Colonial Maya of the Yucatan

Another short assignment for a class...

Nancy Farriss’s Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival endeavors to elucidate the process of colonization in the Yucatan from the perspective of the Maya themselves. Using traditional historical sources in addition to fieldwork, archaeological resources, and ethnographic writings, the author is able to formulate certain arguments on Maya social organization before conquest and clarify patterns of continuity and change in the social order during colonialism. The bulk of Farriss’s argument revolves around the notions of reciprocity and social bonds within fragmented polities that were rooted in extended family kinship and elites who presided over military and religious rituals as a source of legitimacy. Because of the lack of exportable resources and unattractive climate, Spanish colonial intrusion into the Yucatan was less devastating, incomplete, and the Spanish relied on the batabs and other Maya elites to enforce tribute and labor drafts to the small non-Indian population, gradually incorporating aspects of Maya preconquest social bonds into the colonial state and the Mayanized Christianity.

This aforementioned process left the Maya, though still unequal and exploited in colonial Yucatan, in a better position to preserve or retain past social and religious patterns with some degree of autonomy through the republicas de indios or the ever-present option of flight beyond the colonial frontier. According to Farriss, until the Bourbon reforms and liberal notions in the late 1700s and 19th century led to the growth of haciendas and changes in colonial governance that undermined adaptive strategies of Maya elites, Maya groups were able to retain access to land, continue certain forms of social bonds that made local Indian elites important in their communities, and avoid some of the harsher fates of Amerindian populations in other regions of Spanish America by remaining numerically superior. In short, the Maya were able to remain mobile corporate groups without being closed to colonial society. 

One particular problem in Farriss’s analysis is the problematic use of the ethnographic present to make assertions about the preconquest or colonial present. For example, Farriss cites a conversation with a 20th century Maya farmer who chooses not to send his child to school because his son will remain an “Indian.” This is supposed to match the Maya patterns of the colonial era of rarely escaping the stigmata of caste, an argument buttressed by the Spanish policy of not incorporating Maya nobility into colonial elite. However, if Farriss is also correct about the number of Maya who became mestizos and pardos without necessarily possessing racial mixture, does it not illustrate Maya escaping the caste category of Indian? Furthermore, as criados and naborías, “Indians” could escape some forms of caste tribute by entering a legal limbo category that also entailed socializing with mestizos, pardos, and some Spanish, even if they continued milpa agriculture on their own land or as tenants on haciendas. 

Moreover, the example of the Lacandon as an “unconquered” Maya group who exemplify certain Maya preconquest social norms in a smaller scale through patrilineal kinship are another potentially problematic use of the ethnographic present. If the Lacandon are descendants of Mayas who fled to unpacified frontiers and the bush to escape Spanish colonial rule, and, as Farriss asserts, their forms of social bonds have changed due to adaptation and flight, how reliable are they as possible models of past Maya conventions? Likewise, the Chilam Balam documents, cited as insightful ways into how the conquest-era Maya elite perceived themselves in their new role in society through a Christianized Maya cosmology and mythology, may not be useful for understanding preconquest social patterns, especially if the Maya elite’s origin during postconquest period were within the Mexican auxiliary forces during the conquest or former displaced elites or lineages. The larger question of broader Mesoamerican social patterns also raises questions as to what constitutes “Maya” in a fragmented and diverse region like the Yucatan.