Pachecos entrada

Pachecos entrada
Part of the Spanish conquest of Yucatán
La conquista by Castro Pacheco, 1974
Date 1543–1544, or 1544 (1544) Location Southern Maya Lowlands 17°42′N 88°30′W / 17.7°N 88.5°W / 17.7; -88.5 Result Spanish victory Territorial changes Uaymil, Chetumal and Dzuluinicob annexed to Spanish Yucatan as Bacalar district
Belligerents
Uaymil Chetumal Dzuluinicob Mopan Manche Ch'ol	New Spain Spanish Yucatan
Commanders and leaders
Unknown	Gaspar Pacheco Melchor Pacheco Alonso Pacheco Rodrigo Álvarez Juan Gómez de la Camasa
Strength
unknown	25 to 30 infantry
Casualties and losses
many killed wounded unknown very many displaced many settlements destroyed	< 10 killed wounded unknown

The Pachecos entrada was a Spanish military expedition against Postclassic Maya polities of the Southern Maya Lowlands, on the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, in what is now Belize and Quintana Roo, Mexico, in 1543 to 1544, or in 1544, during the Spanish conquest of Yucatán. It was commissioned by adelantado and governor Francisco de Montejo in early 1543, and led by conquistadors Gaspar, Melchor and Alonso Pacheco of new-found Mérida, in northern Yucatán. The military offensive resulted in the defeat of Uaymil, Chetumal, Dzuluinicob, Mopan and Manche Ch'ol, and in the annexation of the first three to Spanish Yucatán as Bacalar district, a subdivision of Yucatán ruled by the new cabildo of Salamanca de Bacalar, on Lake Bacalar. Maya residents of conquered polities were thereby made tributary slaves in encomiendas of Bacalar, and were allotted to expeditioners who settled Salamanca as vecinos in 1544. Except for the forceful repression of the Great Maya Revolt of 1546 to 1547, this entrada is considered the closing campaign of the 16th-century phase of the conquest of the Maya Lowlands, which extended to the 17th century with the Spanish conquest of Petén. The expedition is most noted in historical and Mayanist scholarship for its sweeping mass killings, which were deemed excessive even by Spanish contemporaries, and led to runaway demographic collapse of the Maya populace in Bacalar.

The opening leg of the Pachecos entrada involved a scorched earth and guerrilla defence by Uaymil and Chetumal, which the Spanish eventually overcame with the aforesaid indiscriminate attacks, possibly begun in an effort to stave off famine or a war of attrition. This prong further resulted in famine or famine-like conditions in the already war-torn Cochuah, just north of Uaymil, after the Pachecos requisitioned too much of the locals' foodstuffs, and impressed too many of them. The second and closing leg of the entrada is poorly understood, but is thought to have been successful against Dzuluinicob, Mopan and Manche Ch'ol. In the ensuing years of the 1540s, Bacalar vecinos were barred from the last two of these polities, following a protest by the Dominican friars who ruled Verapaz, in Spanish Guatemala. In addition, the Pachecos were convicted of crimes against Indians for their indiscriminate mass killings, and ordered to pay restitution, following calls for their criminal prosecution by Franciscan friars and vecinos of Mérida.

Background

The conquistadors who first settled Spanish Cuba in the 1510s were the first Spanish colonists to turn their attention to the conquest of the Postclassic polities (kuchkabals) of the Maya Lowlands in the Yucatan Peninsula, lying west of Cuba. This first occurred in early 1517, when the Cordoba expedition by Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba returned to the island with news of vast lands (Yucatan) dotted with rich and splendid cities, previously unknown to the Spanish. The thrilling reports prompted the Grijalva and Cortes expeditions in 1518 and 1519, respectively, but the Cubans were soon rather engrossed in the conquest of the Aztec Empire, thus leaving the lowlands' subjugation for a later time.

