1522 - Conquest and Early Settlement
Discovered by Spain at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century and like all the other countries conquered by those adventurers, converted to the fanatical religious creed which predominated in the Middle Ages, her soil became the theater of horrible and bloody deeds which gave the absolute dominion over the lands to those audacious warriors, who subjected the poor Indians — the real and lawful owners — to poverty and the exactions of brutal force which served as the only and supreme law of the land.
In 1522 Pedro de Alvarado, the Spanish authority in the southwest Mexican province of Oaxaca, sent agents to scout out Guatemala. In 1523 Hernán Cortés, the viceroy of New Spain. sent Alvarado to conquer the region. Various authors disagree on the number of troops commanded by Alvarado; the number of Spaniards cited varies between 300 and 450, while their Mexican auxiliaries are variously estimated at 200 to “ several thousand".
Although the Spaniards and their allies were considerably outnumbered by the local armies they faced, the superiority conferred by their horses and firearms gave them easy victories. Combining military superiority with a diplomacy consisting principally of treachery and ruthless cruelty, Alvarado soon subdued the native inhabitants of the region.
The initial conquest was concluded by July 1524, and Alvarado established a capital which he called Santiago de los Caballeros. The capital, still retaining that name, was moved twice. The second site is known today as Ciudad Vieja; the third one. as Antigua Guatemala. The capital remained at Antigua Guatemala until it was leveled by an earthquake in 1773, whereupon present-day Guatemala City was built a short distance to the east.
The Indians were still not completely subdued, however, and a series of revolts and pacification campaigns ensued. Alvarado was distracted by political maneuvers to get himself named adelantado (governor) of Guatemala, which necessitated visits to Mexico and Spain. Things were handled badly by one or another of his brothers, left in charge during his absences. who were excessively zealous in enslaving the Indians.
They also tried to accumulate supplies of gold and engaged in illegal traffic in land titles. Alvarado himself passed a time in Cortés' jail. accused of financial irregularities. Finally, at the end of 1527, King Charles V made Alvarado governor and captain-general of Guatemala, holding the rank of adelantado. Alvarado served only intermittently as governor, frequently taking time off to engage in adventures designed to bring him greater wealth and fame, most of which ended badly. He finally met his end in battle in Mexico in 1541.
By 1527 Spanish rule in Guatemala and El Salvador was secure except for the province of Tezulutlán. whose inhabitants were called Rabinal. Guatemala was a captaincy general with its own governor, although it was still subordinate to the viceroyalty of New Spain. At first the territory of Guatemala included present-day El Salvador but not the other Central American provinces. Nicaragua was ruled from Panama, and Honduras from Hispaniola. In 1544, however, all of Cen tral America, from Panama north through the present-day Mexican states of Chiapas, Yucatán, and Tabasco, was constituted as an audiencia, with its capital at Gracias in Honduras. In 1549 the capital was moved to Santiago de los Caballeros, the site of present-day Antigua Guatemala.
Initially, the conquering Spanish soldiers were allotted encomiendas (tracts of land) together with numbers of Indian laborers. Under the encomienda system. the owners (encomenderos) were given the labor of the Indians and effective control over their lives in return for the guardianship of their souls; that is, they undertook to convert the Indians and to maintain the forms of Christian worship among them.
Under the New Laws of 1542 (actually promulgated on 01 May 1543 ), no further encomiendas were to be given, although those already existing would be maintained ; Indians who had already been enslaved would remain slaves, but no Indians thenceforth would be enslaved. Indians were to be considered vassals of the king of Spain. They were to have the legal rights granted to any individual and could not be forced to labor against their will. These laws were neither rigorously observed nor enforced. Nevertheless, they represented a remarkable victory for the belief that the Indian was a human being with a soul and human rights. This was the view that had been urged by the great Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas in his published treatise “ De Unico Vocationis Modo " and in his book Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, an exposé of outrages committed against the Indians in the course of the conquest.
Las Casas, who was appointed bishop of Chiapas in 1536, accepted the challenge to prove his nonviolent methods in practice. and the Dominicans undertook the peaceful conversion of the Rabinal. an Indian people who had defeated successive Spanish attempts at conquest. Preaching the gospel in the language of the Indians, the Dominicans made good their undertaking to convert the Rabinal within five years and to bring them peacefully under Spanish authority. In recognition of this extraordinary accomplishment, the area they inhabited, Tezulutlán. was renamed Verapaz, meaning “ true peace.
Indians who had not been enslaved or assigned to encomiendas before the New Laws were promulgated were resettled in villages where they were liable to tribute and were expected to attend Christian services but were otherwise left to rule themselves. Nevertheless, the Indians later revolted and killed the Spanish friars, and this in turn prompted another conquest. A series of administrative changes culminated in 1570 with the establishment of a new audiencia of Guatemala, the territory of which was decreased by the subtraction of Panama to the south and Tabasco and Yucatán to the north. That is. it covered present-day Central America plus the present-day Mexican state of Chiapas.
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