an intellectual framework in my University of Texas graduate seminar on Central America. The term “Mesoamerica” was devised by anthropologist Paul Kirchoff to refer to the geographic sub-region of Middle America that was occupied by pre-Columbian “high cultures.” It extended from north of the valley of Mexico to a line running irregularly from Puerto Cortéz on the northern Honduran coast, to the head of the Gulf of Nicoya in Costa Rica. See Kirchoff , “The Conquest Tradition of Mesoamerica1,” Acta Americana, Vol. 1 (1948); reprinted in TaxSol, editor, Heritage of Conquest, (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1952). See also reconsideration by NewsonLinda, Indian Survival in Colonial Nicaragua, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), p.24.

References

2 The differences among the conquistadores has been highlighted for me by a work in progress by Samuel Stone, on the ruling classes in Central America, and I am indebted to his work for some of the details in this treatment.

3 Ibid.

4 The effects of the Liberal Reform in Guatemala and El Salvador have been chronicled in many places. For a general treatment, see Woodward, R.L., 1976, Central America, A Nation Divided, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976),Google Scholar Chapter 6; more specialized are Cambranes, J.C., “Las comunidades indígenas y inicios de la economía de plantación moderna en Guatemala.” Paper presented at LASA meetings, New Orleans, March 1988 Google Scholar; Cambranes, J.C., Coffee and Peasants: The Origins of the Modem Planation Economy in Guatemala, 1853–1897, (Woodstock, VT: CIRMA/Plumstock Mesoa-merican Studies, 1985),Google Scholar and Gudmundson, Lowell, Costa Rica before Coffee, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

5 See David McCreery, LASA paper.

6 Bricker, Victoria, The Indian Christ, the Indian King: The Historical Substraías of Maya Myth and Ritual, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p.6.Google Scholar

7 See Chamberlain, Robert S., The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, (Washington: Carnegie Institution Publication 582, 1948), p.27.Google Scholar

8 See Bricker, , Indian Christ, p.6.Google Scholar

9 Anderson, Thomas P., Matanza: El Salvador's Communist Revolt of 1932, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Davis, Shelton H., “Agrarian Structure and Ethnic Resistance: The Indian in Guatemalan and Salvadoran National Politics.” In Ethnicities and Nations, edited by Guidieri, Remo, Pellizzi, Francesco, Tambiah, Stanley J., (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), pp.78–106.Google Scholar

10 Macdonald, Theodore, “El Salvador’s Indians,” pp. 14–1 Google Scholar6; Maxwell, Judith M., “Nahual-Pipil: Muy Politico,” pp. 17–18,Google Scholar both in Cultural Survival Quarterly, 6:1(1982).

11 See McCreery, LASA paper, 1988.

12 This has not been well researched. My own current work has thus far yielded one paper, “Ethnic Images and Strategies in 1944,” to appear in a volume by Carol Smith.

13 Arias, Arturo, “El movimiento indígena en Guatemala, 1970–1983.” In Movimientos populares en centroamérica, edited by Camacho, Daniel and Menjívar, Rafael. (San José, Costa Rica: EDUCA), Pp.62–119 Google Scholar; Falla, Ricardo, “El movimiento indígena.” In ECA-Estudios Centroamericanos, Año 33: 356–357 (1978),Google Scholar 437–461.

14 Carmack, Robert M., ed., Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988).Google Scholar

15 Manz, Beatriz, Refugees of a Hidden War: The Aftermath of Counter Insurgency in Guatemala, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).Google Scholar

16 MacLeod, Murdo, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).Google Scholar

17 Moore, Alexander, “Lore and Life: Cuna Indian Pageants, Exorcism, and Diplomacy in the Twen-tieth Century,” Ethnohistory 30:2(1983): 93–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Howe, James, “Native Rebellion and US Inter-vention in Central America,” Cultural Survival Quarterly, 10:1(1985), 59–65.Google Scholar

18 Howe, James, The Kuna Gathering: Contemporary Village Politics in Panama, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).Google Scholar

19 Hale, Charles, “Inter-Ethnic Relations and Class Structure in Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast: An Historical Overview.” In Ethnic Groups and the Nation State, edited by CIDCA/Development Study Unit, (University of Stockholm, Department of Anthropology, 1987)Google Scholar; and a recent review by Preston, Jean, “The Mosquito Indians and the Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in Central America, 1630–1821,” University of Glasgow, Latin American Studies, Occasional Paper No. 48, 1987.Google Scholar

20 Diskin, Martin, Bossert, Thomas, Salomón, Nahmad S., and Várese, Stéfano, “Peace and Autonomy on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua: A Report of the LASA Task Force on Human Rights and Academic Freedom,” LASA Forum 16,no.4; and 17,no. 1(1986)Google Scholar; Adams, Richard N., “The Sandinistas and the Indians,” Caribbean Review, 5:l(1981), 22–25,Google Scholar 55–56.

