A Seventeenth Century Poqomchi’ (Mayan) Dictionary and Dominican Evangelizing Tradition in Highland Guatemala

Abstract

One of the first written sources containing information about the Poqomchi’ language (Mayan family, Guatemala) is the trilingual Poqomchi’-Spanish-Latin dictionary dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its author was a Dominican missionary, Dionisio de Zúñiga, although his work is based on earlier dictionaries of his predecessors. This paper analyses Zúñiga’s dictionary in the context of Dominican evangelizing tradition. Whereas the descriptions of certain lexical entries prove that the author was familiar with the culture and customs of the Poqomchi’ people, some other terms, specifically those denoting pre-Columbian deities and native religious concepts, seem to be derived from earlier missionary texts including Domingo de Vico’s famous Theologia Indorum. These intertextualities confirm the intellectual continuity among Dominican missionaries in Highland Guatemala during the early colonial period.