CHILAM BALAM “PROPHECIES” AND THE SPANISH INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF YUCATAN

Abstract

There are some rather famous passages from the Books of Chilam Balam that are known as “prophecies” attributed to five ah kins, the ritual specialists and diviners who interpreted the words of the gods in sixteenth-century Yucatan Ralph Roys refers to a set of these “prophecies” in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel as the “Prophecies of a new religion.” New translations and analyses of these, and related texts, reveal that the ah kins were contemporary cohorts from neighboring polities in the western and northern peninsula and that their leader was the famous Chilam Balam from the town of Maní. Together they exhorted their ancient enemy, the Itza Maya, to accept the new religion that the Spaniards were bringing and to welcome the “bearded guests” from the east. In order to understand why the western and northern Maya would make such pronouncements, this article re-examines the Spanish invasion and occupation of Yucatan and finds that in the years prior to the Landa inquisition trials there was good reason for the Maya to make alliance with and to collaborate with the Spaniards and the Franciscan missionaries.