Ambivalence and Conquest: Recent Studies of Maya Resistance, Revolt, and Revolution in the Colonial Period

Maya Revolt and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century. By Robert W. Patch. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. xx + 248 pp., introduction, maps, index. $24.95 paper.)

Caminos en la selva. Migración, comercio y resistencia. Mayas yucatecos e itzaes, siglos xvii–xix. By Laura Caso Barrera. (Mexico: Colegio de México and Fondo de Cultura Econó mica, 2002. 423 pp., preface, maps, table, appendices, bibliography. $261 MX paper.)

La conquista inconclusa de Yucatán: Los mayas de la montaña, 1560–1680. By Pedro Bracamonte y Sosa. (Mexico: CIESAS, Universidad de Quintana Roo, Miguel Angel Porrua Grupo Editorial, 2001. preface, introduction, tables, maps, bibliography. $280 MX paper.)

With several goals in mind, Robert Patch presents five case studies of disorder in colonial Maya communities. The cases include a 1735 riot of Kekchi in Cobán, provoked by tax collection and the jailing of village notables; a brief riot of Cakchiquel in 1759 Tecpan, sparked by a Spanish attempt to install a village secretary unacceptable to Mayas; altercations and riot in 1760 Utatlán as Mayas resist a labor draft and new tax; the 1761 revolt at Cisteil, Yucatan; and 1768 disturbances in which Ixil Maya resisted undue interference in local elections. From judicial records of the ensuing trials, Patch constructs vivid and highly detailed accounts of each incident.

Patch asks at the outset: Was colonialism important, how did it work, and what difference did it make (xvi)? These case studies do illuminate how Mayas at once acquiesced to the fundamentals of colonialism while resisting violations of the accepted limits of exploitation and interference. When they rioted or revolted, Patch observes, it was usually to restore the status quo and defend a moral economy and moral polity. Spaniards usually tempered their responses to disturbances, likewise seeking to restore an upset order, reestablishing respect for themselves and obedience to their authority without destroying the very foundation of their tribute-based prosperity (i.e., the Indian communities of their realm). There were exceptions to the moderation of both sides. Sometimes, as at Cisteil, Maya grievances cascaded into more revolutionary action against the colonial regime and, in response, threatened Spaniards repressed such outbreaks with devastating violence and cruelty.

Such analytical results are hardly novel, of course, but Patch has other purposes in mind. He wants to study colonialism from the bottom up—to see history as a process involving real people—and he largely achieves that end by narrating so well the stories he has to tell.

The most substantial uprising discussed by Patch was that which took place in Cisteil in November 1761. Patch relies principally on trial records that had otherwise only been used by Nancy Farris in her much briefer outline of those events.¹ Patch's discussion of this rare and important instance of a revolutionary upheaval among colonial-era Mayas is much welcomed. Unfortunately, he declined to critically engage a long history of prior writing concerning those events. Nineteenth-century Yucatecan chroniclers claimed that after having slaughtered hundreds of hapless Maya at Cisteil, authorities disfigured and exaggerated a drunken festival disorder to make it seem as if a grave revolutionary menace had been thwarted. Using a different set of sources than Patch, Victoria Bricker largely concurred in doubting that such an uprising had occurred.² Using the same sources as Patch, Nancy Farris concluded that, "the evidence needed to sort out fact from hysterical conjecture is missing."³ Patch goes further than any previous modern scholar in asserting that Jacinto Uc de los Santos, "Canek," was a wandering shaman who fancied himself a future king of the Maya, that he elicited support from Maya officials in several communities, that he established himself in Cisteil with the intention of initiating an uprising of all Maya on the peninsula, and that once events got started, he took steps to alert and recruit many other communities. The events in Cisteil were, in Patch's view...