Landa, Diego De (1524–1579)

Diego De Landa (b. 1524; d. 1579), Castilian Franciscan missionary. Born in Cifuentes, Landa entered the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo when he was sixteen. In 1549 he journeyed to Yucatán, where he learned the Maya language and ministered to the Maya people. Landa, one of the earliest Franciscans in Yucatán, helped convert the Maya to Christianity, only to discover that they refused to abandon their traditional religion. Suspecting them of carrying out human sacrifice using Catholic ritual, he organized an inquisition (1562) that eventually led to the imprisonment and torture of 4,400 Indians. After extracting confessions, and after more than 170 people had died under torture or by committing suicide, Landa held an auto-da-fé (day of judgment, punishment, and penance) on 12 July 1562 and pardoned the survivors. He was later charged with misconduct in the affair but defended himself successfully and in 1564 returned to Spain, where he wrote his book about Maya history and culture (Relación de las cosas de Yucatán). He returned to Yucatán in 1573 as bishop and died there seven years later without further controversy.

See alsoFranciscans; Maya, The; Yucatán.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1517–1570 (1987).

Juan Francisco Molina Solís, Historia de Yucatán durante la dominación española, vol. 1 (1904).

Additional Bibliography

Chuchiak, John F. "'In Servitio Dei': Fray Diego de Landa, The Franciscan Order, and the Return of the Extirpation of Idolatry in the Colonial Diocese of Yucatán, 1573–1579." The Americas 61:4 (April 2005): 611-646.

Timmer, David E. "Providence and Perdition: Fray Diego de Landa Justifies his Inquisition against the Yucatecan Maya." Church History 66:3 (September 1997): 477-488.

                                  Robert W. Patch