This volume provides historians of colonial Latin America with two valuable seventeenth-century relaciones concerning Spanish efforts to establish control over the troublesome areas of Verapaz, Manché, and Lacandón. The first is by Capitán Don Martín Alfonso Tovilla, Relación histórica descriptiva de las provincias de la Verapaz y de la del Manché del Reino de Guatemala, y de las costas, mares y puertos principales de la dilatada América, written in 1635 and published from a photographic copy of the original which is now in the Biblioteca Pública de Toledo, Spain, and the second Antonio de León Pinelo’s Relación . . . sobre la Pacificación y Población de las Provincias del Manché, y Lacandón . . ., published from a photographic copy of the original pamphlet of 1639.
Tovilla was designated Alcalde Mayor of the provinces of Verapaz, Golfo Dulce, Sacapulas, and Manché late in 1629, while in Spain, and reached Cobán about a year later. He soon obtained authority from the President of the Audiencia of Guatemala to establish a town in the province of Manché to serve as a base for protection of peaceful Indians against attacks by the unpacified Itzáes, Yoles, and Lacandones. He organized and set in motion an expedition in the first part of 1631, but after several months his efforts came to naught. Even though the Tovilla record is one of failure and it was not until the close of the century that a campaign against the Itzáes was to be successful, it includes details of interest concerning the northern provinces of Guatemala. It is also an interesting addition to knowledge of Spanish efforts of pacification in far outlying areas.
