CHAPTER 5 THE COLONIAL PERIOD IN MESOAMERICA 217Native people who remained in the corporate communities faced an often di-
minishing resource base and onerous demands for tribute and labor. Their own of-
ficials sometimes ruled them unfairly. But they had the advantage of various support
structures that helped to ensure that, although they might share their neighbors’
poverty, they would be able at least to survive. Emotional ties within the community,
reinforced by marriage patterns, ritual kinship, and collective religious life, provided
a potent psychological armature that helped people to defend themselves against
pressures for assimilation to the dominant culture.
Legal protections granted to the native communities under colonial law—most
significant, the rights to their communal lands—gave them some economic security,
even though they often had to go to court to defend those rights. People who left their
communities merged into the burgeoning mass of Spanish speakers of mixed In-
dian, African, and Spanish descent; their children ceased to identify with Indian cul-
tures or to speak the native languages. After the end of the Colonial period, many
native towns also would gradually lose their indigenous character and merge into
the dominant mestizo or ladino society, a process that continues to the present day.
But where indigenous people do survive today, their colonial ancestors lived in these
corporate communities and engaged in the collective enterprise of survival that we
have described.NATIVE REBELLIONS
Native response to the imposition of Spanish colonial rule was never passive, and in
much of this chapter we have seen how Indians coped with Spanish domination in cre-
ative ways, holding on to elements of their pre-Hispanic heritage and adapting Span-
ish institutions to meet their own needs. But throughout the Colonial period, and
right up to the present day, native groups in many parts of Mesoamerica have openly
rebelled against authorities when their situations became intolerable. The following
are just a few examples of native revolts that took place during the Colonial period.
We saw in Chapter 4 that the Itza Maya of the Peten effectively resisted Spanish
rule until the closing years of the seventeenth century. East and northeast of Itza ter-
ritory, in the area that today makes up central and northern Belize, the Spaniards also
encountered strong Mayan resistance. This region initially came under Spanish con-
trol in the early 1540s, but local Mayas joined in a widespread revolt throughout the
Yucatán Peninsula in 1546 and 1547. The Spaniards were determined to maintain
control of the region, however, resettling rebellious Mayas into reducciónsettlements.
Again, in the 1630s, rebellions broke out, culminating in a major revolt in 1638 that
was orchestrated by the Indians of Tipu. Over the next forty years, Mayan commu-
nities were deserted, and the entire region was virtually free of Spanish control.
Spaniards regained control of the area in the late 1670s; but for a variety of reasons,
most of the Mayan population was moved to Lake Peten Itza following the Spanish
conquest of the Itza. The entire region eventually came under British control.
In the town of Tehuantepec (Oaxaca), an abusive Spanish alcalde mayorwas
stoned to death in 1660 by angry Zapotecs. The rebels burned municipal buildings