21 See, for example, Americas Watch, Guatemala: A Nation of Prisoners (New York, 1984); Amnesty International, Guatemala: The Human Rights Record (London, 1987); Falla, Ricardo, Voices of the Survivors: The Massacre at Finca San Francisco, Guatemala, (Cambridge, Mass: Cultural Survival,Inc. and Anthropology Resource Center, 1983).Google Scholar

22 Taussig, Michael, “Culture of Terror—Space of Death; Roger Casement’s Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture,” Comparative Studies of Society and History (1984), pp. 467–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Manz, , Refugees of a Hidden War, 1988.Google Scholar

24 The Guatemalan military originally obtained Israeli advice on the organization of the kibbutz and planned to inhibit Indians from producing their own subsistence and milpa crops and to require that theyn produce fresh export vegetables for the United States. These economic projects, however, fell afoul ofn an inability to handle such an extensive and diverse effort and have, apparently, been abandoned.

25 This is written in September 1988.

26 There are many reports on this, but one that contains considerable data (in additional to Diskin et al, Peace and Autonomy, 1986) is Macdonald, Theodore, “The Moral Economy of the Miskito Indians: Local Roots of a Geopolitical Conflict,” in Ethnicities and Nations, edited by Guidieri, Remo, Pellizzi, Fran-cesco, Tambiah, Stanley J., (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), pp. 107–153.Google Scholar

27 Gerhard, Peter, The Southeast Frontier, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p.25 Google Scholar; Newsom, L., “Colonial Indian Population Patterns,” Latin American Research Review, Vol. 20,no.3, p.68,Google Scholar cites other figures from this source that do not conform with these.

28 Nadir set at 1650.

29 Lovell, W.G. and Swezey, William R., “The Population of Southern Guatemala at Spanish Contact,” Canadian Journal of Anthropology, 3:1(1982), 71–84 Google Scholar; cited Lovell, G., “Mayan Survival in Guatemala,” Latin American Research Review, Vol.23, no.2, p.29.Google Scholar

30 Daugherty, H.E., “Man-Induced Ecologie Change in El Salvador,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles), p. 120,Google Scholar cited in Newsom, L., “Colonial Indian Population Patterns,” Latin American Research Review, Vol.20,no.3, p.44.Google Scholar

31 P. Gerhard suggests 1,800 tributaries for 1569 and 800 for 1694; figures estimated at five persons per tributary. The Southeast Frontier, pp. 158-162; cited in Newsom, L., “Colonial Indian Population Patterns,” Latin American Research Review, Vol. 20,no.3, p.68.Google Scholar

32 Nadir set about 1700.

33 Newson, Linda, The Cost of Conquest: Indians Decline in Honduras under Spanish Rule, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), p.330; p.91Google Scholar for the aboriginal population, Western and Central Honduras include Cortés, Santa Barbara, a Copán, Ocotepeque, Lempira, Intibucá, Comayagua, La Paz, Francisco Morazán, and Choluteca; El Paraiso, Olanco, Gracias a Dios, Islas de la Bahía, and half of Colón (528,970), plus the area occupied by the Jicaque, that is, Atlántida, Yoro, and the other half of Colón (16,528).

34 Linda Newsom, Indian Survival in Colonial Nicaragua, Table 31.

35 See note 8.

36 ibid.

37 The Costa Rican figures are independent of those prepared by Newsom and are suggested as being independent of Nicoya.

38 Figures for 1697 (and 1741, see following note) are from Altamirano, Silvia Padilla, “Guatemala y las provincias centroamericanas,” in Perez, Demetrio Ramos, ed., Historia General de España y América, Tomo XI-1: América en el Siglo XVIII, Los Primeros Borbones, (1983), pp. 555–556 Google Scholar. Padilla cites a figure of 1,151 Indians in 1682, but explains the sharp decline by 1697 as the result of a plague that struck in the intervening period.

39 Figure for 1741, see note.

40 Suarez, Omar Jaen, La población del istmo de Panamá, (Panamá: Impresora de la nación, 1978), Cuadro 1, p.22 Google Scholar. The figure 250,000 is taken from Figures 3 and 4 of Jaen Suarez (1978, pp.20-21), a guess about his estimate of the aboriginal population. Indian population for 1790 is 22,000, having reached 20,000 in 1736. Then in 1803 it drops to 10,000, and remains at that figure until 1870. No explanation is given for the drop between 1790 and 1803 ibid,p.22.

41 See note 8.

42 This area includes some portions that were conquered “from the South” and some that were not conquered. Newsom does not suggest what part pertains to each of the two subregions.