La circulación del derecho indiano entre los Mayas: Escritura, oralidad y orden simbólico en Yucatán, siglo XVI

Abstract

– Scholars have studied how the institutions of the Spanish Empire were implemented, have functioned and have evolved in America from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Nevertheless, those structures only made sense because they were known, used, and eventually manipulated by the historical actors. Consequently, the issue of the circulation of law is instrumental in the understanding of the institutional and political functioning of the Spanish Monarchy. This article focuses on the Maya of the province of Yucatan and its objective is to highlight who could be willing that this sector of the colonial society would know the legislation (Derecho Indiano), and what kind of instruments were used in order to achieve this objective in the Sixteenth Century. The study will take into account the role played by the written, oral, and symbolic culture in the circulation of law among the Maya through the writing, the translation, the printing, and the conservation of legal documents, as well as through the proclamations made by public criers, the Franciscan missionaries’ sermons, and the exemplary punishments. One of our hypotheses is that royal agents, the Clergy, the Spaniards, and the Maya themselves were all conscious of the central role played by the circulation of legal culture in the relations of power, so that they struggled to maintain some control on this kind of information throughout the Sixteenth