Maya Society under Colonial Rule

Maya Society under Colonial Rule PDF Author: Nancy Marguerite Farriss
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691235406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
This book traces the history of the Maya Indians of Yucatan, Mexico, during a four-hundred-year period from late preconquest times through the end of Spanish rule in 1821. Nancy Farriss combines the tools of the historian and the anthropologist to reconstruct colonial Maya society and culture as a web of interlocking systems, from ecology and modes of subsistence through the corporate family and the community to the realm of the sacred. She shows how the Maya adapted to Spanish domination, changing in ways that embodied Maya principles as they applied their traditional collective strategies for survival to the new challenges; they fared better under colonial rule than the Aztecs or Incas, who lived in areas more economically attractive to the conquering Spaniards. The author draws on archives and private collections in Seville, Mexico City, and Yucatan; on linguistic evidence from native language documents; and on archaeological and ethnographic data from sources that include her own fieldwork. Her innovative book illuminates not only Maya history and culture but also the nature and functioning of premodern agrarian societies in general and their processes of sociocultural change, especially under colonial rule.

Maya Society under Colonial Rule

Maya Society under Colonial Rule PDF Author: Nancy Marguerite Farriss
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691235406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 598

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book traces the history of the Maya Indians of Yucatan, Mexico, during a four-hundred-year period from late preconquest times through the end of Spanish rule in 1821. Nancy Farriss combines the tools of the historian and the anthropologist to reconstruct colonial Maya society and culture as a web of interlocking systems, from ecology and modes of subsistence through the corporate family and the community to the realm of the sacred. She shows how the Maya adapted to Spanish domination, changing in ways that embodied Maya principles as they applied their traditional collective strategies for survival to the new challenges; they fared better under colonial rule than the Aztecs or Incas, who lived in areas more economically attractive to the conquering Spaniards. The author draws on archives and private collections in Seville, Mexico City, and Yucatan; on linguistic evidence from native language documents; and on archaeological and ethnographic data from sources that include her own fieldwork. Her innovative book illuminates not only Maya history and culture but also the nature and functioning of premodern agrarian societies in general and their processes of sociocultural change, especially under colonial rule.

Maya Lords and Lordship

Maya Lords and Lordship PDF Author: Sergio Quezada
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 080614579X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
When the Spanish arrived in Yucatán in 1526, they found an established political system based on lordship, a system the Spanish initially integrated into their colonial rule, but ultimately dismantled. In Maya Lords and Lordship, Sergio Quezada builds on the work of earlier scholars and reexamines Yucatec Maya political and social power, arguing that it operated not over territory, as previous scholars assumed, but rather through interpersonal relationships. The changes to Maya culture imposed by Franciscan friars and Spanish lords worked to unravel the networks of personal ties that had empowered the highest Maya lords, and political power devolved to second-tier Maya lords. By 1600 Spanish rule had fragmented what was left of the interpersonal networks, draining power from the indigenous political structure. Building on Quezada’s seminal 1993 study, Maya Lords and Lordship offers a fundamentally new vision of Maya political power, challenging the established views of anthropologists and ethnohistorians. Grounded in archival sources as well as historical and ethnographic literature, Quezada’s insights and conclusions will influence studies of the Postclassic and sixteenth-century Maya periods.

From Moon Goddesses to Virgins

From Moon Goddesses to Virgins PDF Author: Peter Herman Sigal
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 9780292798984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
For the preconquest Maya, sexuality was a part of ritual discourse and performance, and all sex acts were understood in terms of their power to create, maintain, and destroy society. As postconquest Maya adapted to life under colonial rule, they neither fully abandoned these views nor completely adopted the formulation of sexuality prescribed by Spanish Catholicism. Instead, they evolved hybridized notions of sexual desire, represented in the figure of the Virgin Mary as a sexual goddess, whose sex acts embodied both creative and destructive components. This highly innovative book decodes the process through which this colonization of Yucatan Maya sexual desire occurred. Pete Sigal frames the discussion around a series of texts, including the Books of Chilam Balam and the Ritual of the Bacabs, that were written by seventeenth and eighteenth century Maya nobles to elucidate the history, religion, and philosophy of the Yucatecan Maya communities. Drawing on the insights of philology, discourse analysis, and deconstruction, he analyzes the sexual fantasies, fears, and desires that are presented, often unintentionally, in the "margins" of these texts and shows how they illuminate issues of colonialism, power, ritual, and gender.

