Friar Diego de Landa in his book Yucatan Before and After The Conquest details how Spanish conquistadors went about eradicating the Mayan's way of life- a fear campaign to either kill or convert the Mayans to the Catholic faith and strip them off their natural resources. Ironically enough, Diego de Landa's passing comments about Mayan culture have helped immortalize the Mayan identity and way of life in the present day. These descriptions would describe such matters as gender relations, law, and punishment:
"The tribes lived in such peace that they had no conflicts and used neither arms nor bows, even for the hunt...They had laws against delinquents...such as against an adulterer... One who ravished a maiden was stoned to death..."
De Landa also detailed the way in which he punished the Mayans, forever recording his violent and disastrous acts in the pages of history: "cutting off their noses, hands, arms and legs, and the breasts of their women...thrusting the children with spears"
Mayan Culture Survival
As scholar Redfield notes however, there were many Mayan rituals that survived the Spanish conquest, "The number thirteen which plays an important part in the present-day Maya rituals, is almost surely derived from indigenous culture, just as three and seven, which go together in the Catholic prayer context, are probably European. But what of nine, which now is a magical and sacred number in a wide variety of ritual contexts? We can only point out that the ancient Maya had nine gods of the underworld as they had thirteen sky-gods, and also that the Catholic novena was introduced by the missionaries and is still generally practiced"
Mayan rituals that survived were those that were similar to Spanish and Catholic rituals - a culture as superstitious, if not more superstitious, than the Mayan culture itself.
Modern Day Relevance
Friar Diego de Landa's quest to convert the Mayan people to the Catholic faith has a lesson to teach the modern world- the weakest humans in society will always have to assimilate according to the strongest's wishes. Even though in today's world the fear is not religious or ideological persecution, the fear of culture and identity loss due to the popularity of Western culture and the dominance of the English language is still very much alive. Even though minority culture's are not being eradicated in the manner that de Landa described by Western culture, it is still an unfortunate reality that economically and technologically superior cultures will dominate weaker ones.
Conclusion
In Diego de Landa's novel Yucatan Before and After The Conquest the Catholic friar specifically details the Mayan culture he is trying to eradicate in the name of his God; instead, he immortalizes the very thing he wishes to destroy through his description. The power of religion to dominate and destroy a culture is one of the major themes- this text proves the atrocities that are committed under the pretense of making the world a better place.
Yucatan before and after the conquest
Diejo de Landa
Courier Dover Publications, 1978
ISBN: 0486236226, 9780486236223
