Maya Maps As a Colonial Cosmology: The Emergence of Cartographic Discourse in Early Colonial Yucatán

From the first moments of contact, Yucatec Maya cartographic documents have played an integral role in intercultural negotiations between Spanish administrative authorities and indigenous communities. Given the novelty of this pictorial genre, native artists effectively invented a cartographic tradition, using a seemingly benign compositional form, the circle, a composition that defines Maya mapping from this time period.  Rather than an arbitrary choice, this composition appears to have been directly derived from literary tropes found in Pre-Columbian cosmogonic narratives, stories that effectively functioned as a mental template for Maya pictorial renderings of their landscape, geography and ultimately their universe.  As such, colonial Maya maps inhabited the conflictive domain of colonial interaction, overtly satisfying Spanish dictates and simultaneously allowing Maya communities to maintain community identity amid the violence of colonization.