The Pachecos entrada was a Spanish military expedition against Postclassic Maya polities of the Southern Maya Lowlands, on the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, in what is now Belize and Quintana Roo, Mexico, in 1543 to 1544, or in 1544, during the Spanish conquest of Yucatán. It was commissioned by adelantado and governor Francisco de Montejo in early 1543, and led by conquistadors Gaspar, Melchor and Alonso Pacheco of new-found Mérida, in northern Yucatán. The military offensive resulted in the defeat of Uaymil, Chetumal, Dzuluinicob, Mopan and Manche Ch'ol, and in the annexation of the first three to Spanish Yucatán as Bacalar district, a subdivision of Yucatán ruled by the new cabildo of Salamanca de Bacalar, on Lake Bacalar. Maya residents of conquered polities were thereby made tributary slaves in encomiendas of Bacalar, and were allotted to expeditioners who settled Salamanca as vecinos in 1544. Except for the forceful repression of the Great Maya Revolt of 1546 to 1547, this entrada is considered the closing campaign of the 16th-century phase of the conquest of the Maya Lowlands, which extended to the 17th century with the Spanish conquest of Petén. The expedition is most noted in historical and Mayanist scholarship for its sweeping mass killings, which were deemed excessive even by Spanish contemporaries, and led to runaway demographic collapse of the Maya populace in Bacalar.
The opening leg of the Pachecos entrada involved a scorched earth and guerrilla defence by Uaymil and Chetumal, which the Spanish eventually overcame with the aforesaid indiscriminate attacks, possibly begun in an effort to stave off famine or a war of attrition. This prong further resulted in famine or famine-like conditions in the already war-torn Cochuah, just north of Uaymil, after the Pachecos requisitioned too much of the locals' foodstuffs, and impressed too many of them. The second and closing leg of the entrada is poorly understood, but is thought to have been successful against Dzuluinicob, Mopan and Manche Ch'ol. In the ensuing years of the 1540s, Bacalar vecinos were barred from the last two of these polities, following a protest by the Dominican friars who ruled Verapaz, in Spanish Guatemala. In addition, the Pachecos were convicted of crimes against Indians for their indiscriminate mass killings, and ordered to pay restitution, following calls for their criminal prosecution by Franciscan friars and vecinos of Mérida.
Background The conquistadors who first settled Spanish Cuba in the 1510s were the first Spanish colonists to turn their attention to the conquest of the Postclassic polities (kuchkabals) of the Maya Lowlands in the Yucatan Peninsula, lying west of Cuba. This first occurred in early 1517, when the Cordoba expedition by Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba returned to the island with news of vast lands (Yucatan) dotted with rich and splendid cities, previously unknown to the Spanish. The thrilling reports prompted the Grijalva and Cortes expeditions in 1518 and 1519, respectively, but the Cubans were soon rather engrossed in the conquest of the Aztec Empire, thus leaving the lowlands' subjugation for a later time.
On 8 November 1526, conquistador Francisco de Montejo secured a capitulacion () from the Spanish crown naming him adelantado of Yucatan, whereby he was authorised to conquer the lowland kuchkabals by force, annex their territory to the recently-founded New Spain, and settle and rule the colony so established (Spanish Yucatan). The adelantado thus kicked off the said conquest by personally leading an entrada to the northern and eastern parts of the peninsula in mid-1527, including to the southeastern provinces of Uaymil and Chetumal. The named polities did not cede victory though, and so required a further entrada to the southeast, though this one likewise failed to defeat them by 1533.
By the early 1540s then, the western, northern and northeastern lowland kuchkabals had been conquered and thus annexed to Spanish Yucatan as the distritos () of the Campeche, Merida and Valladolid villas (), respectively. With the exception of inland polities in the central lowlands (like the Peten Itza kingdom), this left only the southeastern provinces up for conquest by the said period, namely Uaymil, Chetumal, Dzuluinicob, Mopan and Manche Ch'ol.
Entrada
In April 1543, Montejo commissioned Gaspar Pacheco to lead an entrada to the southeastern lowlands, to conquer coastal kuchkabals from Ascension Bay down to Golfo Dulce, which is to say, from Uaymil south to Manche Ch'ol. Pacheco thus recruited 25 to 30 vecinos of Merida as infantry for the campaign, and named his son Melchor his second-in-command, and his nephew Alonso Pacheco third-in-command.
The Spanish expeditioners set out on foot from Merida in late 1543 or early 1544. Upon marching through the former Cochuah kuchkabal, Pacheco requisitioned provisions and impressed locals to forcibly join as his Indian auxiliaries, much to the dismay of the war-stricken populace, who were thereby reduced to famine, or to famine-like conditions at a minimum. They next crossed into Uaymil and "began one of the bloodiest campaigns, and certainly the cruelest, of the entire conquest" of Yucatan, in the words of Carnegie Institution of Washington historian Robert S. Chamberlain. At this point though, the expeditionary leader was stricken ill, and thus forced to retreat to Merida, such that command now fell to Melchor Pacheco, whose second-in-command was his cousin Alonso.
