Assumed Identity

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Less than forty years after the Spanish conquerors arrived in the New World, the systematic extermination of the natives was well under way. Much of the genocide required no effort inasmuch as diseases to which the Europeans had become accustomed. smallpox, measles, mumps, and influenza, for example. did not exist in the New World and hence had a rapid effect on the natives, who had no immunity to them. Those who did not die from disease (perhaps as few as ten percent of the original population survived) were beaten into submission and forced into slavery. Villages were destroyed, the inhabitants herded into labor camps. Every effort, especially torture, was used to compel the survivors to abandon their culture and convert to that of their European dominators.

In Mexico's southeastern extreme, the Yucatan peninsula, a Franciscan missionary whose name was Diego de Landa reacted with shock to the evidence of snake worship and human sacrifice within the Mayan faith. Determined to eradicate these pagan barbarities, Landa organized the destruction of temples, statues, frescoes, any object with religious connotations. and in so doing, he not only separated the Maya from symbols of their beliefs but prevented modern historians from discovering the clues they needed to decipher the remaining hieroglyphs that described the lost, ancient ways.

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