Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar

Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar was a Spanish cleric and author associated with Yucatán in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Sources connected with his writings identify him with the dates 1555–1648, and he is best known today for Informe contra idolorum cultores del obispado de Yucatán, a text written in the early 1600s and printed in 1639.

That work became an important historical source because it describes ongoing Maya religious practices from the viewpoint of a Catholic churchman determined to root them out. Modern scholars continue to study it not only for what it reveals about colonial religious policy, punishment, and evangelization, but also for the indirect evidence it preserves about Indigenous belief and resistance.

For readers today, Sánchez de Aguilar is less a literary figure than a witness to a harsh and contested world. His writing helps illuminate how religion, power, and colonial control were intertwined in Yucatán, which is why his name still appears in studies of Maya history and the Spanish colonial church.