Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century Belize

6. The Millennial Kingdom and the Belize Missions

six The Millennial Kingdom and the Belize Missions That Belize Maya communities operated largely beyond or outside the focus of European colonial powers worked to their advantage in terms of Spanish colonial expansion,1 but to their disadvantage in terms of the activities of buccaneers —pirates and privateers alike—who thrived in places where they had easy access to food, water, supplies, and people, and could elude capture and punishment by Spanish authorities. The pre-Columbian histories of communities in Belize—owing to the nature of coastal and riverine geography, the barrier reef, and the orientation of communities toward coastal exchange and commerce—left the Maya in Belize no choice but to follow a course distinctive from the Maya of the areas we now know as Peten or Yucatan or Guatemala . Centuries-old communication networks, maritime orientation, and local adaptive strategies—which in pre-Columbian times had fitted communities in Belize with the armor to weather collapse—set precedents that well equipped these same communities to be able to function and to communicate effectively over long distances in times of stress or change. What this means, as I sought to demonstrate in chapter 5, is that Belize must be viewed through a lens that attempts to adjust for local conditions and early European responses and reactions to these conditions. In analyzing conversion and the spread and meaning of Christianity in Belize , in addition to framing the environment of contact, of equal importance is the question posed in chapter 4: what does it mean to be Christian? Being Christian meant (and means) different things to different people at different times. In this chapter, I describe the impetus behind the evangelization of Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century as it would have affected and helped to structure the Belize missions. Thus, we move from the local to the global. I draw attention to the friars and their ideals because their “apostolic intensity”2 + + 137 138 Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century Belize was an important force behind evangelization in Belize, where it was not until the relatively late date of 1544, over twenty years after the conquest of Mexico ,3 that Maya communities were forced to comply with the encomienda system and were converted in the process.4 The outcome of events in Belize was contingent on both the kind of Christianity preached by the missionaries and the outlook of the evangelizers themselves. Conditions in Belize, unlike Mexico or even Yucatan,5 are hot and humid, with a long rainy season. Spanish Europeans would have discovered that crops with which they were familiar, such as wheat, could not be grown, food spoiled easily, travel was difficult, and beasts of burden were plagued by biting flies and worm infestations. Clearly, a Mediterranean background was not the best preparation for living and working in the humid tropics. Yet, the documents analyzed by Jones in bringing the Belize colonial experience to light depict the Franciscans as deeply dedicated to drawing Belize’s Maya into the Christian fold.6 Because Belize documentation is relatively sparse, such behavior would seem bizarre, if not unbelievable, without the knowledge of what happened in Mexico, and without knowledge of the European background that led to the apostolic fervor and humanist enterprises that characterized early colonial New Spain. At least three factors combined to foster communities that fiercely valued independence from Spanish authority at the same time that they invested in Christian belief and practice: the zeal of the friars who originally brought Christianity to key communities in Belize, such as Tipu and Lamanai; the particular historical circumstances in which Belize communities, like those in east-coast Yucatan, were left “to their own devices”;7 and, finally, the wet tropical conditions avoided by Spanish settlers. I introduce the idea in this chapter, but expand upon it later, that Christian belief, particularly the Christianity described and transmitted to the Maya by the friars, rather than serving to support Spanish authority, was just as easily used to undermine Spanish authority. Who Were the Mendicants? Under the circumstances just described, both individual and social agendas acted forcefully as instigators of disruption and change. A critical factor—and perhaps the critical factor in the spiritual encounter between Europe and Mesoamerica —was the granting of privileges to the Mendicant orders to Christianize the Aztecs, the Maya, and other Mesoamerican cultural and language groups in the pivotal years of the sixteenth century.8 The Mendicant friars in Mesoamerica comprised a number of orders. After the first...