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ELEVEN. Postcolonial Conquest of the Southern Maya Lowlands, Cross-Cultural Interaction, and Lacandon Maya Culture Change
- University of New Mexico Press
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E L E V E N Postcolonial Conquest of the Southern Maya Lowlands, Cross-Cultural Interaction, and Lacandon Maya Culture Change Joel W. Palka 183 Abstract: During the nineteenth century, the conquest of the lowland rainforests and some of the last autonomous Maya of Chiapas, Mexico, and Petén, Guatemala, gained momentum. Following the establishment of the postcolonial governments from the mid- to late 1800s, a large number of settlers, explorers, missionaries, and traders migrated to the lowlands and contacted the remote Lacandon Maya. The ensuing cross-cultural interaction transformed Lacandon culture in many ways and helped shape their lifeways up until the present. Hence, the Lacandon are not holdovers from the past who were only recently affected by outside contact as sometimes believed. In this chapter, new archaeological and historical information on Lacandon culture change during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is presented. The effects of cross-cultural interaction and indigenous responses to contact, including Lacandon demographic shifts, flight into the wilderness, and focus on trade with outsiders, are stressed. Besides the external influences of foreign colonizers, which are commonly discussed in the literature, changes in Lacandon culture through a local indigenous interaction sphere, mainly from egalitarian trade and social discourse with other Maya, are also presented. Resumen: En el siglo diecinueve se dió la reconquista de las selvas y de los últimos mayas libres de las tierras bajas de Chiapas, México, y Petén, Guatemala. Durante el desarrollo de los gobiernos postcoloniales a mediados de los años 1800s, una gran cantidad de exploradores, agricultores, misioneros, y comerciantes migraron a las tierras bajas donde entraron en contacto con los mayas lacandones. Este contacto inter-cultural cambió mucho la cultura lacandona y la presencia de influencias externas continua afectando esta sociedad hasta hoy. Como resultado, los lacandones no son los decendientes directos de los mayas antiguos que solo fueron recientemente afectados por el contacto intercultural como se postula en la literatura. Este capítulo provee nueva información arqueológica y datos históricos sobre los cambios culturales de los lacandones, y en especial discute los efectos del contacto inter-cultural y las reacciones de los indígenas en sus patrones de asentamiento, sus patrones de migración en la selva y sus patrones de intercambio con otros indígenas mayas y con extranjeros. 184 / JOEL W. PALKA Foreign conquest, the introduction of Christianity, colonization of indigenous territory, and the longterm socioeconomic interaction between native peoples and European colonists occurred comparatively late in the lowland rainforests of Chiapas, Mexico, and Petén, Guatemala. Here the Ch’olan- and Yucatec- (Yukatek) speaking peoples of the southern Maya Lowlands were not subjugated until the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (De Vos 1980; Jones 1998; see Rice and Rice this volume)—nearly 175 years after other Mesoamerican indigenous groups were under Spanish colonial rule. Subsequently, the Spanish colonizers of the southern Maya Lowlands maintained small settlements in only a few towns in lowland Chiapas, Petén, and Belize during the Colonial period, and they only periodically contacted indigenous peoples in the wilderness (Feldman 2000; Jones 1998:356–397; Scholes and Roys 1968; Wasserstrom 1983). In this region, small, scattered populations of unconquered and apostate Mayas lived in the vast remote jungles, and their interaction with the Spanish was relatively intermittent during the Colonial period. Nonetheless, the free native groups in this area were affected by foreign occupation. Importantly, contact between the indigenous groups in the southern Maya area never abated, and the exchange of goods and information flowed through native interaction spheres or egalitarian“social fields.” The remote Maya had significant indigenous autonomy, and there was little actual foreign intervention in the southern lowland wilderness until the nineteenth century (see Boremanse 1998:6–7; De Vos 1988; McGee 2002:11–19; Palka 1998). Also, certain aspects of what appear to be precontact Lowland Maya culture, including elements of religion (bloodletting), social organization (polygyny), and technology (lithics), continued in parts of this region until the Maya experienced the effects of renewed conquest about 150 years ago. The contemporary Yucatec-speaking Lacandon (Lakandon) are descendants of the interacting free Maya populations of the lowland wilderness. These people should not be confused with the Ch’ol Lacandon of this same region who were killed or assimilated by the Spanish and other Mayas in the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries (De Vos 1980). Moreover, the ethnographic Lacandon Maya are often characterized as culturally connected to the...