The Spanish Conquest and Colonial Cities of the Yucatan

Spanish John the Evangelist

The Spanish burning 700 Mayan books

The Spanish Conquest of the Yucatan began in 1517 and took decades, for the Maya were a proud, resistant people, long accustomed to pain and self-sacrifice, and the jungles are tangles so thick that certain villages remained undisturbed for centuries, deep in their protection. It was a cruel conquest, made worse by the fact that the Spanish were fresh from fighting the fierce Islamic peoples in their own land. It was a complicated conquest since the mercenaries and soldiers eventually set loose on the Yucatan Peninsula were at odds with the Franciscan and Jesuit monks and friars, who fanned out to save Mayan souls, and who were at fierce odds with the Spanish settlers, in competition for Mayan slavery and products. Even among the clergy there were competitions and disagreements and at least one powerful priest was sent back to Spain to be tried for his conduct against the Indians: Friar Diego de Landa. The Spanish Conquest plays a prominent role in the Mayan story in the museums of Merida and Dzibilchaltun. In fact, many of the villages welcome you to the land of three cultures: Mayan, Spanish and modern. The conquest has many enduring stories, too numerous to recount here, but one is of Gonzalo Guerrero, a mariner who survived a shipwreck on the coast of Yucatan along with a priest. They were captured by the Maya, who kept them in cages. Eight years passed till Hernan Cortes, traveling through Yucatan, rescued the priest but Guerroro, who had married the daughter of the chief of Chetumal and had a family, refused to go with Cortes. Instead he trained the Maya in battle tactics and fought beside them against the Spanish, dying in battle.

Spanish churches were also fortresses

The visible remnants of the Spanish conquest are the colonial towns, built around village plazas before tall churches the Spanish had built (with the forced labor of the Mayans, on top of the Mayan temples they had likewise destroyed) in the 16th and 17th c. They are beautiful and lively in their centers, and celebrate the mixed Mestizan culture that resulted from the Spanish arrival. There are even small and poor villages with distinguished hulks of churches and cool cloisters, that retain significant history.

Vallodolid's Plaza

Our drive across the Yucatan Peninsula took us first to Vallodolid, whose inauspicious outskirts are low and crumbling cement buildings, rows of auto shops, hardware stores and bare dwellings. But Vallodolid's warm center radiates outward with low stucco buildings painted in bright pastels trimmed in white Spanish decor, noisy at night with brightly lit vendor carts. Children were everywhere, mostly with smartphones. Our hotel, away from the din and fumes, was a colonial oasis of bright tiles, a courtyard around a small pool, spacious rooms in a fine Spanish style. For $18 more, the famous Hotel Marquesas, filled with music and chatter and officiousness, is a somewhat kitsch but grand hotel with strange plaster statues from the Spanish world, a series of courtyards, and plenty of tourists.

Modern Folk Art at Vallodolid

Valladolid's center square has some of the most beautiful artisanal products we saw in all of Yucatan (especially the embroidery at Centro Artesanal Zaci), as well as numerous folk museums, a city hall with murals, and very little coffee except for the tourist hotels. Its tall stone church was rebuilt after the murder of colonial rulers by the revolting Maya in 1705. Down a sweet little street remade for deep-pocketed toursts, Calzada de los Frailes, is a chocolate factory and the Coqui Coqui perfume shop and hotel ($250 a night), that has been covered in a New York Times article, "Vallodolid, a City of Yucatan Cool", annointing it, somewhat bewilderingly, as the next cool thing. At the end is the San Bernadino of Siena monastery.

San Bernadino Monastery

"Outside the village, a little further than musket's shot away, there is a monastery populated by Franciscan monks who appear to be minors in age, very strong, with a vaulted church built of stonework and masonry, having a cloister of four rooms and passageways above, where there are many cells..." wrote the founders of Vallodolid, April 8, 1579. Construction began on the monastery in 1552 and ended in 1560, according to the inscription in the portico of the main entrance.

Cloister

Part fortress, part penitential quarters, it was built over the cenote, or rainwater filled sinkhole in the limestone. Artifacts have been found there, muskets and bayonets, from armed uprisings, especially the "Caste Wars" which came to this monastery.

Inside the Monastery

The monastery cloister is an orange grove is filled with palms and banana trees, next to the rough massive water wheel. Above are the monks' cells, brick red painted vaulted hallways lined with little wooden doors. Much has been looted, destroyed, profaned. Wooden crosses painted black have primitive symbols painted in a simplicitic iconography: nails, torture instruments, dice, the cock on a castle tower.

At noon the sound of gunshot or fireworks richocheted off the low, close walls. Wearily under the midday sun we wound back to see the Zaci cenote, worth the hot walk through the echoes of gunshot. Cool, messily natural, profound, beneath stalactites--if we had known how lovely, we would have swum among the little black fish.

