Spain conquers Nojpeten, the last independent Maya kingdom

Nojpeten was the capital of the Itza, a Maya people who lived on an island in Lake Peten Itza in what is now northern Guatemala. On March 13, 1697, a Spanish force under Martin de Ursua y Arizmendi attacked the island from a galley built for the lake and took the town. The Itza king, Ajaw Kan Ek', was captured. Nojpeten was later rebuilt as the Spanish town of Flores.¹²

The Itza were the last major Maya state to stay outside Spanish rule. Spanish conquests in Yucatan and Guatemala through the 1500s left the dense rainforest of the Peten as a refuge, and the Itza turned away missionaries and colonial parties for generations. By the 1690s, Spain wanted a direct road between Yucatan and Guatemala, and Itza raids and refugees from Spanish territory made the island a target. Ursua advanced on the island in 1696 and 1697 after earlier Spanish missions had failed. The Spanish assault was short, and the island fell with comparatively little fighting. About 180 years after the first Spanish ships reached the Yucatan coast in 1517, no Maya state remained independent. The Maya themselves did not disappear: millions of their descendants still speak Maya languages today.²