Cuauhtémoc, also known as Cuauhtemotzín, Guatimozín, or Guatémoc, was the Aztec ruler (tlatoani) of Tenochtitlan from 1520 to 1521, making him the last Aztec Emperor. The name Cuauhtemōc means "one who has descended like an eagle", and is commonly rendered in English as "Descending Eagle", as in the moment when an eagle folds its wings and plummets down to strike its prey. This is a name that implies aggressiveness and determination.
Ixchel or Ix Chel is the 16th-century name of the aged jaguar Goddess of midwifery and medicine in ancient Maya culture. In a similar parallel, she corresponds, to Toci Yoalticitl "Our Grandmother the Nocturnal Physician", an Aztec earth Goddess inhabiting the sweatbath, and is related to another Aztec Goddess invoked at birth, viz. Cihuacoatl. In Taube's revised Schellhas-Zimmermann classification of codical deities, Ixchel corresponds to the Goddess O.
The Spanish conquest of Yucatán was the campaign undertaken by the Spanish conquistadores against the Late Postclassic Maya states and polities in the Yucatán Peninsula, a vast limestone plain covering south-eastern Mexico, northern Guatemala, and all of Belize. The Spanish conquest of the Yucatán Peninsula was hindered by its politically fragmented state. The Spanish engaged in a strategy of concentrating native populations in newly founded colonial towns. Native resistance to the new nucleated settlements took the form of the flight into inaccessible regions such as the forest or joining neighbouring Maya groups that had not yet submitted to the Spanish. Among the Maya, ambush was a favoured tactic. Spanish weaponry included broadswords, rapiers, lances, pikes, halberds, crossbows, matchlocks, and light artillery. Maya warriors fought with flint-tipped spears, bows and arrows and stones, and wore padded cotton armour to protect themselves. The Spanish introduced a number of Old World diseases previously unknown in the Americas, initiating devastating plagues that swept through the native populations.
The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica, both in the south of Mexico and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least six million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory.
The Itza are a Maya ethnic group native to the Péten region of northern Guatemala and parts of Belize. The majority of Itza are inhabitants of the city of Flores on Lake Petén Itzá, and nearby portions of Belize where they form an ethnic minority.
The Chontal Maya are a Maya people of the Mexican state of Tabasco. "Chontal", from the Nahuatl word for chontalli, which means "foreigner", has been applied to various ethnic groups in Mexico. The Chontal refer to themselves as the Yokot'anob or the Yokot'an, meaning "the speakers of Yoko ochoco", but writers about them refer to them as the Chontal of Centla, the Tabasco Chontal, or in Spanish, Chontales. They consider themselves the descendants of the Olmecs, and are not related to the Oaxacan Chontal.
Yokotʼan (self-denomination), also known as Chontal Maya, is a Maya language of the Cholan family spoken in 2020 by around 60,000 Chontal Maya people of the Mexican state of Tabasco. According to the National Catalog of Indigenous Languages of Mexico-INALI, Yokotʼan has at least four dialects: Nacajuca (Central), Centla (Northern), Macuspana (Southern) and Tamulte (Eastern).
Putún or Chontal Maya is a collective name for several groups of Maya that displaced much of the older leadership of the Maya Lowlands during the Late Classic and Postclassic. The Putún, who came from the Gulf coast in the northwest region of the Maya area, are generally held to have been more Mexicanized than their contemporaries. They were associated with the Puuc architectural style and distinctive orangeware pottery. The Itza are often considered a group of Putún Maya. The contemporary Chontal Maya of Tabasco speak a closely related language.
XHCPBS-FM, known as La Voz de los Chontales, is an indigenous community radio station on 98.7 FM broadcasting in Spanish, Chontal Maya (yokot'an), Ch'ol and Ayapa Zoque from Nacajuca in the Mexican state of Tabasco. The station will form part of the Indigenous Cultural Broadcasting System (SRCI), part of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI).
Ixcateopan is an archaeological site located in the town and municipality of Ixcateopan de Cuauhtémoc, 36 kilometers from Taxco, in the isolated and rugged mountains of the northern part of the Mexican state of Guerrero.
Nacajuca is a city in Nacajuca Municipality in the state of Tabasco, Mexico. It is part of the Chontalapa region in the north center of the state and a major center of Tabasco's Chontal Maya population. Although the local economy is still based on agriculture and livestock, oil production, handcrafts and some tourism are important aspects as well. The environment of the area is low-lying flat land susceptible to flooding including being hard hit by the 2007 Tabasco flood and more recent flooding in 2011.
Chontalpa is an area in the Mexican state of Tabasco, which consists of four municipalities in the northwest of the state. Although the name refers to the state's Chontal Maya population, modern Chontalpa is a subregion of the Grijalva Region, and formed with economic concerns in mind. A large percentage of the state's Chontal Maya population does live here, with the municipality of Nacajuca having the largest concentration of indigenous, with the next largest concentration found just east of the region in the Villahermosa area. The subregion's economy is based on agriculture, especially livestock production as well as oil drilling, which have been at odds with each other because of severe degradation of the environment since the mid 20th century. Chontalpa is also home to Tabasco's two main archeological sites, La Venta and Comalcalco, along with numerous smaller sites.
Putún is the name of a Mayan ethnic group on the periphery of Pre-Columbian Maya civilization. According to the encyclopedia Yucatán en el tiempo and other authors cited by the same encyclopedia, the people of Putún, called Putunes, are identified with and even assimilated into the Chontal Maya. They were originally based in the delta of the Usumacinta and Grijalva Rivers, a region of waterways, lakes, and swamps in which aquatic transport dominated, as it did around the Laguna de Términos and through the numerous rivers that ended there. Although it is thought that over time the Putún inhabited a widespread area that consisted of important chiefdoms, like the Chakán Putún and the Chetumal.
The Kejache were a Maya people in northern Guatemala at the time of Spanish contact in the 17th century. The Kejache territory was located in the Petén Basin in a region that takes in parts of both Guatemala and Mexico. Linguistic evidence indicates that the Kejache shared a common origin with the neighbouring Itzas to their southeast and the Kejache may have occupied the general region since the Classic period. The Kejache were initially contacted by conquistador Hernán Cortés in 1525; they were later in prolonged contact with the Spanish as the latter opened a route southwards towards Lake Petén Itzá.
Potonchán, was a Chontal Maya city, capital of the minor kingdom known as Tavasco or Tabasco. It occupied the left bank of the Tabasco River, which the Spanish renamed the Grijalva River, in the current Mexican state of Tabasco.
A kuchkabal was a system of social and political organisation common to Maya polities of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Maya Lowlands, during the Mesoamerican Postclassic. There were somewhere between 16 and 24 such provinces just prior to the Spanish conquest of Yucatán.
Tabasco or Tavasco was a Chontal Maya Nation in the westernmost area of the Maya region.
Apoxpalon also known of as Paxbolonacha, was a Maya merchant from the Acalan who was elected as a regional ruler of Itzamkanac, the capital in the Acalan. His election demonstrates the Chontal Maya system of raising established veterans of the trade system to high office and he was on the throne in 1525 CE.
The Acala Chʼol were a former Chʼol-speaking Maya people who occupied a territory to the west of the Manche Chʼol and east of the Chixoy River in what is now the Alta Verapaz Department of Guatemala. The Acala should not be confused with the people of the former Maya territory of Acalan, near the Laguna de Terminos in Mexico.
Acala is a guardian deity primarily revered in Vajrayana Buddhism in Japan, China and elsewhere.
