Surviving Spanish Conquest: Yucatec Maya Social and Cultural Persistenc

After decades of bloody conflict the Spanish conquistadors eventually ripped away cultural and social independence from the Maya. Despite life under siege by Europeans, the Maya did manage to persist culturally and socially. Many have explained their survival geographically. Maya territory was not at the center of the Spanish Empire. Nor was the region a ready source for material wealth and natural resources.;However, practical considerations do not adequately explain Maya persistence in the wake of contact with Europeans. This thesis highlights Maya social and cultural structures and how they contributed to Maya resilience. William H. Sewell Jr.'s structural theory argued that 'surface' structures germinate from 'deep' structures. Maya cosmology acted as a 'deep' structure in the manner suggested by Sewell. Classic Maya adaptations to rapid transformation during the Terminal Classic period provided opportunities for the Postclassic Maya to act as agents during and after Spanish conquest, reconfiguring their social and cultural structures to respond to new circumstances. These processes continued for centuries---the Lacandon Maya of Chiapas, Mexico continue to reproduce expressions of Maya social and cultural structures today. As a result, this group provides a productive case study in the analysis of cosmology as a deep structure.