For tilling the Haciendas, the Indians are divided into groups. The
hacienda owners demand these groups of Indians for planting and for
weeding, whenever their labor is necessary for agricultural production,
which is the same time the Indians need to be working on their own land;
yet the Indians are taken to distant haciendas, so the result is that the
Indian land is not cultivated and produces nothing. This partitioning of
Indians for labor service is done with great violence without respect for
the Indian's own need to work his land, or for his own life, so much so
that in Chichicastenango several of these wretched souls, fearing they
would perish, brought me money in exchange for their labor service, leaving
it on the table so that I would give it to the hacienda owners because they
could not go to work. They were sick and left me with the sorrow of not
being able to console them. . .
Three towns have been complaining of their Spanish administrator, who
forces them to send food supplies to the port without paying them: for two
years the Indians' corn, beans and hens have been taken away violently, so
they have experienced two years of calamitous starvation because of which
many have died and fled the villages. Many have also died spinning cotton
which the Spanish administrator makes the Indian women do all year long so
they cannot for their families. . .
The truth is, that at whoever's command, these wretched Indians are tied to
the whipping post, men, women, young and old; they are whipped with
excessive times without any reason at all, and almost always for things
which they would not be whipped for if they were not Indians. . . . Of this
cruelty I cannot produce greater evidence except to say that frequently
enough I hear screams and cries from my room or inn even though the
beatings are taking place at a great distance. . .
The Indians have an aversion and absolute hate for anything Spanish as is
case in all of America. They do not like anything Spanish, neither doctrine
or customs. . . . On holy days, the priests and civil servants spend hours
pulling the Indians out of their huts and the woods They start to ring
the bells for mass very early and with pauses the bells ring for two hours;
they go to look for the people; then the civil officials go out. Some hide,
others flee. After some are rounded up and brought to mass, in some places
the civil officials guard the church doors, in others they lock them,
otherwise the Indians would leave. . . If these wretched people did not
attend mass because they were inactive or lazy, or because they were
playing or enjoying themselves, it would be one thing; but it is another to
not attend because of a positive repugnance is so strong that they hide in
the woods and hide their children. . .
The priest in one particular parish reprimands their excesses with
prudence, and helps them generously with what they need . . . but with all
this they do not give up being Indians. One afternoon, I took a walk and I
met an old Indian who and had a troop of children, his grandchildren; I
stopped to speak to him and asked him to give me one of the children to
raise and educate, indicating I would provide every comfort; he responded
frankly, saying under no circumstances would he give me a child. Because he
responded so forcefully, I pursued the conversation, asking him: "Why do
you walk barefoot?" He responded, "Because I am an Indian." I told him
Indians were Spaniards like us. He replied he was not a Spaniard, but an
Indian. Pursuing the subject, I asked him if he did not want to be a
Spaniard. He answered: "No," and since I pressed him repeatedly, he
insisted forcefully that he did not want to be a Spaniard. In this
incident, one can see clearly the ideas these wretched people have about
Spaniards.
(From a journal kept by Archbishop Pedro Cortes y Larraz in colonial
Guatemala, 1769. Found in "The Guatemala Reader", edited by Jonathan Fried,
Marvin Gettleman, Deborah Levenson and Nancy Peckenham, Grove Press, 1983)
