Week 10: Ambivalent Conquests

Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucutan, 1517-1570 is a very appropriate title to Inga Celendinnen's book.  The Yucatan was a region unlike any the Spanish had encountered during their exploration and conquest of the New World.  Whereas other areas had many incentives to draw new arrivals from Spain, the Yucatan possessed many attributes which would drive people away.  Celendinnen sums up the situation well: "The subjugation of the Yucatan required not heroism, but a kind of dour tenacity little valued and therefor little practiced in Spanish performance...What made the hardships intolerable and the place and people detestable was that there was neither gold nor silver nor precious stones in the peninsula" (28).  These are the factors which caused Spaniards to feel ambivalent about going to the Yucatan, as there did not seem to be any real reward in store for those who committed themselves to the conquest of the region.  This is shown by the way the original Spanish settlers in the Yucatan, under Monetjo's command, had left the peninsula by 1535, less than twenty years from when they had first entered the Yucatan.  The Spanish would return, but the group would be different than the typical Spanish explorers.  They were older men who were hoping to establish some sort of prosperity in the New World, though they knew the region did not hold potential for great riches.  All the Spaniards who still sought to achieve great wealth had gone elsewhere.  As Celendinnen said, it took a certain kind of mentality to decide to seek prosperity in the Yucatan, and most Spaniards were not willing to test their resolve in the harsh region.