Ek Chuah encounters the holy ghost in the colonial labyrinth: Ideology and commerce on both sides of the Spanish invasion

Abstract

In this chapter, I consider the complex relationship between indigenous ideology and the economy of the northern lowlands Maya of Yucatan, Mexico, during the transition from indigenous rule to full-fledged Spanish colonialism. In this analysis, I employ multiple sources of information including late pre-Hispanic iconography, colonial-era Spanish sources, secondary works based on these sources, the native-written Books of Chilam Balam, sacred Christian art still visible in the region’s sixteenth-century Spanish churches, and diachronic archaeological evidence from the territory the Maya of the transitional epoch called Chikinchel, in the northeast corner of Yucatan state. I consider how the links between ideology and commerce changed through time. I propose that indigenous elites used ideological means to maintain the robust Late Postclassic Mesoamerican world system. When the Spaniards tried to usurp the native economy and to kill off native religion with the weapons of Christianity, the Maya reformulated their ideology of commerce to fit the times—and trade itself became a form of resistance to Spanish authority.