Chontal Maya

The Chontal Maya are a Maya people of the Mexican state of Tabasco. "Chontal", from the Nahuatl word for chontalli, which means "foreigner", has been applied to various ethnic groups in Mexico. The Chontal refer to themselves as the Yokot'anob or the Yokot'an, meaning "the speakers of Yoko ochoco", but writers about them refer to them as the Chontal of Centla, the Tabasco Chontal, or in Spanish, Chontales. They consider themselves the descendants of the Olmecs, and are not related to the Oaxacan Chontal. The Yokot'an inhabit 21 towns in a large area known as "la Chontalpa" that extends across five municipalities of Tabasco: Centla, El Centro, Jonuta, Macuspana, and Nacajuca. In Nacajuca, they form a majority of the population. The terrain is highly varied — no single landform dominates — and it has many bodies of water. The land is traversed by seasonally-flooding rivers, and there are numerous lakes, lagoons, and wetlands. The climate is humid and tropical, and the fauna was typical of tropical regions until the environment was altered by human industrialization. The mangrove is the predominant form of vegetation. The territory of the Yokot'an was the cradle of the Olmec civilization, which lived there from about 1400 BCE until about 400 BCE. The Maya civilization reached its height in about the year 300 of the Common Era. At this time, the Yokot'an were also at their cultural apex. They had already begun to decline by the time of the Spanish conquest of Yucatán, and are mentioned in the narratives of Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Hernán Cortés. In 1518, Juan de Grijalva arrived in Yokot'an lands, and was greeted with hostility. The next year, Cortés's expedition reached Tabasco, and he met with Tabscoob and other chiefs, who supplied him the translator who later became known as Doña Marina or La Malinche. According to Díaz, "Before we left, Cortés won the chiefs by his many kind words, telling them how our master, the Emperor, had many grand lords who gave him obedience and that they should also obey him ; that whatever they might need we would give them.