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Conquest and Population: Maya Demography in Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

W. George Lovell  and
Christopher H. Lutz
W. George Lovell
Affiliation:
Queens University, Canada
Christopher H. Lutz
Affiliation:
Plumsock Mesoamerican Studies, Vermont
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How many Mayas are there? That deceptively simple question has seldom met with an unqualified answer, especially in Guatemala, where both question and answer invariably trigger ideological positions that are not easily reconciled. The Columbus Quincentenary in 1992, the year a Maya woman, Rigoberta Menchú, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, offered a timely juncture for reflecting on the matter. In this research note, we chart from the eve of conquest to the present the collapse and eventual recovery of an Indian population that today numbers more than twice as many as it did at European contact, a trajectory of survival experienced by few other Native American populations. The figures we examine are the best we could find, although none of them should be considered definitive. Moreover, they all indicate an Indian presence without ever being clear or consistent as to whom the definition applies. These figures are displayed in table 1. Any figure contemplated must also be appreciated in relation to the sources and methodology of its calculation. Discussion of this issue, however, we have kept to a minimum. Our aim is to summarize the salient features of a complex demographic situation in the hope of shedding light on an enduring Maya presence, one that increasingly challenges traditional notions of what a Guatemalan nation-state should be and on what terms Maya peoples contained within it should live (Cojtí Cuxil 1991; Smith 1990, 1991).

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , 1994 , pp. 133 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this research note was presented at the panel entitled “500 Years of Guatemalan Mayan Resistance: A Dialogue between Maya and Non-Maya Scholars,” held at the meetings of the Latin American Studies Association in Los Angeles, California, 23–26 September 1992. We thank session organizers Enrique Sam Colop and Alan Le Baron as well as fellow participants for their involvement and interaction. David McCreery provided a couple of additional statistics and especially helpful commentary on our first draft. We thank Elisabeth Siruček and Judy Walker for secretarial assistance. The financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is appreciated. Our interest in Central American population history will be indulged at length in Demography and Empire, an annotated bibliography to be published by Westview Press.

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