Spanish Conquest of Guatemala - Guatemala Before The Conquest

Guatemala Before The Conquest

In the early 16th century the territory that now makes up Guatemala was divided into various competing polities, each locked in continual struggle with its neighbours. The most important were the K'iche', the Kaqchikel, the Tz'utujil, the Chajoma, the Mam, the Poqomam and the Pipil. All were Maya groups except for the Pipil, who were a Nahua group related to the Aztecs; the Pipil had a number of small city-states along the Pacific coastal plain of southern Guatemala and El Salvador. The Pipil of Guatemala had their capital at Itzcuintepec. The Xinca were another non-Maya group occupying the southeastern Pacific coastal area. The Maya had never been unified as a single empire, but by the time the Spanish arrived Maya civilization was thousands of years old and had already seen the rise and fall of great cities.

On the eve of the conquest the highlands of Guatemala were dominated by several powerful Maya states. In the centuries preceding the arrival of the Spanish the K'iche' had carved out a small empire covering a large part of the western Guatemalan Highlands and the neighbouring Pacific coastal plain. However, in the late 15th century the Kaqchikel rebelled against their former K'iche' allies and founded a new kingdom to the southeast with Iximche as its capital. In the decades before the Spanish invasion the Kaqchikel kingdom had been steadily eroding the kingdom of the K'iche'. Other highland groups included the Tz'utujil around Lake Atitlán, the Mam in the western highlands and the Poqomam in the eastern highlands.

The kingdom of the Itza was the most powerful polity in the Petén lowlands of northern Guatemala, centred on their capital Nojpetén, on an island in Lake Petén Itzá. The second polity in importance was that of their hostile neighbours, the Kowoj. The Kowoj were located to the east of the Itza, around the eastern lakes: Lake Salpetén, Lake Macanché, Lake Yaxhá and Lake Sacnab. Other groups are less well known and their precise territorial extent and political makeup remains obscure; among them were the Chinamita, the Kejache, the Icaiche, the Lacandon, the Mopan, the Manche Ch'ol and the Yalain. The Kejache occupied an area north of the lake on the route to Campeche, while the Mopan and the Chinamita had their polities in the southeastern Petén. The Manche territory was to the southwest of the Mopan. The Yalain had their territory immediately to the east of Lake Petén Itzá.