The Maya World

The Maya World PDF Author: Matthew Restall
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804765006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
This pathbreaking work is a social and cultural history of the Maya peoples of the province of Yucatan in colonial Mexico, spanning the period from shortly after the Spanish conquest of the region to its incorporation as part of an independent Mexico. Instead of depending on the Spanish sources and perspectives that have formed the basis of previous scholarship on colonial Yucatan, the author aims to give a voice to the Maya themselves, basing his analysis entirely on his translations of hundreds of Yucatec Maya notarial documents—from libraries and archives in Mexico, Spain, and the United States—most of which have never before received scholarly attention. These documents allow the author to reconstruct the social and cultural world of the Maya municipality, or cah, the self-governing community where most Mayas lived and which was the focus of Maya social and political identity. The first two parts of the book examine the ways in which Mayas were organized and differentiated from each other within the community, and the discussion covers such topics as individual and group identities, sociopolitical organization, political factionalism, career patterns, class structures, household and family patterns, inheritance, gender roles, sexuality, and religion. The third part explores the material environment of the cah, emphasizing the role played by the use and exchange of land, while the fourth part describes in detail the nature and significance of the source documentation, its genres and its language. Throughout the book, the author pays attention to the comparative contexts of changes over time and the similarities or differences between Maya patterns and those of other colonial-era Mesoamericans, notably the Nahuas of central Mexico.

Mexico: Volume 2, The Colonial Era

Mexico: Volume 2, The Colonial Era PDF Author: Alan Knight
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521891967
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
This 2002 book, the second in a three-volume history of Mexico, covers the period 1521 to 1821.

Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History

Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History PDF Author: Michael Adas
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781566398329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Introduces readers to the cross-cultural study of ancient and classical civilizations. The book is divided into two sections, the first examining the ongoing interaction between ancient agrarian and nomadic societies and the second focusing on regional patterns in the dissemination of ideas.

Soldiers of the Virgin

Soldiers of the Virgin PDF Author: Kevin Gosner
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816512930
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
In the early summer of 1712, a young Maya woman from the village of Cancuc in southern Mexico encountered an apparition of the Virgin Mary while walking in the forest. The miracle soon attracted Indian pilgrims from pueblos throughout the highlands of Chiapas. When alarmed Spanish authorities stepped in to put a stop to the burgeoning cult, they ignited a full-scale rebellion. Declaring "Now there is no God or King," rebel leaders raised an army of some five thousand "soldiers of the Virgin" to defend their new faith and cast off colonial rule.Using the trial records of Mayas imprisoned after the rebellion, as well as the letters of Dominican priests, the local bishop, and Spaniards who led the army of pacification, Kevin Gosner reconstructs the history of the Tzeltal Revolt and examines its causes. He characterizes the rebellion as a defense of the Maya moral economy, and shows how administrative reforms and new economic demands imposed by colonial authorities at the end of the seventeenth century challenged Maya norms about the ritual obligations of community leaders, the need for reciprocity in political affairs, and the supernatural origins of power.The first book-length study of the Tzeltal Revolt, Soldiers of the Virgin goes beyond the conventions of the regional monograph to offer an expansive view of Maya social and cultural history. With an eye to the contributions of archaeologists and ethnographers, Gosner explores many issues that are central to Maya studies, including the origins of the civil-religious hierarchy, the role of shamanism in political culture, the social dynamics of peasant corporate communities, and the fate of the native nobility after the Spanish conquest.

Living with the Ancestors

Living with the Ancestors PDF Author: Patricia Ann McAnany
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Ancestor veneration in the Maya lowlands traditionally has been associated with divine kingship and royal genealogies. But in this revisionist study, Patricia McAnany challenges this view and presents a strong case for the Formative Period roots of ancestor veneration, suggesting that it is an ancient agrarian practice linked to the emergence or restrictive patterns of land tenure and unequal access to resources. Just as the decipherment of hieroglyphs has given voice to the political strategies of Classic Maya elites, so Living with the Ancestors gives voice to the agrarian strategies and political struggles of non-elite Maya. A first approach to a complete history of the Maya, it will be important reading for everyone interested in Mesoamerican culture.

Maya Revolt and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century

Maya Revolt and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century PDF Author: Robert W. Patch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317464982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Records of revolts, rebellions, and revolutions provide insight into the nature of the Maya in the colonial period. This book presents five case studies - four in Guatemala and one in Yucatan, Mexico - of eighteenth-century Maya acts of violent resistance to colonialism, and, in the process, reveals a great deal about indigenous culture, social structure, politics, economics, lineage, and gender. The author carefully analyzes the causes of, participation in, and resolution of each uprising, explaining the different political, economic, and cultural catalysts, and the scope and outcome of each conflict. Through such detailed narratives, the reader not only learns about the reality of colonialism but also encounters the flesh-and-blood, real-life individuals and groups who resisted, counteracted, circumvented, and defied the Spaniards. These stories reveal the drama, tragedy, and even comedy of the history of ordinary people and everyday life at the time.

The Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh PDF Author: Lewis Spence
Publisher: New York : AMS Press
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description