Cenote Zaci

Then we hit the hot road, past men on bicycles with rifles over their shoulers, bicycle rickshaws under the oppressive sun, past congregations of vultures standing politely, perhaps waiting for something to die, through villages of curious people and dogs napping in the road.

Izamal's Monastery

Christ is always modestly covered

The potholed road through thickets started to improve immeasurably at Izamal, a beautifully gold painted village around another massive convent, which we would visit a few days later. This colonial town of strong character had been the headquarters for the Friar Diego de Landa, a bitter fanatic Franciscan who eventually burned 700 books of the Mayans (and a number of Mayans) but, while waiting in Spain to be tried for his overweaning role, wrote one of the most important sources we have on Mayan culture, An Account of the Things of Yucatan. Even his statue in the square acknowledges that he was a fanatical persecutor of Maya, who later promulgated the culture he had figured so largely in destroying.

Friar de Landa

Seventh Day Adventist Church, Izamal

Folk Art at Izamal

Izamal is a charming golden colonial ensemble that surrounds a huge and popular monastery built by de Landa, over the foundations of what had been an immensely important site of pilgrimage for the Maya. We climbed a remaining Mayan pyramid, towering over the low Yucatan forest. Village sounds were vivid up there, far above the Franciscan convent: roosters, dogs barking, scooters, conversations, among the slender umbrellas of trees below. Street corners are named for animals (rooster, elephant, etc) and bear little legends in Spanish of thwarted love and talking crosses. The golden stucco walls have doorways of beautiful wood, but a peek inside revealed strange mixtures of empty concrete dwellings and homes with only a hammock strung in the dark, or, further from the center, rubble. Despite the charming ensemble, one layer beneath is grinding poverty. A doctor's office or a restaurant door leads only into overgrown jungle and rubble. But on the square is the Centro Cultural y Artesanal, a little museum of exquisite folk art, advertising a closed down spa, cafe and a pyramid under construction in an elegant courtyard, with mention of an exhibit at the Parisian museum Quai Branly of 19th c photos of the Yucatan monuments in the jungle.

Merida's Plaza

We had lunch at a place on the plaza, served by a kindly dark haired man in a Guayabera (the hand sewn formal dress shirt of Mexico), his hair slicked down. I had papazules: outstanding tomato sauce over another sauce of pumpkin and manioc, covering starchy tortillas wrapped around hard boiled eggs.

The convent lacked the dignity of San Bernadino but was bustling with cleaning women, caretakers and laughing monks, who were making fun of the tourists.

Montejo's Palace, stark symbols of the Conquest

Merida, long the capital that answered directly to Spain, has an especially distinguished center. The cathedral is a tall stone fortress with astonishing interior detail, a Renaissance dome with extraordinary hatchwork, massive and ambitious for 1562. As was customary, the Mayan pyramid (of great significance) has been dismantled for these buildings. The conquistador of the Yucatan, Francisco de Montejo, lived in Merida's center. His mansion tells the story of ease and elegance for the rulers of fortunes made by Sisal (a hardy plant that was wound into rope, by the Mayans' bleeding hands); the Governor's palace (see blog) tells the bitter drama of the Mayans themselves, from a man sprouting from a corn stalk, to being conquered by instruments of torture. Most graphically the leader of a rebellion being quartered with red hot tongs. To the various heroes for their cause, to their eternal hard work, sold into slavery, and all in giant murals blazed with umber and black and brick red.

Rebel leader being quartered by the Spanish

The plazas of Merida, which were being set up for the Carnaval, have winding love seats like Valladolid where we sat when a Yucatecan man came to chat with Jacques for quite some time about the Europeans who come to really see Merida while gringoes just get off their ship for two hours. He directed us to the Indian market with hard bargaining Mayan sellers of jewelry and embroidery, pottery, huge clay penises, kama sutra figures, Mayan statues, beautiful and not cheap.

Campeche

The most beautiful colonial city is Campeche, declared a UNESCO historical site. It has an immaculate city center, brightly painted stucco with perfectly molded white trim, radiating from a calm and green square with wrought iron benches and a kiosk that sold a lemonade/spinach juice. The church was the oldest of the peninsula, tall stone, remade over the centuries, but inside where gorditos and their gorditas sat before the tranquil altar of saints and the Virgin is a deep calm.

Chatting with a pirate in Campeche

Campeche had been a prosperous trading port, then the prey of many English pirates. In 1868 it finally acquired stolid fortresses and battlements, thick walls with impressive portals. Now its center's cool internal courtyards of marble and arches and wrought iron and potted palms are havens and artesanal centers, hotels and reconstructions of Mayan environments.

The often portrayed battle between the Snake and the Eagle is said to be the battle between evil and good.  In modern Mexico, evil is corruption, drugs, murders, and such plagues of the Mexicans.  But the Serpent was one of the most sacred creatures of the ancient Mayans.  And the Eagle, of course, was the Spanish.