Abstract

CUNILL, Caroline. Seven Unpublished Letters from Yucatán: Private Communication between the Maya and the Spanish and Illegal Exploitation of Indigo in the 16th Century. Estud. cult. maya [online]. 2015, vol.45, pp.91-120. ISSN 0185-2574.

The present paper examines a group of letters that Mayas and Spaniards exchanged in sixteenth century Yucatán. These missives have survived because the Defensor de Indios Francisco Palomino joined them, as proof documents, to a memorial he sent to the king of Spain in 1576 in order to denounce the excessive and illegal use that the Yucatecan colonists made of Maya workers in the indigo plant's production. This group of seven letters offers the incomparable opportunity to better understand one of the historical fields of more difficult access, the private written communication in the Spanish Empire. This notable interest is reinforced by the fact that five of those letters were addressed to indigenous governors, so that one of the paper's objectives will consist in highlight the modalities of epistolary communication between Mayas and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatán.

Keywords : private communication; colonial discourse; mayas; Yucatán.

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