Sunday, November 3, 2013
Week 11: Villians/Heroes
Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, by Inga Clendinnen, is not aimed at vilifying a particular group, so much as it is at analyzing the Spanish conquest of the Yucatan. That being said, there are still villains in this story. Clendinnen characterizes the Spaniards as the "bad guys" of this period of history. She does this mostly through her descriptions of their actions and the effects which they had on the Mayan people. Clendinnen talks about the devastation caused by the Spanish friars: "in the days after the conquest the friars in charge of the resettlement programme adopted harsh measures...to keep the Maya in their new villages, burning the dwellings of the old, smashing the hives, destroying the fruit trees" (141-142). Clendinnen further describes the Spanish as violent destroyers of culture: "the idols and the jeweled skulls of the ancestors were burned at their command. The violence, the sufferings inflicted by the friars, the destruction of the idols, signaled that the time of the old gods was indeed over, and the rule of the new gods had begun" (190). The majority of Mayan sources to which Clendinnen refers also portray the Spanish in a negative light, such as the accounts on page 157 which describe the misery that came with the Spanish arrival. These sources describe the way in which life was made miserable by the invading Spanish, who brought with them sicknesses and a new system of oppression, which led to the establishment of a tribute system, church dues and violence (157). While the Spanish do assume the role of the "bad guys" in Ambivalent Conquests, I would not say the Maya are the necessarily the "good guys"of the book. Instead I think the Maya play more the role of the victims. This is because they are not really building towards any productive or beneficial goal throughout the book, but rather are trying to hold on to their values and traditions in the face of Spanish conquest.
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Nick, I think you capture two very important distinctions in Clendinnen’s book that contribute to her depiction of the “conquest” as “ambivalent.” Your first statement, that Conquests “is not aimed at vilifying a particular group,” yet “there are still villains in this story,” is perfectly compatible. Clendinnen fully attempts to contextualize the actions of both Spaniard and Maya but even within context, the actions of certain Spaniards is still horrifying. I think a similar distinction could be made between “hero” and “heroic.” Certainly, the early Franciscans carried out heroic journeys, crossing inhospitable terrain and even entering new villages and towns without the protection of soldiers (49, 52). Does this make them heroes? The Order considered them thus, and Landa portrays himself as a martyr rejected not only by his flock, but his people and his church. Yet the results of these heroic actions hardly make the friars heroes, and the inquisition is a big reason why.
ReplyDeleteIn a similar manner, we could discuss the Maya lords resistance to Catholicism (Clendinnen spends little time on the commoners in the same way she ignores, for the most part, the encomenderos). The preservation of religion/culture was heroic, yet what culture were they preserving? “The cost of all this,” Clendinnen writes of the Maya understanding of rhythms and organization of the universe, “…was war,” in addition to slavery and human sacrifice (148-149). Hardly heroic from our vantage point, similar to our sensibility regarding the actions of the friars.
The other excellent point you made was that “while the Spanish do assume the role of the ‘bad guys,’” this does not ipso facto make the Maya the “’good guys.’” Unless we are ready to declare a culture inherently good or evil, we must concede that when two cultures collide, even in situations where they are both pursuing what their culture deems “good,” bad things result. Clendinnen points out that gender roles and modes of production were not at risk under the new Spanish overlords (a neutral effect of the culture clash), but “what was more directly threatened were the structures and expressions of the wider collectivity: essentially, the relations between lords and commoners, and the modes of celebration of the collective life,” a thoroughly negative result which the Maya lords attempted to stave off with a continuation of native religious practices which the Spaniards found so offensive (154-155).
All in all, I think what you point out so well is that each culture could see its own actions as heroic and those of the other as villainous but that Clendinnen does not seek to render her own opinion on the subject merely pointing out the basis for each culture’s opinion.