The Spanish conquest of the Mayans in the 16th century was a slow, gradual affair that lasted until the next century in its entirety. Compared to the power and iron-handed reign of the Mexica Empire (aka the Aztec Empire), traits that made it both appetizing to conquer and easy to decapitate, the Mayans were a loose conjunction of states spread around the Yucatan jungles that offered too much effort and too little interest to earn a full-on campaign of conquest.
The Spaniards made contact with them at multiple points during a span of many years, sometimes entirely by accident due to the Yucatan Peninsula's closeness to the Spanish homebase of Cuba, and the first attempts to expand on it often featured more action between rivaling conquistadors than between them and the indigenous themselves. Expeditions and conquering efforts were carried on sparsely, usually in the pattern of Spaniards allying with Mayan states to conquer less receptive neighbors, or on the other hand coming to help existent Mayan allies under attack by enemies - or on a third hand, coming to suffocate rebellions of allies that had broken or forgotten their alliance. This meant campaigns were small and short and tended to stop once the most nearby enemies had been subjected.
Another divergent trait from the Mexicas, who were in the peak of their power, was the Mayans of the 16th century were a civilization in the last legs of its past glory, reaching the end of a period of decadence that is still not fully understood. All of this, ironically enough, would help the Mayans adapt better to Hispanic rule than their western neighbors, as their decentralized nature and little riches in comparison ensured that many pockets of Mayan culture would survive Hispanicization. Even in present day, many ethnic Mayans and Mayan mestizos live with the same customs, language, and even calendars that their ancestors did millennia ago.
First battles
Focused warfare on the Maya started immediately after the capture of the Mexica Empire in 1521. When it became widely known that Tenochtitlan had been conquered by Hernán Cortés and his entente of indigenous states, the Mayan tribes of Iximche and Q'umarkaj sent emissaries of friendship to him. However, Cortés heard by other Mayan informants that those tribes weren't trustworthy, and in fact were attacking Spanish-aligned natives, so he dispatched his lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado with the help of an army of Tlaxcaltecs and Cholultecs to right wrongs. Alvarado and company broke through with the usual combination of cavalry, western weapons and ruthless countertraps, and after ravaging Q'umarkaj, he convinced the Iximche people to sincerely join his side. In 1524 founded the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, and their territory received further the name of Guatemala (meaning "forested land" in Nahuatl).Meanwhile, Cortés sent back another of his trusted men, Luis Marín, to pacify the revolted Mayan land of Tabasco and to expand their domains to Chiapas. He battled there in two back-to-back expeditions, sometimes with the help of the allied Zinacantec tribe, but he found little reward due to the place's hostile climate and the elusive retreats of the Mayans, who often opted to just abandon their cities and flee. Upon his return, the pacifying effort of Tabasco was continued by the unexperienced Rodrigo Rangel, who faced harsh resistance and failed to capture the rebel leaders of Cimatan, and later by the veteran Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who managed to punish the Cimatecs with a better prepared native army, although rebellion would spring back afterwards.
Conquistador wars
At the same time, upon hearing of Gil González Dávila's successful conquests around the southern coast, Cortés sent yet another of his lieutenants, Cristóbal de Olid, to grab his piece of the cake. However, in a supply trip back to Cuba, Olid turned on Cortés, and was advised by their Arch-Enemy Diego Velázquez to continue the expedition and take the new lands for himself. To make things worse, there were two other rival factions: the infamous Pedro Arias de Ávila, whose own lieutenant Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (not to confuse him with the late captain who explored México) was warring with González, and the entire Real Audiencia de Santo Domingo, which also claimed legal property over everything. In short, a mess. With the Mayan lands of modern-day Honduras turning into a both legal and literal battlefield, Cortés deployed his cousin Francisco de las Casas in a Capt. Willard-like mission to solve the Olid problem, after which Hernán himself prepared an expedition with abundant Mexican warriors to join by land.De las Casas lost most of his fleet to a series of storms, but he managed to arrive to find De Olid and González Dávila locked in combat. He capitalized on the chance to assault Olid's forces, but yet another storm finished the Cortesian fleet, and De las Casas himself ended up captured along with González. In his moment of triumph, De Olid tried to extract loyalty from them and let them free, but the two captains became unlikely allies and found the chance to turn the camp against him. De Olid was killed in an attempt to escape, or sent back to Spain and beheaded, depending on the version. Only then Cortés arrived, having suffered his own string of bad luck in a tortuous expedition through Tabasco and Acalán, in which he signed up some alliances with Mayan tribes yet lost most of his expeditioners. After pacifying some Mayan revolts, he left the two in charge and made due in 1525.
