Still, the balance of power in central Mexico had clearly shifted dramatically in 1521. Nor were they likely to have made a connection between the arrival of the foreigners in Mexico and the epidemics of disease that swept through southern Guatemala in 15. And the Maya rulers may have sensed opportunity, rather than felt alarm, when in 1521 they learned of the destruction of Tenochtitlan by these new invaders. The K’iche’ and Kaqchikel lords were probably not nervous in 1519, when Moctezuma sent word of well-armed foreigners entering the Mexica Empire. Meanwhile, there were local distractions, especially as the K’iche’s and Kaqchikels continued periodically to wage war against each other.īut, had Maya rulers feared that one day the long-distance trade route would bring not merchants but tens of thousands of Mexica and other Nahua warriors, they could hardly have imagined the circumstances that would in fact bring such warriors into their lands in 1524. The frontier of Mexica control remained some distance from the Guatemalan highlands, buffered by several small city-states in between (see Map 1).įurthermore, a busy trade route running from Tenochtitlan into the Guatemalan capital cities surely benefited the Maya elite and kept information flowing about the great empire to the west. This expansion was probably not of great concern to the Kaqchikel rulers, or to their neighbors, the K’iche’ Mayas. A decade passed, during which time the Mexica Empire continued its gradual expansion east toward the Maya kingdoms. They were clearly designed to impress upon the Mayas the awesome power and reach of the Mexica emperor, perhaps as a prelude to an eventual incorporation into the empire-but the 1509 visitors were not an invasion force. And this we truly saw, when indeed the Yakis of Culhuacan arrived there were many Yakis who arrived, long ago, my sons, while our grandfathers were ruling.”Īll these Aztec (or, more properly, Mexica) visitors comprised a diplomatic and trading embassy. As the Kaqchikels observed in their own chronicle of their kingdom’s history, “On 1 Toh the Yakis arrived, the ambassadors of the lord Moteksumatzin, the lord of the Mexicas. In the autumn of 1509, the two rulers of the small Kaqchikel Maya kingdom that lay among the mountains of southern Guatemala “received the Yakis of Culhuacan, as guests.” Culhuacan is in the Valley of Mexico these guests, whom we would call Aztecs, had come from their vast imperial capital of Tenochtitlan. Together, these sources reveal a fascinating multiplicity of perspectives and show how the conquest wars of the 1520s were a profoundly brutal moment in the history of the Americas. The views of the invaded are represented by Kaqchikel and Tz’utujil accounts. Nahua perspectives are presented in the form of pictorial evidence, along with written testimony by Tlaxcalan and Aztec veterans who fought as invading allies of the Spaniards their claim to have done most of the fighting emerges as a powerful argument. Designed to be an accessible introduction to the topic as well as a significant contribution to conquest scholarship, the volume presents for the first time English translations of firsthand accounts by Spaniards, Nahuas, and Mayas.Īlvarado’s letters to Cortés, published here in English for the first time in almost a century, are supplemented with accounts by one of his cousins, by his brother Jorge, and by Bernal Díaz and Bartolomé de Las Casas. This volume shows that the real story of the Spanish invasion was very different. After invading highland Guatemala in 1524, Spaniards claimed to have smashed the Kaqchikel and K’iche’ Maya kingdoms and to have forged a new colony-with their leader, Pedro de Alvarado, as Guatemala’s conquistador.
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