John Chuchiak

This paper offers a revisionist viewpoint on the nature of colonial Maya literacy, showing that the colonial Yucatec Maya elite utilized both the traditional hieroglyphic script and the new alphabetic writing skills taught by the Franciscan friars. By adapting and utilizing both styles of writing, the colonial Maya elite created a system of graphic...

Differing from the rapid political, economic, and social conquests, the conquest of indigenous sexuality was often a long and deeply contested arena of indigenous-Spanish encounters. The roots of what can be called the “sexual conquest” of the Yucatec Maya began with the initial missions of the Franciscan friars. The earliest friars produced vocabu...

“My dear spiritual brothers and fathers, you whose relationship to me is closer than that of my own blood. . . . Even though my present position as Bishop might appear to separate me from you, I swear that it cannot divide me from you, because I have and always will be a son of our Father Saint Francis. . . . Now that I have returned, I come to you...

In his presentation, Just considered four almanacs in the Madrid Codex that are structurally related to the Borgia group, including the in extenso almanac on pages 12b18b,² the calendar round almanac on pages 6572 and 73b, the forme cross almanac on pages 7576, and the trecena almanac on pages 7778.³ He demonstrated not only that they share novel,...

This article analyzes the appearance and content of the surviving archival manuscript of the Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, ascribed to Fray Diego de Landa (1524-79), the most prominent of the first generation of Franciscan friars in the Spanish colony of Yucatán. This analysis is placed in the context of the way in which published editions of t...

This paper explores the limitations and validity of the document genre of autobiographical and service narratives of colonial clergymen called Relaciónes de Méritos y Servicios and their role in defining colonial concepts of idolatry. It addresses the issues of clerical exaggeration and the use of testimony as a political weapon, two frequently rai...