Weaving for the Living and the Dead: Maya Women and Encomienda Tribute in Early Colonial Yucatán

Maya women have been written out of the history of encomienda tribute and labor in colonial Yucatán, Mexico. This article employs a gendered analysis of the encomienda by focusing on Indigenous women's creation of mantas, the lengths of cotton cloth that became the region's most valued tributary good. Maya society's gendered division of labor marked weaving as women's work. Spanish encomienda grantees compelled Maya women to make mantas in camulnae, or protoworkshops dedicated to textile production. Many women wove as quickly as possible under the threat of the lash so that they could return to their families. Some single and widowed women purportedly avoided marriage and its associated tributary obligations. But in 1584, a colonial official decreed that Maya women were formal tributaries regardless of their marital status, cementing their position as encomienda laborers in Yucatán for two centuries.