Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-m9pkr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T07:32:05.483Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE MYSTERIOUS AND THE INVISIBLE: WRITING HISTORY IN AND OF COLONIAL YUCATAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2011

Matthew Restall
Matthew Restall*
Affiliation:
Department of History, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
*
E-mail correspondence to: restall@psu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This brief essay argues that studying the non-Spanish inhabitants of Yucatan's past requires bridging the social distance generated by differences of time and culture and that the specific nature of that distance must first be understood. With respect to the Mayas, their mystique in the modern popular and academic imaginations is as much the creation of Maya elites in ancient and colonial times as it is the product of archaeologists and historians. To demystify the Maya, we must engage mundane as well as exotic sources and be aware of the obfuscating influence of those who interpreted Maya culture before us. A complete picture of colonial Yucatan and of the colonial Mayas must include Afro-Yucatecans, or Africans and their descendents in the peninsula. Rendered invisible by historical processes and lack of scholarly attention, Afro-Yucatecans must be fully examined if we are to fully grasp the Yucatec experience, including the Yucatec Maya experience.

Type
Special Section: Current Perspectives on Social Memory
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Fall 2010 , pp. 393 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bricker, Victoria R., and Miram, Helga-Maria 2002 An Encounter of Two Worlds: The Book of Chilam Balam of Kaua. Middle American Research Institute, Publication No. 68. Tulane University, New Orleans.Google Scholar
Browne, Walden 2000 Sahagún and the Transition to Modernity. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.Google Scholar
Campos García, Melchor 2005 Castas, feligresía y ciudadanía en Yucatán: Los afromestizos bajo el régimen constitucional español, 1750–1822. CONACYT and Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Merida.Google Scholar
Carpentier, Alejo 1956 The Lost Steps. Translated by de Onís, Harriet. Knopf, New York.Google Scholar
Castañeda, Quetzil 2002 The Aura of Ruins. In Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Popular Culture in Mexico Since 1940, edited by Joseph, Gilbert M., Rubenstein, Anne, Zolov, Eric, Rosenberg, Emily S., and Poniatowska, Elena, pp. 452–469. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.Google Scholar
Chuchiak, John F IV. 2000 The Indian Inquisition and the Extirpation of Idolatry: The Process of Punishment in the Provisorato de Indios of the Diocese of Yucatan, 1563–1812. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans.Google Scholar
Clendinnen, Inga 2003 Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570. 2nd ed.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delbridge, Spencer Forthcoming 2012 Reconstructing Conquest: Mayas and Spaniards in the Making of Yucatan. Ph.D. dissertation in progress, Department of History, The Pennsylvania State University.Google Scholar
Echeverría, Roberto González 1990 Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández Repetto, Francisco, and Sierra, Genny Negroe 1995 Una población pérdida en la memoria: Los negros de Yucatán. Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Merida.Google Scholar
Gabbert, Wolfgang 2004 Becoming Maya: Ethnicity and Social Inequality in Yucatán since 1500. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Griffiths, Nicholas, and Cervantes, Fernando (editors) 1999 Spiritual Encounters: Interactions between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.Google Scholar
Golden, Charles 2010 Frayed at the Edges: Collective Memory and History on the Borders of Classic Maya Polities. Ancient Mesoamerica 21:373–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hervik, Peter 1999 Mayan People Within and Beyond Boundaries: Social Categories and Lived Identity in Yucatán. Harwood, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Johnson, Christopher 2003 Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Formative Years. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutz, Christopher, and Restall, Matthew 2005 Wolves and Sheep? Black-Maya Relations in Colonial Guatemala and Yucatan. In Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America, edited by Restall, Matthew, pp. 185–221. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
McAnany, Patricia A. 1995 Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society. University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Quezada, Sergio 2001 Breve historia de Yucatán. El Colegio de México, Fideicomiso Historia de las Américas, and Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Redondo, Brígido 1994 Negritud en Campeche. Congreso del Estado de Campeche, Campeche.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew 1997 The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550–1850. Stanford University Press, Stanford.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew 1998 Maya Conquistador. Beacon Press, Boston.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew 2001a The Janus Face of Maya Identity. In Maya Survivalism, edited by Hostettler, Ueli and Restall, Matthew, pp. 15–23. Verlag Anton Saurwein, Markt Schwaben, Germany.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew 2001b The People of the Patio: Ethnohistorical Evidence of Yucatec Maya Royal Courts. In Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, vol. 2: Data and Case Studies, edited by Inomata, Takeshi and Houston, Stephen D., pp. 335–390. Westview, Boulder, CO.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew 2002 The Renaissance World from the West: Spanish America and the ‘Real’ Renaissance. In A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance, edited by Ruggiero, Guido, pp. 80–82. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew 2004 Maya Ethnogenesis. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 9:64–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Restall, Matthew 2007 Sources for the Ethnohistory and Afrohistory of Postconquest Yucatan. In Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, edited by Lockhart, James, Sousa, Lisa, and Wood, Stephanie. Provisional version of volume at http://whp.uoregon.edu/Lockhart/.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew 2009 The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan. Stanford University Press, Stanford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Restall, Matthew, and Chuchiak, John F. 2002 A Re-evaluation of the Authenticity of Fray Diego de Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. Ethnohistory 49:651–669.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew, Chuchiak, John F., and Solari, Amara (editors) Forthcoming 2012 The Friar and the Maya: Diego de Landa's Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán. Manuscript in progress.Google Scholar
Tacitus, 1970 The Agricola and the Germania. Penguin, London.Google Scholar
Tedlock, Dennis (translator) 1985 Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. Simon and Schuster, New York.Google Scholar
Tozzer, Alfred M. (translator) 1941 Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. A Translation. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 18. Harvard University, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Vinson, Ben III, and Restall, Matthew (editors) 2009 Black Mexico. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Webster, David 2002 The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse. Thames and Hudson, New York.Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon 1987 Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. Stanford University Press, Stanford.Google Scholar