On 8 November 1526, conquistador Francisco de Montejo secured a capitulacion ('letters patent') from the Spanish crown naming him adelantado of Yucatan, whereby he was authorised to conquer the lowland kuchkabals by force, annex their territory to the recently-founded New Spain, and settle and rule the colony so established (Spanish Yucatan). The adelantado thus kicked off the said conquest by personally leading an entrada to the northern and eastern parts of the peninsula in mid-1527, including to the southeastern provinces of Uaymil and Chetumal. The named polities did not cede victory though, and so required a further entrada to the southeast, though this one likewise failed to defeat them by 1533.

By the early 1540s then, the western, northern and northeastern lowland kuchkabals had been conquered and thus annexed to Spanish Yucatan as the distritos ('districts') of the Campeche, Merida and Valladolid villas ('Spanish settlements'), respectively. With the exception of inland polities in the central lowlands (like the Peten Itza kingdom), this left only the southeastern provinces up for conquest by the said period, namely Uaymil, Chetumal, Dzuluinicob, Mopan and Manche Ch'ol.

Entrada

In April 1543, Montejo commissioned Gaspar Pacheco to lead an entrada to the southeastern lowlands, to conquer coastal kuchkabals from Ascension Bay down to Golfo Dulce, which is to say, from Uaymil south to Manche Ch'ol. Pacheco thus recruited 25 to 30 vecinos of Merida as infantry for the campaign, and named his son Melchor his second-in-command, and his nephew Alonso Pacheco third-in-command.

The Spanish expeditioners set out on foot from Merida in late 1543 or early 1544. Upon marching through the former Cochuah kuchkabal, Pacheco requisitioned provisions and impressed locals to forcibly join as his Indian auxiliaries, much to the dismay of the war-stricken populace, who were thereby reduced to famine, or to famine-like conditions at a minimum. They next crossed into Uaymil and "began one of the bloodiest campaigns, and certainly the cruelest, of the entire conquest" of Yucatan, in the words of Carnegie Institution of Washington historian Robert S. Chamberlain. At this point though, the expeditionary leader was stricken ill, and thus forced to retreat to Merida, such that command now fell to Melchor Pacheco, whose second-in-command was his cousin Alonso.

Concurrent with the entrada's southerly march, however, Uaymil and neighbouring Chetumal had somehow gotten word of their impending arrival, as their authorities had apparently resolved to totally oppose the conquistadors with scorched earth and guerrilla warfare. As such, when the Spanish arrived at Uaymil and then Chetumal, time and again they came upon deserted settlements, barricaded thoroughfares and torched farms and orchards. This latter tactic soon proved trying for each side though, as the Maya and the Spanish both were equally forced to hunt and forage for their sustenance, thus drawing out what was meant to be a quick shock and awe campaign, which thereby threatened to devolve into a war of attrition. Faced with such dire straits, the Pachecos now "deliberately resorted to wanton acts of cruelty of a kind of which the Montejos and their other principal captains were seldom, if ever guilty", according to Chamberlain. Consequently, the Spanish expeditioners reportedly began indiscriminately mass killing Maya men, women and children, regardless of combat status, in increasingly brutal ways. According to later Spanish records, they started killing "many" or "numbers" of people by beating them to death with garrotes, by drowning them in bodies of water, by setting perros de guerra ('war dogs') on them, or by slowly maiming or wounding them until their bodies gave out. Typical tactics purportedly included sicking dogs until victims were dead and their bodies mutilated; severing the hands, ears and noses of "many" people; severing women's breasts, tying gourds to their feet, and drowning them in lagoons; and tying prisoners to stakes, then loosing arrows and flogging them, over and over, in such a manner as to not immediately kill them, until they died of "natural" causes.

As said terror campaign dragged on, an apparently alarmed Rodrigo Alvarez, entrada recruit and former secretary to Montejo the Younger, "sought to persuade the Indians of Uaymil-Chetumal to accept Spanish dominion peacefully, but without the slightest success". Alvarez had previously been back to Cochuah to commandeer further food and supplies, possibly in a bid to facilitate a decisive Spanish victory, but "his efforts to obtain supplies without the use of force failed completely". At about the same time, Montejo the Younger and the Nephew both learnt of the ongoing indiscriminate mass killings, and reportedly tried to put a stop to them. The Pachecos evidently did not heed the Montejos though, and did not lawfully have to, as the latter lacked formal authority to give the former orders. In a similar vein, Chamberlain is of the opinion that the said "wanton acts of cruelty" would have been prevented or at least curtailed by either the adelantado or clergymen, but the former was elsewhere occupied, and so likely not even aware of the Pachecos' excesses, whereas the latter had not even been recruited, or else had declined to join the entrada.

