Editing Pedro de Alvarado (section)

===Kaqchikel rebellion===
Pedro de Alvarado rapidly began to demand gold in tribute from the Kaqchikels, souring the friendship between the two peoples.<ref name="ScheleMathews99p298">Schele & Mathews 1999, p. 298.</ref> He demanded that their kings deliver 1000 gold leaves, each worth 15 [[peso]]s.<ref name="Guillemin67p25">Guillemin 1967 p. 25.</ref><ref group="nb">A ''peso'' was a Spanish coin. One peso was worth eight ''reales'' (the source of the term "pieces of eight") or two ''tostones''. During the conquest, a ''peso'' contained {{convert|4.6|g|oz}} of gold. Lovell 2005, p. 223. Recinos 1952, 1986, p. 52. n. 25.</ref> The Kaqchikel people abandoned their city and fled to the forests and hills on 28 August 1524. Ten days later the Spanish declared war on the Kaqchikel.<ref name="ScheleMathews99p298" />

Two years later, on 9 February 1526, a group of sixteen Spanish deserters burnt the palace of the ''[[Iximche#Political organisation|Ahpo Xahil]]'', sacked the temples and kidnapped a priest, acts that the Kaqchikel blamed on Pedro de Alvarado.<ref>Schele & Mathews 1999, pp. 298, 310, 386n19.</ref><ref group="nb">Recinos 1998, p. 19. gives ''sixty'' deserters.</ref> The Kaqchikel kept up resistance against the Spanish for a number of years. On 9 May 1530, exhausted by the warfare that had seen the deaths of their best warriors and the enforced abandonment of their crops,<ref>Polo Sifontes 1986, p. 92.</ref> the two kings of the most important clans returned from the wilds.<ref name="ScheleMathews99p298" /> A day later they were joined by many nobles and their families and many more people; they then surrendered at the new Spanish capital at [[Ciudad Vieja]].<ref name="ScheleMathews99p298" />