Maya conquistador

by Matthew Restall

Our familiar images of Mexico's conquest are powerful and enduring - bold and blood-thirsty Spanish conquistadors, nobly savage Aztecs lamenting their broken spears, the triumph and tragedy of Cortes and Moctezuma. But one story has not been told - and it is one that reshapes our entire vision of the conquest. It is the Maya story of the Spanish creation of a colony in the ancient Maya homeland of Yucatan. Maya Conquistador tells this tale through a collection of unique first-hand accounts - most of them previously untranslated from the original Maya texts - written from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. In it are surprising twists: The conquistadors were not only Spaniards, but also Mayas, reconstituting their own sophisticated governance and society; and the conquest was not one catastrophic event, but the story of the survival of a vital and complex civilization evolving over centuries of contact with the Spanish and other peoples. Out of this new chapter in history, the M