Spanish conquest of Guatemala

The Spanish and native tactics and technology differed greatly. The indigenous peoples of Guatemala lacked key elements of Old World technology such as a functional wheel, horses, iron, steel, and gunpowder. The Maya preferred raiding and ambush to large-scale warfare, using spears, arrows and wooden swords with inset obsidian blades.

About Spanish conquest of Guatemala in brief

The Spanish conquest of Guatemala was a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Spanish colonisers gradually incorporated the territory that became the modern country of Guatemala into the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. Before the conquest, this territory contained a number of competing Mesoamerican kingdoms, the majority of which were Maya. The Spanish and native tactics and technology differed greatly. The indigenous peoples of Guatemala lacked key elements of Old World technology such as a functional wheel, horses, iron, steel, and gunpowder. The Maya preferred raiding and ambush to large-scale warfare, using spears, arrows and wooden swords with inset obsidian blades. The Itza Maya and other lowland groups in the Petén Basin were first contacted by Hernán Cortés in 1525, but remained independent and hostile to the encroaching Spanish until 1697, when a concerted Spanish assault led by Martín de Ursúa y Arizmendi finally defeated the last independent Maya kingdom. The first contact between the Maya and European explorers came in the early 16th century when a Spanish ship sailing from Panama to Santo Domingo was wrecked on the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in 1511. The Kaqchikel Maya initially allied themselves with the Spanish, but soon rebelled against excessive demands for tribute and did not finally surrender until 1530. The Tlaxan allies of the Spanish who accompanied them in their invasion of Guatemala wrote their own accounts of the conquest; these included a letter protesting their treatment once the campaign was over.

Other accounts were in the form of letters to the Spanish king protesting the poor treatment of the colonial magistrates before the campaign. The Brevís de la Destrucción de la Indusia was first published in 1552 in Seville. The conquistador Pedro de Alvarado’s brother Jorge wrote another account to the king of Spain that explained it was his own campaign of 1527–1529 that established the Spanish colony. Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote a lengthy account of the Conquest of Mexico and neighbouring regions, the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España ; his account of Guatemala generally agrees with that of the Alvarados. Hernan Cortés described his expedition in the Cartas de Relación, in which he details his crossing of what is now Guatemala’s Petén Department. The Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote a highly critical account of some incidents in Guatemala and included accounts of some incident in some of some of the incidents in the conquest of some areas. The accounts were published in a register of magistrates to protest and register a claim for recompense for the colonial claim for the territory. In 1568, some 40 years after the campaigns it describes, the Spanish wrote a letter to the King of Spain explaining the reasons for the conquest. The letters were despatched to Tenochtitlan, addressed to Cortés but with a royal audience in mind; two of these letters are now lost.

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Maya civilization Maya stelae Operation PBHistory Spanish conquest of Petén