The Spanish conquest of Mexico would not have been possible without
the
participation of native warriors and African slaves. There were
as many
Africans as Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan. During three centuries
of
Spanish colonial rule in Yucatan, the peninsula was home both to the
native
Maya and to a growing African and Free-Colored population. Only
recently
have scholars started to study the colonial era Maya extensively using
source documents in Yucatec Mayan. Historians have almost completely
ignored Afro-Yucatecans and how they interacted with both the Spanish
and
the Maya. Dr. Restall described some of the hurdles that scholars
must
overcome to both find useful data on this neglected group and to tease
information from it. He was able to document profound shifts
in the place
of origin of Yucatecan Black population in the 18ty century, and challenged
some of the traditional notions of hostility between Maya and Africans
during the Caste Wars.
Matthew Restall was educated at Oxford and UCLA. He is currently
Professor
of Latin American History, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies and Co-Director
of Latin American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.
He
specializes in colonial Yucatan and Mexico, Maya history, the Spanish
Conquest, and Africans in Spanish America. Since 1995 he has
published
thirty articles and essays and six books, including The Maya World
(Stanford, 1997), Maya Conquistador (Beacon, 1998), and Seven Myths
of the
Spanish Conquest (Oxford, 2003). He received NEH Fellowships
for 1997-1998
and 2001-2002 and a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2003-2004 to write a
history
of Afro-Yucatecans. This year, Seven Myths will be released in
Spanish and
Portuguese, and two new books will appear: an edited volume titled
Beyond
Black and Red, and a co-edited volume, Mesoamerican Voices.