Translating Native Consent in the Spanish Empire: Maya Words and Agency in Sixteenth-Century Yucatan

Abstract

Building on two case studies, the article explores how the Maya caciques understood the concept of consent and made use of it in concrete political negotiations with the Spanish crown in sixteenth-century Yucatan, New Spain. It highlights that the analysis of translation practices is pivotal to unraveling the intricacies of inter-legal communication under imperial rule. Although part of the corpus analyzed in the article was originally written in the Maya Yucatec language, it can be viewed as the result of a process of translation in which two legal cultures were finding ways to be intelligible to one another. The article shows, moreover, that oral exchanges and nonverbal communication – through posture or clothing, and gift-giving – were also crucial in expressing consent in the Spanish empire. This article is part of the special theme section on Consenting to Early Modern Empires, guest-edited by Sonia Tycko.