Invading Guatemala: Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars

Restall, Matthew,Asselbergs, Florine

ISBN 10: 0271027584 / ISBN 13: 9780271027586

Published by Penn State University Press, 2008

About this Item

Pages clean and binding sound. Cover clean, shiny and intact. Corners square and sharp.

Seller Inventory # mon0000150668

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Invading Guatemala: Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars
• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271027584
• ISBN 13: 9780271027586
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

After invading highland Guatemala in 1524, Spaniards claimed to have smashed the Kaqchikel and K’iche’ Maya kingdoms and to have forged a new colony―with their leader, Pedro de Alvarado, as Guatemala’s conquistador. This volume shows that the real story of the Spanish invasion was very different. Designed to be an accessible introduction to the topic as well as a significant contribution to conquest scholarship, the volume presents for the first time English translations of firsthand accounts by Spaniards, Nahuas, and Mayas.

Alvarado’s letters to Cortés, published here in English for the first time in almost a century, are supplemented with accounts by one of his cousins, by his brother Jorge, and by Bernal Díaz and Bartolomé de Las Casas. Nahua perspectives are presented in the form of pictorial evidence, along with written testimony by Tlaxcalan and Aztec veterans who fought as invading allies of the Spaniards; their claim to have done most of the fighting emerges as a powerful argument. The views of the invaded are represented by Kaqchikel and Tz’utujil accounts. Together, these sources reveal a fascinating multiplicity of perspectives and show how the conquest wars of the 1520s were a profoundly brutal moment in the history of the Americas.

About the Authors

Matthew Restall is Sparks Professor of Latin American History at Penn State and the author of eight books on colonial Latin America, including Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest.

Florine G. L. Asselbergs is an independent scholar in the Netherlands and the author of Conquered Conquistadors, a groundbreaking study of the Guatemalan conquest.