Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T15:20:27.660Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conquest and Population: Maya Demography in Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

W. George Lovell  and
Christopher H. Lutz
W. George Lovell
Affiliation:
Queens University, Canada
Christopher H. Lutz
Affiliation:
Plumsock Mesoamerican Studies, Vermont
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

How many Mayas are there? That deceptively simple question has seldom met with an unqualified answer, especially in Guatemala, where both question and answer invariably trigger ideological positions that are not easily reconciled. The Columbus Quincentenary in 1992, the year a Maya woman, Rigoberta Menchú, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, offered a timely juncture for reflecting on the matter. In this research note, we chart from the eve of conquest to the present the collapse and eventual recovery of an Indian population that today numbers more than twice as many as it did at European contact, a trajectory of survival experienced by few other Native American populations. The figures we examine are the best we could find, although none of them should be considered definitive. Moreover, they all indicate an Indian presence without ever being clear or consistent as to whom the definition applies. These figures are displayed in table 1. Any figure contemplated must also be appreciated in relation to the sources and methodology of its calculation. Discussion of this issue, however, we have kept to a minimum. Our aim is to summarize the salient features of a complex demographic situation in the hope of shedding light on an enduring Maya presence, one that increasingly challenges traditional notions of what a Guatemalan nation-state should be and on what terms Maya peoples contained within it should live (Cojtí Cuxil 1991; Smith 1990, 1991).

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , 1994 , pp. 133 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this research note was presented at the panel entitled “500 Years of Guatemalan Mayan Resistance: A Dialogue between Maya and Non-Maya Scholars,” held at the meetings of the Latin American Studies Association in Los Angeles, California, 23–26 September 1992. We thank session organizers Enrique Sam Colop and Alan Le Baron as well as fellow participants for their involvement and interaction. David McCreery provided a couple of additional statistics and especially helpful commentary on our first draft. We thank Elisabeth Siruček and Judy Walker for secretarial assistance. The financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is appreciated. Our interest in Central American population history will be indulged at length in Demography and Empire, an annotated bibliography to be published by Westview Press.

