220 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
and captured Spanish weapons. With an Indian government installed in Tehuante-
pec, the uprising spread to other towns, nearby Nejapa and the highland towns of Ix-
tepeji and Villa Alta. Indian supporters of the revolt may have numbered as many as
10,000 in over twenty towns. In a letter to the viceroy, leaders of the rebellion ex-
plained that they remained loyal to the king of Spain but were unwilling to submit
to harsh treatment, excessive tribute, and the demands of repartimiento.Within a year,
the revolt had been violently suppressed; the leaders were condemned to death, their
bodies quartered and displayed in prominent places within the communities.
Priests perpetually feared that the Indians would rebel against Christianity and
revert to their pagan ways. But when religious uprisings did occur, their participants
usually did not try to revive the native cults of the ancestors but instead sought to form
their own versions of Christianity, with their own priests. These movements some-
times began as reactions against particularly abusive or negligent priests. This desire
to give an Indian face to Christian religion has its roots in the failure of the early
mission Church to integrate Indians into the priesthood.
Perhaps the most well-known colonial religious rebellion is the so-called Tzeltal
Mayan rebellion of highland Chiapas in 1712. This rebellion was the culmination of
events that began several years earlier with roots in the almost two centuries of eco-
nomic abuse by Spaniards and the development of a native Christianity that horri-
fied some members of the Spanish clergy. Beginning in 1706, the Virgin Mary
appeared to Tzotzil and Tzeltal Indians in several highland communities. In each case
the Virgin offered to help the Indians, and a cult was created around her image.
These apparitions happened at a time when Spanish friars and priests were increas-
ingly intolerant of any deviation from Spanish Catholicism. Church response to the
Virgin cults was swift and decisive; church officials destroyed chapels dedicated to the
Virgin, images of the Virgin were removed, and Indian devotees were punished. See
Box 5.3 for a fuller account of this revolt.
There were numerous other native rebellions in colonial Mesoamerica. None
of them was successful for very long, and many never received widespread support.
Spaniards always maintained an advantage, since they controlled the weapons, and
punishment for rebels was always severe.SUGGESTED READINGS
BURKHART, LOUISEM. 1989 The Slippery Earth: Nahua-
Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
CHANCE, JOHNK. 1989 Conquest of the Sierra: Spaniards and
Indians in Colonial Oaxaca.Norman: University of Ok-
lahoma Press.
CLINE, S. L. 1986 Colonial Culhuacan, 1580–1600: A Social
History of an Aztec Town.Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press.
FARRISS, NANCYM. 1984 Maya Society under Colonial Rule:
The Collective Enterprise of Survival.Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press.
GOSNER, KEVIN 1992 Soldiers of the Virgin: The Moral Econ-
omy of a Colonial Maya Rebellion.Tucson: University of
Arizona Press.
GRUZINSKI, SERGE 1989 Man-Gods in the Mexican High-
lands: Indian Power and Colonial Society, 1520–1800.
Translated by Eileen Corrigan. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
HILL, ROBERTM. 1992 Colonial Cakchiquels.Fort Worth,
Texas: Harcourt.
JONES, GRANTD. 1989 Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule:
Time and History on a Colonial Frontier.Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press.