1 - Histomesoamericana

INTRODUCTION XÍX
The Itza took their prophecies very seriously indeed. One group which
had fled south after the fall of Mayapan and resettled at Tayasal on Lake
Peten rejected as calendrically premature the efforts of Cortés in 13 Ahau
(1539) and of Fuensálida and Órbita in 3 Ahau (1618) to Christianize them.
But when the appropriate katun 8 Ahau approached (1697-1717) they
knew the time was right, and in 1695 they sent an embassy to Merida to
ask the governor to convert them. Obliging with their usual obtuse alacrity,
the Spaniards arrived before 8 Ahau began and forced the Indians into
armed opposition. But true to the prophecy it was in 8 Ahau that Tayasal
was conquered. (For a detailed documentation of this event, see Bricker
1981.)
In 1752, five years before the end of katun 4 Ahau, the Itza resolved
upon another calendrical revision. It happened that in that year the name
day of the katun fell on the second day of the Mayan year. Furthermore,
the Itza cycle was due to end two katuns later, in 13 Ahau, with apocalyptic
implications. The priests calculated that, if they redefined the
katun as a period of twenty-four years instead of twenty tuns, they could
always celebrate the seating of the katun on its eve, on the Mayan new
year. If they further redefined the cycle [may] as twenty-four such katuns
beginning from the 11 Ahau of the conquest, it would not end until 2088,
a distinct advantage over surrendering legitimacy in 1776. Katun 4 Ahau
was therefore reseated in 1752, hence lasting for thirty-nine years, and
Valladolid (Zaciapan) was made the seat of the new cycle and also the seat
of katun 2 Ahau (1776-1800). Just as the Mayapan calendar of 1539 adjusted
Mayan terminal dating to Mexican initial dating, the Valladolid
calendar of 1752 adjusted the Mayan calendar to the Julian one. The cost
was the final abandonment of the true katun and hence of the Classic
Mayan Long Count dating (see the appendix).
Despite the brilliance of the Valladolid calendar, there may well have
been Mayas, including Itzas, who remained uneasy about 13 Ahau, the
traditional end of the Itza cycle. One such may be responsible for the
aberrant fifty-two-year calendar of chapter 41, which appears to have been
designed in 1758 and may be identified with Coba. It retains the yearbearers
of the Mayapan calendar but alters their numeral coefficients by
twenty-one years (presumably the twenty-one years between the beginning
of 4 Ahau in 1737 and the writing of chapter 41 in 1758). There is no
evidence that this calendar was adopted by anyone but its author. Other
similar experiments occurred sporadically in Mayan history: see the
twenty-eight-year cycle of the early seventeenth century (lines 3531 ff.). A
further experiment of this type may be implied by the marginal notes to
chapter 24, probably added in 9 Ahau (1848-1872), which give Type I
yearbearers and an ecclesiastical calendar attuned to the Gregorian one
(see the appendix and Satterthwaite 1965).
The final chapter of the Tizimin continues to identify itself as Itza in
the very last line. But this is a new Itza cycle that is initiated in 1824—or
so its author appears to believe. It claims the mantle of all the gods, the
privilege of prophetic vision, the tradition of the Spokesmen of the Jaguar
Priest of the katun, and the aegis of the 4 Gods, yearbearers and rain
giants of the four directions. It honors Mayapan and Christianity. And it
predicts and records the ending of tribute to the Spaniards as well as the
Caste War.