192 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
Opposed to this majority opinion was the more radical position taken by Bar-
tolomé de Las Casas and some of his fellow Dominicans. As discussed in Chapter 4,
Las Casas believed that the end, Christian evangelization, did not justify the means:
violent conquest. Missionaries should do their work without the assistance of invad-
ing armies. Las Casas convinced Charles V to allow him to try out his program in
Tuzulutlan, an as yet unconquered area of Guatemala. During the 1540s he and
other Dominicans succeeded in bringing the area under Spanish control without
military intervention, while introducing Christianity among the indigenous peoples.
In recognition of the Dominicans’ achievement, Charles changed the region’s name
from Tuzulutlan, which means “the land of war,” to Verapaz, or “true peace.” He
granted the Dominicans full administrative authority over this district, which for the
next three centuries remained a theocratic ministate operating within the larger
colony.
The situation in Verapaz was an extreme example of a pattern that emerged
throughout colonial Mesoamerica: an alliance between the religious orders and the
native communities. This is one dimension of a colonial political scene that was far
more complex than a simple struggle of Spaniards against Indians. The ties that
bound friars and Indians to one another were often phrased in terms of kinship,
with the friars represented as stern but compassionate fathers to their innocent but
oft-misguided Indian children. This terminology helped to obscure what was in re-
ality a relationship of mutual dependence. The Indians fed and clothed the friars,
built their convents and churches, and provided a power base to back up the friars’
various political intrigues, many of which, such as a campaign to prevent the eccle-
siastical hierarchy from forcing the Indians to pay tithes, benefited both friars and
Indians.
The friars taught the native nobles to read and write and to master the forms of
rhetoric with which they could petition Crown or Council on their own behalf. Since
they sometimes petitioned for more friars, or to prevent friars from being removed
from their communities, such skills worked also to the friars’ advantage. The friars
trained commoners to exploit the new tools and technologies introduced from Eu-
rope, to the frustration of Spanish artisans who had hoped to monopolize these in-
dustries. They acted as advocates and interpreters before the colonial government.
Sometimes the friars resorted to corporal punishment to impose their will, and oc-
casionally they were guilty of economic and sexual exploitation, but far less frequently
than other Spaniards, including the secular clergy. It is no wonder that the native peo-
ple, shrewdly appraising the friars as the best friends they were likely to find among
the emigrants from Europe, welcomed their presence.
But what about conversion? Did the Indians become Christians? Perhaps the
best answer to that question is both “yes” and “no.” Yes, they were baptized, almost
all of them within a few decades after their particular territory had been brought
under Spanish rule. Yes, they participated in Christian worship and eventually came
to think of themselves as Christian people who no longer worshipped the gods of their
ancestors. Yes, Christian churches replaced the old temples as the centers of com-
munity religious life (Figure 5.4). Yes, they were sincerely devoted to the sacred be-
ings of Catholic Christianity: Christ, the Virgin Mary, the various saints.