References

Archival citations for the colonial period refer to the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Seville, Spain. The section known as Contaduría contains fiscal and tax records; the section entitled Audiencia de Guatemala houses documents pertaining to diverse matters of church and state. Specifically, see AGI, Contaduría 969 and 973 (for the years 1594–95, 1625, and 1710), reports of an Indian head-tax known as the servicio de tostón. See also AGI, Guatemala 39 (1575), “Descripción de los corregimientos en Guatemala,” a report sent by President Pedro de Villalobos to the Crown.Google Scholar
Indigena, America 1990 “Los pueblos indios de América.” América Indígena 50, no. 1:11–62.Google Scholar
Carmack, Robert M., ED. 1988 Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Cecilio Del Valle, Jose 1930 “Guatemala hace cien años.” Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala 6, no. 3:263–86.Google Scholar
Cojti Cuxil, Demetrio 1991 Configuración del pensamiento político del pueblo maya. Quezaltenango: Asociación de Escritores Mayances de Guatemala.Google Scholar
Cook, Noble David, AND Lovell, W. George, EDS. 1992 “Secret Judgments of God”: Old World Disease in Colonial Spanish America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Cortes Y Larraz, Pedro 1958 Descripción geográfico-moral de la diócesis de Goathemala. 2 vols. Biblioteca “Goathemala,” vol. 20. Guatemala City: Sociedad de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala.Google Scholar
Cuz Mucu, Andres 1993 “La realidad de los idiomas mayas y el castellano guatemalteco desde el punto de vista de la sociedad maya.” In Planes y perspectivas de desarrollo sostenible en la región del mundo maya, edited by Guillermo NiÑO De, GuzmÁN, 101–5. Lima: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Denevan, William M., ED. 1992 The Native Population of the Americas in 1492. Revised edition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Early, John D. 1982 The Demographic Structure and Evolution of a Peasant System: The Guatemalan Population. Boca Raton: University Presses of Florida.Google Scholar
Early, John D. 1983 “A Demographic Survey of Contemporary Guatemalan Maya.” In Heritage of Conquest: Thirty Years Later, edited by Kendall, Carl, Hawkins, John, and Bossen, Laurel, 73–91. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Enriquez Macias, Genoveva 1989 “Nuevos documentos para la demografía histórica de la Audiencia de Guatemala a finales del siglo XVII.” Mesoamérica 17:121–83.Google Scholar
Gall, Francis, ED. 1976–1983 Diccionario geográfico de Guatemala. 4 volumes. Guatemala City: Instituto Geográfico Nacional.Google Scholar
Garcia AÑOveros, Jesus M. 1987 Población e estado socio-religioso de la diócesis de Guatemala en el último tercio del siglo XVIII. Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala.Google Scholar
Guatemala, Republica De 1880 Censo general de 1880. Guatemala City: Establecimiento Tipográfico de “El Progreso.”Google Scholar
Juarros, Domingo 1936 Compendio de la historia de la ciudad de Guatemala. Third edition, 2 volumes. Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional.Google Scholar
Le Bot, Won 1988 “Guatemala: 4 milliones de Indios.” Trace 13, no. 11 (published by the Centre d'Etudes Mexicaines et Centroamericaines in Mexico City).Google Scholar
Ligorred, Francesc 1992 Lenguas indígenas de México y Centroamérica (de los jeroglíficos al siglo XXI). Madrid: Editorial Mapire.Google Scholar
Lovell, W. George 1988 “Enfermedades del Viejo Mundo y mortandad amerindia: la viruela y el tabardillo en la Sierra de los Cuchumatanes de Guatemala, 1780–1810.” Mesoamérica 16:239–85.Google Scholar
Lovell, W. George 1992a “Disease and Depopulation in Early Colonial Guatemala.” In cook and lovell 1992, 49–83.Google Scholar
Lovell, W. George 1992b “‘Heavy Shadows and Black Night’: Disease and Depopulation in Colonial Spanish America.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3:426–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lovell, W. George 1992c Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500–1821. Revised edition. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Lovell, W. George, AND Lutz, Christopher H. 1992 “The Historical Demography of Colonial Central America.” In Benchmark 1990: Geographic Research on Latin America, edited by Martinson, Tom L., 127–38. Auburn, Ala.: Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers.Google Scholar
Lovell, W. George, Lutz, Christopher H., AND Swezey, William R. 1984 “The Indian Population of Southern Guatemala, 1549–1551: An Analysis of López de Cerrato's Tasaciones de Tributos.” The Americas 40, no. 4:459–77.Google Scholar
Lovell, W. George, AND Swezey, William R. 1982 “The Population of Southern Guatemala at Spanish Contact.” Canadian Journal of Anthropology 3, no. 1:71–84.Google Scholar
Lujan MuÑOz, Jorge 1976 “Fundación de villas de ladinos en Guatemala en el último tercio del siglo XVIII.” Revista de Indias 36, nos. 145–46:51–81.Google Scholar
Lutz, Christopher H. 1993 “The Late Nineteenth-Century Guatemalan Maya in Historical Context: Past and Future Research.” In Maya Textiles of Guatemala: The Gustavus A. Eisen Collection, 1902, edited by Schevill, Margot Blum, 43–53. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
n.d. “La población no española y no indígena, sus divisiones y evolución demográfica, 1700–1821.” In Historia General de Guatemala, edited by Jorge Luján Muñoz, vol. 3. Guatemala City: Fundación para la Cultura y el Desarrollo, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Lutz, Christopher, AND Lovell, W. George 1990 “Core and Periphery in Colonial Guatemala.” In smith 1990, 35–51.Google Scholar
Macleod, Murdo J. 1973 Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mayer, Enrique, AND Masferrer, Elio 1979 “La población indígena de América … en 1978.” América Indígena 39, no. 2:217–337.Google Scholar
NACLA (NORTH AMERICAN CONGRESS ON LATIN AMERICA) 1991 Special issue, The First Nations, 1492–1992. NACLA Report on the Americas 25, no. 3.Google Scholar
Ortmayr, Norbert 1991 “Matrimonio, estado y sociedad en Guatemala (siglos XIX y XX).” In Territorio y sociedad en Guatemala: tres ensayos históricos, edited by Sorio, Julio CÉSar Pinto, 58–125. Guatemala City: Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Regionales, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala.Google Scholar
Pinto Sorio, Julio Cesar 1989 “Apuntes históricos sobre la estructura agraria y asentamiento en la Capitanía General de Guatemala.” In Estudios sobre la Guatemala colonial, edited by Webre, Stephen, 109–40. Antigua: Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica.Google Scholar
Scheetz De Echerd, Pamela, ED. 1983 Bibliografía del Instituto Lingüístico de Verano de Centroamérica. Guatemala City: Instituto de Verano.Google Scholar
Smith, Carol A. 1991 “Maya Nationalism.” In nacla 1991, 29–33.Google Scholar
Smith, Carol A., ED. 1990 Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540–1988. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 1910– “General Census of the Republic of Guatemala, 1914.”Google Scholar
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 1924 In Documents Relating to the Internal Affairs of Guatemala, 1910–1924.Google Scholar
Woodward, Ralph Lee JR. 1980 “Crecimiento de población en Centroamérica durante la primera mitad del siglo de la independencia nacional.” Mesoamérica 1:219–31.Google Scholar
Woodward, Ralph Lee JR. 1983 “Population and Development in Guatemala, 1840–1879.” SECOLAS Annals 14:5–18.Google Scholar
WORLD BANK 1991 Informe sobre el desarrollo mundial, 1991. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.Google Scholar