Davila entrada

The Davila entrada was a Spanish military expedition of conquest against Postclassic polities of the Southern Maya Lowlands, in the Yucatan Peninsula, in 1531 to 1532, during the Spanish conquest of Yucatan, part of the broader conquest of the Maya. The campaign was led by Alonso Davila and commissioned by Francisco de Montejo, adelantado and governor of Spanish Yucatan, a recently founded province of New Spain, as a follow-up to the larger Montejo entrada of 1527 to 1528, which had failed to subdue Maya polities south of Waymil, in modern Quintana Roo, Mexico and Belize. The expedition initially went well for Davila, who marched through Cochuah and Waymil to Chetumal unopposed, founding Villa Real, an administrative centre for pacified polities, in the latter's port in the summer of 1531. Things soon turned south for the conquistadors though, as first Waymil and then Cochuah rebelled against Spanish dominion, leading to a protracted siege which ultimately saw the expeditioners routed from Villa Real in the autumn of 1532. A Spanish victory was thus frustrated for a second time, and Davila's retreat itself was, notably, a seven-month odyssey on Postclassic trading canoes to southern Spanish Honduras.