The New History of Conquest in Guatemala
By the time Cortes invaded Mexico, Guatemala was a land with at least six ethnic territories pitted against each other: K’iche’, Kaqchikels, Tz’utujils, Pipils, Xinca, and Mam. Each of these ethnic groups, in turn, was a collection of smaller, contesting autonomous polities. The conquest of this region was not “Spanish.” The Kaqchikels first allied with the “Spanish” to force the K’iche, Tzutujils, Pipil, Xinca, and Mam into tributary states only then to have the K’iche’ do a turnabout within the year, becoming the leading ally of Pedro de Alvarado against a Kaqchikel rebellion. Moreover, tens of thousands of Tenochtla, Cholulan, Texcocan, Xochimilcan, Tlaxcalans, Quauhquecholans, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs accompanied different parties of Spanish Conquistadors that from 1524 to 1541 entered Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in waves to secure encomienda, slaves, gold, and plunder. “Guatemala” became the stronghold of one family, the Alvarados (about 8 brethren and cousins), that used the land to launch ever more ambitious military campaigns. From 1524 to 1541 (when he died in the Mixton War, fighting Chichimecas on his way to China), Pedro de Alvarado spent only 6 of 17 years in Guatemala. He left Guatemala with indigenous troops several times to intervene in the conquest of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, and “China.” Alvarado also returned twice to Spain to sign his own contracts (capitulaciones) with the Crown.
Strike Fear communicates some of this complexity but focuses particularly on Alvarado’s conquest of the Kaqchikels. Lowell, Lutz, and Kramer seek to rescue three new heroes to the pantheon of indigenous “resistance,” Ahpozotzil Cahí Ymox (Sinacán), Ahopoxahil Belehé Qat (Sinacam), and Quiyavit Caok, Kaqchikels lords of Ixmiché (the first Spanish city of Guatemala). The plight and ultimate martyrdom of these lords had remained obscured by centuries of confusing and contradictory Spanish and indigenous accounts of the Kaqchikel original alliance with the Spanish (and with the Mexica, Tlaxcalan, and Zapotec). Drawing on cumulative evidence in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (illustrating more than 25 Tlaxcalan-led battles in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), the Memorial de Sololá (1570s Kaqchikel annals), the laconic letters of Alvarado to Cortes, the probanzas and residencias of the Alvarados, the late seventeenth-century chronicles of Francisco Vazquez and Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzman (who had access to many lost indigenous sources and all the complete records of the Cabildo of Santiago de Guatemala), and the recently rediscovered Libro Segundo del Cabildo (at the Hispanic Society of NYC), the three authors reconstruct nearly 16 years of ongoing conflict of the Alvarados with these Kaqchikel lords.
Lowell, Lutz, and Kramer demonstrate that Tecún Umán, who surfaces in four K’iche’ mid-sixteenth-century títulos and annals as a K’iche leader who died in a pitched battle against Alvarado, is a fictional character. They highlight the paradox that the mythical, fictional Tecún Umán appears in school textbooks, paper currency, ritual drama, and dozens of statues, whereas the Kaqchikel lords, who actually lived and resisted for 14 years have gone unnoticed. Guatemalan nationalism seems to be organized on the twin narrative of K’iche’ resistance and Kaqchikel disgraceful collaboration, as if nation states had fought the “Conquest.”
Unlike previous studies by Florine Asselbergs, Laura Mathew, Mathew Restall, and Ruud Van Akkeren that seek to reconstruct the conquest mostly from an indigenous perspective (New Conquest History and New Philology), Lowell, Lutz, and Kramer follow indigenous sources along with the deeds of Pedro de Alvarado as demonic, causal forces of their own. The book is a short, pointed study of the conflict between the three Kaqchikel lords of Ixmiché with the Alvarados, from 1524 to 1540. The book fails to make sense of those other Kaqchikel lords who collaborated with the Alvarados in the Mixton War, the conquest of Peru, and the campaign of the South Sea that led Alvarado all the way to northern Mexico (the construction of a fleet to conquer the Spice Islands). No matter how much fear Alvarado sought to strike in the land, his power often had limits. His campaign to El Salvador ultimately floundered as the Pipil learned not to fight in open fields and left Pedro with a limping leg. His campaign in Peru was also a disaster. He was killed by the Chichimec.
Strike Fear leaves out the logic of collaboration and resistance of the many factions of the K’iche’, Tz’utujils, Pipils, Xinca, and Mam and of the thousands of Mexica, Tlaxcalans, Quauhquecholans, Mixtec, and Zapotec in the conquest of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. The “Spanish” side is also underdeveloped as the many encomendero factions competing with the Alvarados over the control of Guatemala appear only tangentially. Some of these factions actually chose to burn down the Spanish capital to get rid of the Alvarados. The voice of other “Spanish” factions, including bishops, friars, crown accountants and visitadores is also muted.
Strike Fear suggests that the Memorial de Sololá captures rather accurately events that transpired 50 years prior to the writing of the annals. Yet Lowell, Lutz, and Kramer also show that the Memorial got many things wrong. The politics behind the drafting of these Kaqchikel annals is still poorly understood. They were one of the dozens of mid-sixteenth-century local indigenous accounts supporting biased ethnic indigenous visions of collaboration in the conquest, including the Popol Vuh, some of which Lowell, Lutz, and Kramer themselves use. What is striking about the Memorial is how quickly the Kaqchikel incorporated the Israelite and Christian narratives into the histories of the conquest.
Finally, Lowell, Lutz, and Kramer miss an opportunity to explore the nature of the matrimonial alliances between the Alvarados and the various indigenous lords. According to Spanish sources, the original conflict with the Kaqchikel lords in 1524 began when Alvarado took “the wife” of Cahi Ymox, Suchil, as an informant. This abuse triggered Alvarado’s residencia trial in 1529. The Kaqchikel annals, however, did not record any of this and perfunctorily highlight the exchange of elite women to establish alliances. The Alvarados brought Tlaxcalan elite women pregnant to the conquest of Guatemala. These mothers and kids would later play significant political roles in the new “colonial” polity. In Peru, these “mestizos” were the leaders of conquistador civil wars and multiple conquest expeditions into the Amazon. We won’t get a new global history of the Conquest just by digging deeper into the archives or by substituting the old “Spanish” heroes/sociopaths (depending on one’s politics) with new indigenous ones.
This review will appear in the Journal of Latin American Geography
