Pre-Conquest Ah Kinob in a Colonial World: The Extirpation of Idolatry and the Survival of the Maya Priesthood in Colonial Yucatán, 1563–1697

This paper examines the continued worship of the traditional Maya deities during the colonial period and the Church’s attempt to subvert practices they termed as “idolatrous.”  The continued cult of Maya deities depended to a large part on the survival, in one form or another, of the Maya priesthood.   Ritual specialists who could read the codices and interpret their sacred texts, and idol makers who knew how to make the images of their gods remained important proponents of the perpetuation of the native cult.  Many scholars argue that the Maya priesthood became quickly extinct after the conquest.  However, the documentary evidence points to the survival of a highly intricate and hierarchical “Maya priesthood” long into the colonial period.  The Maya priesthood, collectively called the Ah Kinob, continued to openly lead resistance to Spanish Catholicism and the friars’ missionary efforts into the later 17th century. The surviving Maya priesthood, in some instances, formed an underground religious “network” complete with head-priests, minor officiating district priests and even idol cult fraternities with lesser religious officials in charge of the care and maintenance of the gods’ images.  Despite the endless efforts of the clergy to extirpate Maya “idolatry,” this paper will examine the documentary evidence and show that traditional Maya religious specialists survived well into the colonial period.