Hungry jungles
Upon returning to México, Cortés was informed the Tabasco Mayans had revolted one more time, so he sent Juan de Vallecillo, who found the local Spanish headquarters destroyed and its occupants surviving desperately in the mountains. Vallecillo pushed the rebels back and rebuilt things by sheer hard work, but he died of illness in 1527 and had to be replaced by Baltasar de Osorio. The same year, the Spaniards expanded to the Chiapas highlands under the aristocratic Diego Mazariegos, but the Mayan jungles were still disrupting exploration and conquest with its continuous revolts: Mazariegos struggled to maintain control, and even Francisco de Montejo and Alonso de Ávila, both of them Cortesian veterans who just returned from making conquests in alliance to local chieftain Nahum Pat, only obtained gradual success upon replacing Vallecillo, as the Mayans still revolted again right after being submitted.1529 also saw the continuation of the conflict in Guatemala, as two unconquered Mayan tribes, the Ixil and Uspantecs, harassed indigenous allies of the Spanish. A coalition of those led by Gaspar Arias would climb to the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes to counter the threat, but the ill-fated attack of another unexperienced lieutenant, Pedro de Olmos, crashed the entire expedition. A second effort by Francisco de Castellanos the following, though, would finally capture Uspantan and end the banditry. However, being a mountainous land with little gold and such, the rest of the Cuchumatanes indigenous would remain independent for almost two centuries, with Spanish control being only established 1696 out of a desire to connect provinces separated by their territory.
In 1531, Alonso de Ávila and Francisco de Montejo, helped by the latter's son, also named Francisco, initiated from Tabasco the conquest and settlement of northern Yucatán. Although the Mayan states of Xiu, Chel and Pech allied with them, others like the Canul would have to be submitted by war. The Cupul state, famous by the city of Chichén Itzá, feigned alliance with Francisco Jr before trying to murder him, after which they threatened an attack that made the Spaniards retire quietly to take refuge in the allied lands. As the more successful Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire had started grabbing the attention of the soldiers, and due to a legal struggle between Francisco Sr and Pedro de Alvarado, no action of punishment was taken, and the Montejos returned to México in 1534, leaving a handful of cities built.
Gonzalo Guerrero, one of the two Spaniards that went native and were found by Cortés, would die in 1532 or 1536 helping the Mayans of Chectumal resist against the Spanish armies, faithful to the end to the society that had adopted him.
De Montejo and his son led a new expedition to Yucatán in 1537, accompanied now by his nephew, who was also named Francisco de Montejo. The conquest seemed to go smoothly the first years, as the powerful lord Tutul Xiu converted to Christianity and popularized peaceful adhesion around the western lands, but eastern tribes were still unconvinced, so Francisco the nephew was sent with orders to attract their friendship by either the pen or the sword. Despite his efforts, an alliance of hostile states including the Cupul rose up in 1546 and attacked the Spaniards and their Mayan allies, requiring the three Franciscos de Montejo to team up and defeat them. The area was finally declared conquered, with many of the surviving rebels fleeing to the southern, densely forested lands of Petén. Those would not be attacked and conquered until the end of the 17th century, putting an end to the last rebel Mayan kingdom.
In fiction:
- The depressing conclusion of Apocalypto features the arrival of Spanish conquerors, although this gets a bit downplayed given that the film is set in 1502, almost twenty years before any significant action.
- The documentary Spain, the first globalization mentions the conquest among its many points about Spanish history.
- The True History of the Conquest of Mexico is a chronicle written by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was part of multiple battles against the Mayans and commanded an expedition.
- The ancient backstory of Steve Alten's Domain includes a characteristically stereotypical review of the Spanish conquest.
- Clive Cussler's Serpent features a plot rooted in the contacts between Mayans and Spaniards before the latter supposedly exterminated them.
- Spanish TV series The Ministry of Time, has an episode set during Cortés' expedition's arrival to the Mayan lands (though its portrayal of the Mayans themselves is more similar to that of their stone age).
- Age of Empires II features the conquest of the Mayans in its aptly named The Conquerors expansion pack.
- In American Conquest's Expansion Pack Fight Back, the Maya campaign covers details from the Spanish conquest of Yucatán.
