Human Agency Issues - Essay Example

As Clendinnen notes, the Mayans of Yucatan viewed the Spaniards as “threatening” (1987, p. 4). Thus, it was only natural for them to react with violence and resistance. However, while Mayan resistance did not last for long, consequently allowing the Spaniards to physically conquer them, the Mayans succeeded in a more peaceful way of resistance – through religion, language, and economy.

First, about religion, resistance is seen in the manner that the natives secretly preserved their old religion, while at the same time adopting Christian symbols (Clendinnen, 1987, p. 164). While the arrival of Franciscan Friars brought with them the goal of converting natives to Christianity (p. 44), this goal did not materialize in the manner that the friars predicted, such that conversion was only minimal. Thus, what resulted instead was a Mayan version of Christianity where natives held the belief that Jesus, with his Mayan lords, will return to the region to cleanse it of foreign influence (p. 185).

Second, Clendinnen frequently referred to a “confusion of tongues” which prevailed since the onset of the two cultures’ first encounter wherein a “strong evidence of...riddling messages, and deliberate and conscious endeavors to sustain their accounts of things” (p. 160) was deliberately carried out by the natives to keep Spanish comprehension of their “complex web of understanding” (p. 153) limited. Hence, communication not only became a problem for the Spaniards (p. 73); but they also had a limited understanding of Mayan warfare (pp. 7-11).

Last, the use of torture by the friars in forcing the conversion of the natives (p. 143) also lead to an economic resistance, where oppressed natives sought refuge from the encomenderos, who were themselves rivals of the friars (p. 82). Hence, placing the natives in a position where they can, at least potentially, threaten the stability of the economic system imposed by the Spaniards.

In this respect, one can understand how disempowered groups, such as the Mayans of Yucatan were able to affect their history and at least limit the foreign influence in their society. As noted by Frank Tannenbaum, the relationship between the conqueror and the conquered “has found expression in the partial blending of the two races, of their institutions, of their culture, and in the gradual absorption of the Spaniard by the Indian” (Tannenbaum, 1933, p. 4). Hence, illustrates that the oppressed, through the form of resistance they may take in preserving their traditional culture, can determine, although not consciously, the resulting conditions of colonialism.

Studying history from this perspective, however, yields important challenges for the historian. On one hand, they are still bound by the “confusion of tongues” which can affect understanding of the native’s perspective. Second, historians also face the problem of sources (pp. 165-189), such that as in the case of the Spanish and Mayan encounters, historical accounts of Mayan history by the natives themselves were destroyed instead of converted. Last, the reliability of the Spaniard conqueror’s account of these encounters can also be questioned (p. 137).