In the end though, the Pachecos won out, as either the said campaign or else attrition itself "finally brought the Maya of Uaymil-Chetumal to their knees and the Spaniards to mastery of the province" in 1544. And so, Melchor founded a Spanish villa, christened Salamanca de Bacalar, on the banks of Lake Bacalar in former Uaymil, and forcibly resettled Maya survivors in reduccion villages and towns around it, thereby establishing the Bacalar district. He appointed the inaugural cabildo, designated twenty surviving conquistadors as vecinos of the villa, and allotted the new-found district's reduccion settlements as encomiendas to the same. According to cronista de Indias Diego Lopez de Cogolludo, "once the settlement was founded, the Conquistadors who had not been made vecinos returned to the City of Merida and debriefed their General [Gaspar Pacheco] on what happened, thereby ushering in a period of greater tranquilty [in Bacalar]; according to Bachiller Valencia, this took place towards the end of 1545".

At some uncertain point in 1544, the Pachecos pushed south of Chetumal to Golfo Dulce, across Dzuluinicob, Mopan and Manche Ch'ol territory. When exactly this occurred, and what exactly this entailed, however, is not clear. For Dzuluinicob in particular, whether the said polity was successfully conquered during this southern prong of the entrada, or not, is still an open question. According to University College London Mayanist Elizabeth A. Graham, its capital Tipu "does not appear on a [Bacalar] tribute list for 1544, but is recorded as an already established encomienda town in 1568, which indicates that it had functioned as part of an encomienda for some time. This, plus what is now [in 2011] known about the extent of the Pacheco conquest, suggests strongly that Tipu was brought into the encomienda system not long after the Pacheco conquest".

Aftermath

The Pachecos entrada ultimately met their objectives, but only did so at great cost to both sides, as the precipitous collapse of the Maya population in former Uaymil and Chetumal left relatively few tributary slaves for vecinos' encomiendas in the new Bacalar district. The said kuchkabals had reportedly been heavily settled and wealthy, and so had naturally been expected to make for a thriving Spanish district upon conquest, but Bacalar remained an impoverished and sparsely-peopled outpost of Spanish Yucatan up to Spanish American independence in the 19th century. From 1544 to 1639, Salamanca itself only ever averaged a total population of 75, counting both Spanish vecinos and Maya servants in naboría ('household slaves'). According to Chamberlain and Graham, upon the villa's founding, "large numbers" of Maya survivors would likely have fled to nearby Maya territory in the central lowlands, closer to the unconquered Peten Itza kingdom, "in an attempt to place themselves beyond Spanish reach forever".

Sometime soon after 1544, the Dominican friars, including Bartolome de las Casas, who then governed Verapaz, in Spanish Guatemala, submitted a formal protest to the Real Audiencia de los Confines and Spanish crown, opposing the southern leg of the Pachecos entrada (to Golfo Dulce). The Dominicans claimed jurisdiction over Mopan and Manche Ch'ol territory, which abutted Verapaz, but adelantado Montejo (and thus the Pachecos) did so too. Eventually, the audiencia and crown ruled in favour of the friars, and definitively barred non-Dominicans from settling the area around the said gulf, thus bringing the entrada's efforts there (whatever they had been) to naught.

