Abstract

CUNILL, Caroline. Claiming Identity Through the Uses of the Word “Maya” in an Unpublished Letter in Yucatec Maya Language of the Sixteenth-Century. Estud. cult. maya [online]. 2022, vol.60, pp.167-185.  Epub Nov 14, 2022. ISSN 0185-2574.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ecm.60.23x00s705.

At the beginning of the 1580s, some Maya caciques of Yucatan sent to King Philip II a letter asking him the future bishop of the province to be Franciscan and a group of religious from the same Order to be sent to the peninsula in order to consolidate the evangelization of Native people. The letter was written in Yucatec maya and was translated into Castilian by the interpreter Juan Ruiz de la Vega. The record, which remains unpublished until today, completes the restricted corpus of sixteenth century texts written in Yucatec maya and, for that same reason, it has an exceptional historical value. The present article offers a linguistic and philological analysis of both the maya text and its translation. It aims at highlighting that the term “maya” was used in the letter to emphasize the native linguistic and cultural identity. We also demonstrate that the interpreter intended to minimize the expression of this revendication in its translation.

Keywords : language; identity; Maya; translation; Colonial Yucatan.

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