Concurrent with the entrada's southerly march, however, Uaymil and neighbouring Chetumal had somehow gotten word of their impending arrival, as their authorities had apparently resolved to totally oppose the conquistadors with scorched earth and guerrilla warfare. As such, when the Spanish arrived at Uaymil and then Chetumal, time and again they came upon deserted settlements, barricaded thoroughfares and torched farms and orchards. This latter tactic soon proved trying for each side though, as the Maya and the Spanish both were equally forced to hunt and forage for their sustenance, thus drawing out what was meant to be a quick shock and awe campaign, which thereby threatened to devolve into a war of attrition. Faced with such dire straits, the Pachecos now "deliberately resorted to wanton acts of cruelty of a kind of which the Montejos and their other principal captains were seldom, if ever guilty", according to Chamberlain. Consequently, the Spanish expeditioners reportedly began indiscriminately mass killing Maya men, women and children, regardless of combat status, in increasingly brutal ways. According to later Spanish records, they started killing "many" or "numbers" of people by beating them to death with garrotes, by drowning them in bodies of water, by setting perros de guerra () on them, or by slowly maiming or wounding them until their bodies gave out. Typical tactics purportedly included sicking dogs until victims were dead and their bodies mutilated; severing the hands, ears and noses of "many" people; severing women's breasts, tying gourds to their feet, and drowning them in lagoons; and tying prisoners to stakes, then loosing arrows and flogging them, over and over, in such a manner as to not immediately kill them, until they died of "natural" causes.
As said terror campaign dragged on, an apparently alarmed Rodrigo Alvarez, entrada recruit and former secretary to Montejo the Younger, "sought to persuade the Indians of Uaymil-Chetumal to accept Spanish dominion peacefully, but without the slightest success". Alvarez had previously been back to Cochuah to commandeer further food and supplies, possibly in a bid to facilitate a decisive Spanish victory, but "his efforts to obtain supplies without the use of force failed completely". At about the same time, Montejo the Younger and the Nephew both learnt of the ongoing indiscriminate mass killings, and reportedly tried to put a stop to them. The Pachecos evidently did not heed the Montejos though, and did not lawfully have to, as the latter lacked formal authority to give the former orders. In a similar vein, Chamberlain is of the opinion that the said "wanton acts of cruelty" would have been prevented or at least curtailed by either the adelantado or clergymen, but the former was elsewhere occupied, and so likely not even aware of the Pachecos' excesses, whereas the latter had not even been recruited, or else had declined to join the entrada.
In the end though, the Pachecos won out, as either the said campaign or else attrition itself "finally brought the Maya of Uaymil-Chetumal to their knees and the Spaniards to mastery of the province" in 1544. And so, Melchor founded a Spanish villa, christened Salamanca de Bacalar, on the banks of Lake Bacalar in former Uaymil, and forcibly resettled Maya survivors in reduccion villages and towns around it, thereby establishing the Bacalar district. He appointed the inaugural cabildo, designated twenty surviving conquistadors as vecinos of the villa, and allotted the new-found district's reduccion settlements as encomiendas to the same. According to cronista de Indias Diego Lopez de Cogolludo, "once the settlement was founded, the Conquistadors who had not been made vecinos returned to the City of Merida and debriefed their General [Gaspar Pacheco] on what happened, thereby ushering in a period of greater tranquilty [in Bacalar]; according to Bachiller Valencia, this took place towards the end of 1545".
At some uncertain point in 1544, the Pachecos pushed south of Chetumal to Golfo Dulce, across Dzuluinicob, Mopan and Manche Ch'ol territory. When exactly this occurred, and what exactly this entailed, however, is not clear. For Dzuluinicob in particular, whether the said polity was successfully conquered during this southern prong of the entrada, or not, is still an open question. According to University College London Mayanist Elizabeth A. Graham, its capital Tipu "does not appear on a [Bacalar] tribute list for 1544, but is recorded as an already established encomienda town in 1568, which indicates that it had functioned as part of an encomienda for some time. This, plus what is now [in 2011] known about the extent of the Pacheco conquest, suggests strongly that Tipu was brought into the encomienda system not long after the Pacheco conquest".
Aftermath
The Pachecos entrada ultimately met their objectives, but only did so at great cost to both sides, as the precipitous collapse of the Maya population in former Uaymil and Chetumal left relatively few tributary slaves for vecinos' encomiendas in the new Bacalar district. The said kuchkabals had reportedly been heavily settled and wealthy, and so had naturally been expected to make for a thriving Spanish district upon conquest, but Bacalar remained an impoverished and sparsely-peopled outpost of Spanish Yucatan up to Spanish American independence in the 19th century. From 1544 to 1639, Salamanca itself only ever averaged a total population of 75, counting both Spanish vecinos and Maya servants in naboría (). According to Chamberlain and Graham, upon the villa's founding, "large numbers" of Maya survivors would likely have fled to nearby Maya territory in the central lowlands, closer to the unconquered Peten Itza kingdom, "in an attempt to place themselves beyond Spanish reach forever".