In the meantime, in Merida, Franciscan friars and some vecinos, having learnt of the Pachecos' "wanton cruelties" and been evidently scandalised by the reports reaching them, likewise petitioned the Spanish crown, asking that the said expeditionary leaders be criminally prosecuted. And so, by the late 1540s, a criminal case was opened, and the Pachecos charged, tried and convicted in the Council of the Indies, by promotor fiscal ('prosecutor') Villalobos. In a 1 June 1549 real cedula to the Audiencia de los Confines, the council announced that they had found the accused guilty "of robbing and killing and mistreating the native Indian men and women of those lands, who were at peace and serving the Christian Spaniards. By force and against their will they stabbed many and cut off the hands and noses of men ... and tied them to stakes and shot arrows at them until they died of natural causes. And they committed many cruelties and robberies not seen nor heard of heretofore". Consequently, the Pachecos were ordered to compensate surviving relatives of their victims 100,000 castellanos de oro. Melchor Pacheco, in particular, was singled out, as he was further stripped of his encomienda in Bacalar district.

Legacy

The Pachecos entrada is today most discussed in historical and Mayanist literature, where it is commonly noted for its indiscriminate mass killings, deemed excessive even by Spanish standards of the day. Chamberlain typifies scholarly views in saying, "The only campaign [of the conquest of Yucatan] which was accompanied by systematic ruthlessness of a wholly wanton nature was that of Gaspar Pacheco, his son Melchor and his nephew Alonso in Uaymil-Chetumal ... This conquest was one of extreme excesses. The natives, who resisted stubbornly, were slaughtered without mercy and the province was laid to waste. Many of those of the natives who succeeded in escaping fled beyond Castilian control. Relatively heavily peopled at the outset, the area became largely depopulated ... The reduction of Uaymil-Chetemal as contrasted with that of the remainder of the peninsula makes clear in striking fashion the manner in which differences in the characters and purposes of the conquistadores could determine the nature and methods of conquest".

The entrada's disrepute, however, dates to the 1540s. An often cited missive to Philip II by Franciscan friar Lorenzo de Bienvenida, dated Merida, 10 February 1548, is thought to have been representative of contemporary Spanish views on the matter. In it, Bienvenida informs the then-Prince of Asturias as follows.

As Your Highness is aware, the adelantado assigned a captaincy to Gaspar Pacheco, vecino of this city, about three and a half years ago, to conquer certain provinces of the Golfo Dulce, which lie between Honduras and Guatimala and this land. But due to this captain's poor command, he halted [his southerly march] in a pacified province called Cochua, the largest and even best of this land, about thirty leguas distant. There were many people here; they had been divided in repartimiento amongst this city's vecinos. They depleted the natives' stores of food, plundered the province and took tamemes [tlamemehs]. Since the Indian men fled to the bush for fear of the Spaniards, they took the women. And so died of hunger the majority of the Indians, such that the captain was unable to carry on for want of tamemes. He therefore came back, and gave the captaincy to a nephew of his, named Alonsso Pacheco. Nero was not more cruel than this man. He marched onwards and reached a province called Chetemal, which was at peace. And even though its natives did not wage war, he pillaged it and consumed the foodstuffs of the natives. They fled to the bush, fearing the Spanish, because as soon as he captured any of them, he set the dogs on them. And the Indians fled from all of this, and did not sow their crops, and all died of hunger. I say all, because there used to be settlements of five hundred and one thousand houses, and now a settlement of a hundred is large. This province was also rich in cacao. This captain, with his own hands, committed outrages: he killed many with the garrote, saying 'oh how well I've hit them!' He would cut the breasts off many women and the hands off men, and noses and ears, and tie them to stakes. And to the women, he would tie gourds to their feet and throw them into lagoons to drown, merely to amuse himself. He committed other great cruelties, which for want of space I leave out. He destroyed all of the province. The Spaniards there founded a villa of eight vecinos, called Salamanca, a scant settlement, with neither cleric nor a church. The vecinos there do not even confess, since the villa is sixty leguas from this city. If he had not destroyed the province, it would have supported thirty vecinos. And for his cruelties they sent this captain back to the province he destroyed, and gave him its best Indians, which is no small reward. Such is the justice rendered in this land.

See also

• Tipu rebellion – in Bacalar district in 1638
• Fall of Nojpeten – last Maya polity conquered in 1697
• Guatemalan genocide – latest anti-Maya atrocities in Yucatan in the 1960s to 1990s
• List of Indian massacres in North America

Notes and references