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Jose Osorio Espinosa de los Monteros, who became Judge of the Royal Court of Mexico, attained a degree in Civil Law from the Royal University of Mexico with a thesis published in 1668, and now preserved at the Nation's General Archive (agn). The purpose of this paper is to present said thesis along with its paleographic transcription and his translation, as well as a philological and historical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses one type of important intermediaries of colonial Yucatan, the general interpreters of Yucatan's Juzgado Privado de Indios. From the time of Gaspar Antonio Chi in 1580 until the demise of this court in the 1820s, these men mediated directly in land disputes, complaints against priests and other officials, and translated decrees initially published in Spanish for the province's Maya-speaking majority. The activities of the interpreters demonstrate that Yucatan had a high number of individuals literate and fluent in both Maya and Spanish until the close of the colonial period. Furthermore, the quantity of qualified individuals serving unofficially as interpreters during the late eighteenth century and the surprising number of non-Mayas in need of their services also shows that the colonial period was a time in which Maya spread as the predominant language of Yucatan rather than a time of decline for the region's native language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]