Valladolid, Yucatán, México: Heroic Valladolid

HEROIC VALLADOLID

The site of Valladolid, had garrisons ready to go to aid to the defenders, and they wrote a chapter in the history of that village which today is a city. On this site in the years of 1546 and 1547, Juan de Azamar, wife of the veteran soldier and chronicler Blas González, wrote in 1588 this review:

"The first task of Tamayo Pacheco, defending appointee of Valladolid, at the same time that the Bracamonte was sent to Sotuta, was to break in. Consequently, he assaulted the outlying elements of the Maya. The struggle was bloody; with great losses on both sides. He had to return to the defense of the villa due to the large numbers of the Maya who were finally withdrawing slowly to their communities. This is the way Valladolid was released from the siege".

Juan Azamar was just arriving in the Yucatan and his work taking care of the injured was incredible. He had lost his brother, sister-in-law and nephews, that had remained trapped in their homes in the East, during the revolt.

Statements of the brothers Bracamonte, Hernando and Francisco, in the year of 1571, mention that the Spanish went to Chemax and Pixtemax expelling to the chiefs and priests that had put under way the dangerous revolt of 1546. This served to give the Spanish definitive control of the province Cupul.

The lessons did not escape in the reprisal plans, since The Senior said that "five or six Maya leaders would be burnt", according to Monk Luis of Villalpando in 1550. Montejo, The Nephew ordered the hands of several Maya warriors to be cut off and he hung a good number of women; in addition to using prey dogs trained to hunt the Maya, according to Cogolludo and India Letters.

The cruel vindictive actions of the Spanish were reported to have been performed by Montejo, The Senior, during his stay in the Yucatan. These actions were performed to such a degree that many leaders felt obligated to follow his lead. Many of the Spanish had demanded the right to make slaves of their prisoners or enemies. But, The Senior, after the crisis and return to tranquillity, decreed that all the children and women stopped by the revolt were not guilty and released them, returning them to their people (Residence of Montejo by Yucatan 1549-50).

There lived a form of chaos in the east and the south. After the revolt of Chemax of 1546, Valladolid resented the reduction of its productive activities, as thousands of the Maya were in hiding in the Guatemalan Petén, vacating villages and provinces in the Yucatan and the decrease in agriculture was easy to see. The Senior held a meeting in Merida with the principal chiefs and leaders from the east and the south, to reiterate the promise of peace and collaboration, promises that history shows were never fulfilled. Of Montejo in Yucatan 1549-50, the General Indias file, said of that meeting:

"... come of peace of all the earth punished

for justice, some of the guilty, processes against

them conform to the right sending a call to all

the men on the earth that I came in the name of

His Majesty the King to fix the wrongs and bring

justice to everyone. Any Spanish who is angry and

comes to me looking to punish you will be told

to stop. As any of my Captains who took matters

into their own hands and went outside the boundaries

of my orders concerning treatment have been punished

as I was obliged to do, they have been punished..."

In the year of 1549, the Senior was thinking that with the meeting in Merida and the understanding of his son and nephew he had been able to keep the peace and tranquillity in Yucatan.

But history and its testimonies prove than the Maya continued suffering and the slavery, humiliation and discrimination continued for many centuries. The brutal persecution of Landa against the habits and customs of the Maya in 1562; the revolt in Cisteil in 1761, the great revolt of 1847 are the most eloquent chapters of those abuses that continued to ruin the culture of the Maya... and in the nineteenth century we know to well the history of the new type of slavery of the Maya, and that it was met - in part- with violent reactions.

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