A Seventeenth-Century Encomienda: Chimaltenango, Guatemala

Captain Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán, whose proud boast it was (as he never tires of reminding us) that he was the great-great-grandson of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, in his erratic, rambling, and frequently delightful Recordación Florida (c. 1690), has this to say about the ancient town that will be the subject of this article: Three smooth and pleasant leagues north of this City of Goathemala, on a road thickly studded with villages and tile yards, upon a high eminence in the midst of a wide and marvelous plain, but so accessible and gently sloping that, despite the many carts, the journey can be made quite comfortably in a carriage, lies the town of Chimaltenango (called by the Indians, Bocco). This broad and smiling plain is always clothed with pleasant and fertile meadows, and with rich and extensive cornfields. It is more than sixteen leagues in circumference, of rich and very fecund soil, and produces in abundance, corn, chickpeas, beans, capons and chickens, as well as other things… . The Indians of the district do not cultivate other crops, but maintain themselves with what it yields, so that the people of its villages are plentifully supplied with everything, according to their own way of living, and have no need to seek food elsewhere… . On the contrary, the people from other villages come to their market to buy whatever they lack … , so that for three leagues roundabout (the distance to which their commerce extends) there is as much provender as one finds in the abundant markets of Goathemala City.