Ch'ol

The Ch’ol were a Maya people of the northern Chiapas highlands and nearby lowlands, including the Usumacinta valley and the abandoned city of Palenque. They called their language Lak ty’añ, meaning our speech.

In the sixteenth century Ch’ol communities resisted in the forests until Spanish campaigns from 1554 broke the Lacandon jungle settlements. Resettlement in the later 1550s brought people to Palenque, Tilá and Tumbalá, where they were put to work under the encomienda system. Royal decrees later granted them lands their families had long cultivated.