A number of recent regional studies have emphasized the complexity of the colonial experience in Latin America. Each new study notes significant variations from patterns reported in earlier studies of different regions. George Lovell’s superb work on the mountainous Cuchumatán region of northwestern Guatemala is no exception. Based on meticulous research in the archives of Seville and Guatemala, Lovell has reconstructed the history of the Mayan people of the Cuchumatanes from 1500 to 1821 with remarkable clarity. He has demonstrated the region’s unique qualities, as well as its historical similarities with other rural sections of the Spanish American empire.
The Cuchumatán region represented one of the most densely populated parts of preconquest Guatemala. The Spanish conquest, and the diseases accompanying it, devastated these people and only in the 1980s has the population of the area recovered to its 1500 level. Lovell paints a vivid picture of Cuchumatán physical and human geography on the eve of the conquest, including a plausible, if at times speculative, description of community organization and daily life. He documents their fierce though hopeless resistance to the Spanish conquerors, as well as the ultimate subjugation to Spanish encomenderos of those who survived the dreadful toll of war and pestilence. Yet he also shows the remarkable ability of the Maya to survive and to retain significant aspects of their cultural identity.
Lovell’s description of the encomienda as it existed and evolved in the Cuchumatanes is especially well done. He shows the close geographical connection between encomiendas and the preconquest communities, which eventually evolved into the modern municipios of the region. Documenting the persistence of the encomienda long after the royal government sought to abolish the institution, Lovell also details the specific payments by encomienda Indians, including goods, livestock, and personal service. Personal service continued to be extracted by encomenderos even after the Cerrato reforms of 1549. In fact, Lovell makes it clear that throughout the colonial period Indian service to the Spaniards, in one form or another, constituted the most durable legacy of the conquest. He also reveals that encomenderos often lived at great distances from their encomiendas—in other parts of Central America or in Spain. Yet, gradually, the encomiendas evolved into landed estates that contributed significant income and power to the creole elite.
Lovell’s work complements the more general recent studies of colonial Central America by Murdo MacLeod, William Sherman, and Miles Wortman. It provides detailed evidence of how the Spaniards exploited first native labor and later their lands to create the creole elites that came to dominate the country. He also emphasizes how European diseases not only devastated the native populations, but limited the ambitions and greed of their European conquerors. Historical geography at its best, this work reflects the high level of both the scientific and literary talent of its author.
