Starving for a Conquest: Maya Forest Networks, Parasitic Conquistadors, and the Creation of Two Yucatans, 1517–50

In the early sixteenth century, Europeans and Mayas encountered one another in the tropical forests on the Yucatan Peninsula. By the middle of the sixteenth century, conquistadors claimed they had conquered Yucatan, yet tens of thousands of Mayas continued to live autonomously throughout the majority of the geographic area of the peninsula for the entirety of the early modern period. Until now, the process of conquest and colonization in the lowlands has always been framed as a human story. This paper explores how the ecologies of the tropical lowlands played an integral role in early contact with the Yucatan Peninsula. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Mayas used mobile, yet firmly rooted networks to thrive within the tapestry of tropical arboreal ecosystems. Spanish conquistadors were ignorant of the intricate relationships necessary to sustain themselves within these ecologies and fell quickly into starvation whenever they entered the tropical forests. The Mayas easily exploited their vulnerability. To survive, the invaders turned to what I define as parasitic violence, as well as Indigenous slavery, to gain entry to the Maya forest, but the routes of invasion took them away from the heart of the woodlands. Though colonization was devastating for Maya communities, tropical forest relationships also favored their autonomy, continuity, and dominance. Spanish enthusiasm, on the other hand, floundered in mud, thickets, and clouds of mosquitoes—a product of their inability to create a settled tropical “neo-Europe” out of its parasitic foundation. But to claim a conquest had in fact occurred, the Spaniards moved the goalposts. They described a “colonial” north and an “uninhabited” south. It is a false conception that reflects the Indigenous ecological power throughout the early modern period.