Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 21, 2012



The Spanish conquest of Guatemala was a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonization of the Americas, in which Spanish colonizers gradually incorporated the territory that became the modern country of Guatemala into the colonial viceroyalty of New Spain. The Maya kingdoms resisted integration into the Spanish Empire with such tenacity that their defeat took almost two centuries. Pedro de Alvarado arrived in Guatemala from the newly conquered Mexico in early 1524, commanding a mixed force of Spanish conquistadors and native allies, mostly from Tlaxcala and Cholula. The Itza Maya and other lowland groups in the Petén Basin were first contacted by Hernán Cortés in 1525, but remained independent and hostile to the encroaching Spanish until 1697, when a concerted Spanish assault led by Martín de Urzúa y Arizmendi finally defeated the last independent Maya kingdom. The indigenous peoples of Guatemala lacked key elements of Old World technology such as a functional wheel, horses, steel and gunpowder; they were also extremely susceptible to Old World diseases, against which they had no resistance. (more...)

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