Crosses, Burned Churches, and Kidnapped Priests: Ambivalent Maya Catholics in 19th-century British Honduras

Summary

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Spanish colonization of New Spain rested upon a pragmatic, yet conflicted, alliance between Cross and Crown. Following independence, many republican and neocolonial governments also relied on the soft power of the Church. In the 19th century, Yucatec Maya religious sentiments appear to have been indelibly shaped by prevailing relations of power. The syncretic religion of the Talking Cross that developed among Santa Cruz Maya rebels during the Caste War of Yucatán (1847-1901) is well known for its militaristic character, and heavy religious fees contributed to the war’s outbreak. This presentation considers the less well-known religious practices of other Maya rebel groups of southern Yucatán and British Honduras, who did not revere the Talking Cross. In the 1850s-60s, both the British Honduran and Yucatecan governments used priests as emissaries to encourage political submission by rebels. In British Honduras, priests expressed personal regard, sympathy, and even affection in a way that other representatives of colonial power typically did not. The Janus face of the Catholic church generated extraordinary feelings of ambivalence among the Yucatec Maya, as can be seen in the archaeological and archival materials from San Pedro, wherein examples of devotional crosses contrast with accounts of anti-clerical violence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24680