When the Spaniards conquered the Yucatan Peninsula in the early
1500s, they made a great effort to destroy or Christianize the
native cultures flourishing there. That they were in large part
unsuccessful is evidenced by the survival of a number of documents
written in Maya and preserved and added to by literate Mayas up to
the 1830s. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel is such a document,
literally the history of Yucatan written by and for Mayas, and it
contains much information not available from Spanish sources
because it was part of an underground resistance movement of which
the Spanish were largely unaware.
Well known to Mayanists, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel is
presented here in Munro S. Edmonson's English translation,
extensively annotated. Edmonson reinterprets the book as literature
and as history, placing it in chronological order and translating
it as poetry. The ritual nature of Mayan history clearly emerges
and casts new light on Mexican and Spanish acculturation of the
Yucatecan Maya in the post-Classic and colonial periods.
Centered in the city of Merida, the Chumayel provides the
western (Xiu) perspective on Yucatecan history, as Edmonson's
earlier book The Ancient Future of the Itza: The Book of Chilam
Balam of Tizimin presented the eastern (Itza) viewpoint. Both
document the changing calendar of the colonial period and the
continuing vitality of pre-Columbian ritual thought down to the
nineteenth century. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the survival of
the long-count dating system down to the Baktun Ceremonial of 1618
(12.0.0.0.0). But there are others: the use of rebus writing, the
survival of the tun until 1752, graphic if oblique accounts of
Mayan ceremonial drama, and the depiction of the Spanish conquest
as a long-term inter-Mayan civil war.
General
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