Using colonial tax and census records, some scholars think the indigenous population dropped at least 90% in the first 160 years after the European conquest. Mismanagement, drought, famine, flood, earthquakes, and even volcanic eruptions all had their victims, but the chief causes of death were none of these. In colonial Guatemala the pests, the epidemics, were the greatest killers.
There are many books on medicine in colonial Guatemala. What makes this work different is that it is not a broad history of the colonial era, nor is it restricted to a single ethnic group or profession. Instead, it seeks to answer the question: What happened when an epidemic struck?
The words are those of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth century witnesses who speak to us from the Hispanic archival records of those times. From worship of the Angel of Death to threats to lynch officials introducing inoculation, the reaction of the Indian population was proactive in the face of the danger from diseases. And the Spanish government, whose Inquisition burnt images of the Angel of Death and introduced what they considered were the best and most effective remedies to halt the spread of epidemics, was no less active in seeking a cure.
For a comprehensive list of the epidemics that struck Colonial Guatemala and the words of those who witnessed these events see The War Against Epidemics in Colonial Guatemala, 1519-1821
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