Origin of the Itza Maya community

Our people are one of the native indigenous communities of the region that is now known as Mesoamerica. In the document Memorias Mayas, made by XIMENA LOIS and VALENTINA VAPNARSKY, the following text is established about the origin of our people:

…”On the shores of the great Lake Petén Itza', in the town of San José, live the last descendants of the great Itza' Mayan lordship. In pre-Hispanic times, the influence of this people reached to the borders of the Mayan Lowlands, from Yucatán to the south of Petén. The ancestors of the Itza' dominated such important sites as Chichén Itza' and governed the last independent native political community in Mesoamerica in Tayasal. At the end of the 17th century, with the Spanish conquest, the lake turned red with Itza' blood, beginning a dramatic process of violence, subordination and plundering of this Mayan people. The Spanish colonial policies, as well as those of the independent state of Guatemala, established a system of repression and exploitation of the Mayans and their lands, which led to a drastic decrease of the Itza' population and the near extinction of their language. Of the 100,000 Mayan inhabitants of Petén in the period immediately before the conquest, only less than 10,000 remain, of whom about 2,000 are Itza and only a dozen elderly Itza speakers. Faced with the devastation of their ecological environment, the numerous traditional Itza practices and knowledge have thus been fatally affected…”

In general our ancestors had the following milestones:

1. They settled in Chichén Itzá in the 9th century AD.

2. They created a broad domain with a unified culture.

3. They were displaced from Chakán Putum by the Xiues.

4. They emigrated to the Guatemalan Petén in the year 1194.

5. They lived in Tayasal, the current city of Flores.

6. They were one of the last lordships conquered by the Spanish conquerors.