The Lowland Mayas, from the Conquest to the Present

The lowland Maya people had long been accustomed to outside influences due to interaction with other Mesoamerican peoples from beyond their borders and to the dislocations that resulted from their own expanding and contracting spheres of political influence. Spanish conquest and colonization, although probably more devastating in their impact than any of these earlier events, must be seen as an another major stage of Maya history. The Mayas of the northern lowlands constituted a single ethnic group of Yucatec speakers. Like all Mesoamericans, the lowland Mayas believed in a complex, hierarchical supernatural world of gods and other spiritual forces. The impact of migration and resultant population growth in tropical forest regions, along with rapidly increasing cattle production and logging operations, not only threatens the survival of indigenous societies but also has a disastrous impact on the stability of fragile ecozones, especially in Peten, Belize, Chiapas, Campeche, and Quintana Roo.