Why go
This history gives context to the Maya and colonial places encountered across the peninsula. Spanish fleets first met established coastal communities, then struggled to hold settlements as Maya provinces resisted in different ways. Northern Yucatán came under Spanish rule in the 1540s, while the Itza kingdom around Lake Petén Itzá remained independent until 1697.
The full story
Spanish encounters began with a Maya trading canoe recorded off Honduras in 1502 and expeditions along Yucatán's coast from 1517. Francisco Hernández de Córdoba's fleet suffered heavy losses at Champotón. Juan de Grijalva sailed the coast in 1518, and Hernán Cortés passed Cozumel on his way toward Tabasco and central Mexico the next year. Francisco de Montejo began a dedicated campaign in 1527, but his early east-coast garrisons were nearly destroyed. Spanish efforts shifted around the peninsula, and an attempted settlement at Chichén Itzá was abandoned after Maya resistance. Permanent colonial town councils were founded at Campeche and Mérida in the early 1540s. Some Maya rulers accepted alliances or submission; eastern provinces continued to fight and launched a coordinated uprising in 1546. Southern Petén remained beyond Spanish control long afterward. The sequence matters because it shows Maya communities making different political choices, rather than a peninsula falling in one battle.