Week 193: Destruction of Mayan heritage, Canadian Hindu map, Naga Panchami Prayer
8/26/2023 - Modern Hindu Content
Welcome to Eternal Path! This week we feature: Friar de Landa and the destruction of Mayan heritage, a map of the Canadian Hindu community, and an aesthetic (Naga Panchami Prayer)!
History Highlight: Friar De Landa and the destruction of Mayan heritage
After Spain and Portugal shook off Islamic rule in 1492, they went on a conquering and proselytizing rampage around the world. Concurrent with that was the Inquisition, which originally had the goal of eliminating Islam and Judaism from the Iberian peninsula but then got expanded to brutal attacks on non-Christians across the world. We’ve covered this period in Week 49 (Goa Inquisition), Week 179 (also Goa Inquisition), Week 180 (Japanese response to the Inquisition), and Week 189 (the effects of Islamic rule on Spain). This week, we feature a look at this period in Central America!
Friar Diego de Landa Calderón (1524-1579), born in Cifuentes, Spain, was a Franciscan friar who played a pivotal role in the early colonial history of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. He arrived in Yucatan in 1549 and embarked on a mission to convert the indigenous Maya people to Christianity.
The official Spanish Inquisition policy, as it applied to the Maya, involved converting them over a 50-60 year timeframe, rather than immediately. de Landa, however took it upon himself to be more aggressive than the Inquisition in his desire to convert the Maya.
In 1561, he assumed the role of Franciscan provincial, the highest-ranking authority within a province of the Roman Catholic religious order, for Yucatán. During his tenure, he oversaw a series of heinous acts against the indigenous population, which included their unjust imprisonment, enslavement, brutal torture, and even murder. Among the methods employed by the Franciscans was a particularly cruel technique borrowed from the Spanish Inquisition known as a variation of strappado. This method involved securing the victim's wrists to a rope, suspending them by their wrists, sometimes with added weights on their feet, all while subjecting them to flogging and scalding with hot wax. Within a span of three months, approximately 4,500 Mayas endured horrific suffering, leading to the death of nearly 200 individuals and the enduring physical and psychological trauma of countless others, with many Maya killing themselves to escape the torture. Many similar torture techniques were applied by the Portuguese in Goa during the Goa inquisition towards Hindus who did not convert.
The next year saw the infamous "auto de fe" of 1562 in Mani, where he ordered the public burning of Mayan codices, over 5,000 Maya statues, and sacred texts. Popular Archaeology notes that these codices were not merely religious artifacts but:
“intricate records of Mayan history, astronomy, mathematics, and culture. The records of those canvases covered a wide range of topics including: the cycles of the sun and moon according to agrarian cycles, numbering structure, time recording method, and concomitant religious filiation. They also recorded secular information on villages, families, water rights and properties”.
Only four Mayan codices remain today thanks to the “work” of de Landa; that’s it, four books from one of the world’s great civilizations, thanks to a zealot Abrahamic!
In 1563, there were numerous reports of de Landa and his underlings engaging in more cultural destruction, including destroying graves of Maya people and throwing their bones in an attempt to stop ancestor reveration, and charging insane levies of gold and cacao on Mayans who disobeyed Spanish orders. It got so bad, that de Landa was actually brought back to Spain in 1563 for essentially being too harsh on the natives, but then in 1569 he was “absolved” by the Council of the Indies for acting within the bounds of the Spanish Inquisition. He then came back to the Yucatan peninsula, becoming bishop in 1572, and continued his attempts to destroy the Mayan people and their heritage until his death in 1579.
As a reader you might ask “yeah this sucks and he sounds like a bad guy; how is this relevant for Hindus?” A few reasons:
The Inquisition literally came to India; thousands of Hindus were killed, raped, and converted during the Goa Inquisition, and hundreds of temples destroyed. This is part of the same movement.
Destruction of ancient heritage and history is something adharmic invaders, wherever they go, engage in. Countless pieces of Hindu and Buddhist heritage were destroyed when the Muslims sacked Nalanda University in the 1200s. More recently, the Burning of Jaffna Public Library by a Sinhala Buddhist mob destroyed thousands of pieces of Tamil Hindu heritage in 1981.
Christianity is often lauded as a force of “liberating” people from the “caste system” in India, and groups like Equality Labs, the so-called “Hindus for Human Rights”, and other Marxist aligned-groups try to play Christianity as a force for justice in India and center Christian voices when discussing religion and politics in India. Highlighting Christianity as a force of destruction to pagan religions is important to refute these hucksters.
Lots of Hindu texts and Hindu heritage is untranslated, exists on palm leaves gathering dust, is in museums, or is scantily documented across multiple languages. Its a reminder that cultural heritage is fragile, and having 100 people preserve a text is better than 1, and having 1 million is even better!
Community Highlight: Canadian Hindu Map
Via India in Pixels/Soham Pal (Instagram)
Aesthetic: Naga Panchami Prayer
