Santa Maria Nebaj

Santa Maria Nebaj Nebaj
Municipality
The central plaza of Nebaj, 2006-11-12, at 8:39 am
Santa Maria Nebaj Location in Guatemala
Coordinates: 15°24′30″N 91°8′50″W / 15.40833°N 91.14722°W / 15.40833; -91.14722Coordinates: 15°24′30″N 91°8′50″W / 15.40833°N 91.14722°W / 15.40833; -91.14722
Country	Guatemala
Department	El Quiché
Municipality	Santa Maria Nebaj
Government
• Type	Municipal
• Mayor (2016-2020)	José Adolfo Quezada Valdez (LIDER)
Elevation	6,200 ft (1,900 m)
Population (Census 2002)
• Municipality	53,617
• Urban	18,484
• Ethnicities	Ixil, K'iche', Ladino
• Religions	Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy,Evangelicalism, (then recent historically) Roman Catholicism, Maya
Climate	Cfb

Santa Maria Nebaj (Spanish pronunciation: [neˈβax]; usually abbreviated to Nebaj) is a municipality in the Guatemalan department of El Quiché. Santa Maria Nebaj is part of the Ixil Community, along with San Juan Cotzal and San Gaspar Chajul. Native residents speak the Mayan Ixil language.

There is a nearby pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Maya civilization, called Nebaj.

In the ten years after the fall of Zaculeu various Spanish expeditions crossed into the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes and engaged in the gradual and complex conquest of the Chuj and Q'anjob'al. The Spanish were attracted to the region in the hope of extracting gold, silver and other riches from the mountains but their remoteness, the difficult terrain and relatively low population made their conquest and exploitation extremely difficult. The population of the Cuchumatanes is estimated to have been 260,000 before European contact. By the time the Spanish physically arrived in the region this had collapsed to 150,000 because of the effects of the Old World diseases that had run ahead of them.

After the western portion of the Cuchumatanes fell to the Spanish, the Ixil and Uspantek Maya were sufficiently isolated to evade immediate Spanish attention. The Uspantek and the Ixil were allies and in 1529, four years after the conquest of Huehuetenango, Uspantek warriors were harassing Spanish forces and Uspantán was trying to foment rebellion among the K'iche'. Uspantek activity became sufficiently troublesome that the Spanish decided that military action was necessary. Gaspar Arias, magistrate of Guatemala, penetrated the eastern Cuchumatanes with sixty Spanish infantry and three hundred allied indigenous warriors. By early September he had imposed temporary Spanish authority over the Ixil towns of Chajul and Nebaj. The Spanish army then marched east toward Uspantán itself; Arias then received notice that the acting governor of Guatemala, Francisco de Orduña, had deposed him as magistrate. Arias handed command over to the inexperienced Pedro de Olmos and returned to confront de Orduña. Although his officers advised against it, Olmos launched a disastrous full-scale frontal assault on the city. As soon as the Spanish began their assault they were ambushed from the rear by more than two thousand Uspantek warriors. The Spanish forces were routed with heavy losses; many of their indigenous allies were slain, and many more were captured alive by the Uspantek warriors only to be sacrificed on the altar of their deity Exbalamquen. The survivors who managed to evade capture fought their way back to the Spanish garrison at Q'umarkaj.