1546 – 1547
The great Maya revolt
The Nephew founds Valladolid at Chauaca in May 1543 and moves it to the Maya town of Zaci in March 1544. In 1543 – 1544 Gaspar Pacheco, his son Melchor and Alonso López Zarco conquer Uaymil and Chetumal in one of the bloodiest campaigns of the conquest and found Salamanca de Bacalar. The eastern provinces resent the encomiendas, the tribute and the new religion.
A Spanish encomendero beats a man of Tepetlaoztoc, near Mexico City, in the Codex Kingsborough, a complaint against encomenderos of about 1555, British MuseumWikimedia Commons, Not recorded, Public domain (Kingsborough.jpg)
On the night of 8 to 9 November 1546, the day 5 Cimi 19 Xul, the provinces of Cupul, Cochuah, Sotuta, Tazes, Uaymil, Chetumal and Chikinchel rise together. In the east the Maya kill 18 Spaniards and more than 400 Maya allies, and they besiege Valladolid. Mérida and Campeche are warned in time.
Rodrigo Álvarez seizes the lords around Mérida before they rise. He and Francisco Tamayo Pacheco lead a column that breaks the siege of Valladolid after two weeks, while Francisco and Hernando de Bracamonte march against the Cocom of Sotuta. The elder Montejo reaches Mérida from Chiapas in December 1546 with men from Champotón and Campeche. The rebels are beaten in a single battle in which 20 Spaniards and several hundred allied Maya die.
The church of San Servacio on the main square of Valladolid, first built in 1545 and rebuilt in 1706Wikimedia Commons, Bernard DUPONT, CC BY-SA 2.0 (San Servacio Church - Valladolid, Yucatán 2020.jpg)
Early in 1547 Juan de Aguilar and Melchor Pacheco relieve Bacalar, and by March, after four months of war, the rebel provinces are conquered again. The Spanish enslave 2,000 prisoners, mostly Cupul, whom the elder Montejo must free under the New Laws of 1542. Many Maya of the east and south flee to the independent Petén.
Sources
- Laura Caso Barrera, Caminos en la selva: migración, comercio y resistencia. Mayas yucatecos e itzaes, siglos XVII – XIX (2002), pp. 17 to 19.
- Robert S. Chamberlain, The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, 1517 – 1550 (1948), ch. 13 to 15.
- Diego de Landa, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (c. 1566), ch. 4.
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