AHC: Incas, Mayans, ETC. get subjugated without getting their cultures destroyed.

Basically, the goal is for some (not necessarily all) the major New World Empires or Civilizations to be conquered by an Old World country (not necessarily the Europeans), yet to have their cultures, religions, and such survive to the present day to a much greater extant than OTL.

For example, the criteria for success is something like a New World equivalent of OTL Kurdistan, where it is under foreign rule for centuries, yet it is entirely realistic to imagine a Kurdish-speaking, Majority ethnically Kurdish state declaring independence in the 1800s or 1900s. (NOTE: the scenario doesn't require that any war of independence actually BE successful. Just that it is possible for it to occur.)
 
Basically, the goal is for some (not necessarily all) the major New World Empires or Civilizations to be conquered by an Old World country (not necessarily the Europeans), yet to have their cultures, religions, and such survive to the present day to a much greater extant than OTL.

For example, the criteria for success is something like a New World equivalent of OTL Kurdistan, where it is under foreign rule for centuries, yet it is entirely realistic to imagine a Kurdish-speaking, Majority ethnically Kurdish state declaring independence in the 1800s or 1900s. (NOTE: the scenario doesn't require that any war of independence actually BE successful. Just that it is possible for it to occur.)
That was technically the case here in Peru. The Natives mixed their culture with the Spaniards but nonetheless kept their own local traditions mostly intact. And up to the aftermath of the Tupac Amaru rebellion, Quechua was widely spoken.
 
Possible scenario:

Cortez's expedition is a failure, and the conquistadors are massacred. Although the Spanish consolidate their hold on the already-subjugated Panama and Caribbean they do not press to attack the Mexica and neighboring polities, opting instead for trading European goods for maize to feed sugarcane agriculture in the Caribbean. They still send in missionaries and merchants who succeed in Europeanizing the elites of these areas, but don't have direct control.

Wracked by successive epidemics introduced by these visitors, the Mesoamerican polities are too weakened to resist a second wave of European colonization-but by this time, the balance of power in Europe has shifted, and the colonization is done by European powers like the Dutch and perhaps a more Calvinist *Britain, who are less interested in prosletyzing and changing Native Culture, and the French, who are interested in prosletyzing but unconcerned with making local cultures conform to their norms.

The result is something like French Tahiti or Greenland on a much larger scale: a majority indigenous nation controlled by a foreign power and scarred by colonialism, but highly autonomous and with a realistic potential for independence.

Alternatively, you have OTL. In addition to GohanLSSJ2's example, much of Central America and Mexico has a strong Native influence in the culture and religious practice, and literally millions of people who still speak indigenous languages and belong to traditional indigenous communities.
 
I'm from Ecuador, and I don't think the culture of the natives here has been destroyed. You can frequently see people of Indigena descend still wearing traditional garments, Quechua is spoken by 10 million people and it's a recognized language of several countries, with education and news avaliable in it. Indigena festivals and traditions are still celebrated, and, in fact, some of them have been adopted even by the mestizos or the people of European descend. The most triumphal example is perhaps Paraguay, were a majority of the people speak a native language, Guarani, along with Spanish, even if they don't are of native descend themselves.
 
If you want an example of a "successful" native state OTL, look at Paraguay. The vast majority of the population speak Guarani, even more than the amount that speak Spanish.
 
I think my felow Latin Americans here are leaving this pretty clear: Latin America already has many states with deeply entrenched and very strong cultural roots based on our Native American peoples.

Spain may have conquered us, but they never destroyed us completely!
 
In Peru a native/mixed noble caste which claimed descent from the Inca nobility, while Christianized, remained significant landholders and maintained a lot of their traditions and traditional dress up until a failed rebellion in the 1780s. Either tone down the 'reforms' which pissed 'em off or have the revolt push the colonial administration out...

Edit: Beaten to it, but the big point is that it wasn't just rural subsistence farmers maintaining pre-conquest traditions but also a sizable chunk of people as far up the food chain as native-blooded people could easily rise...
 
Interesting... I've hearn of many rebellions, but I've never heard of a major Mayan rebellion this late in history?
There was the Caste War of Yucatan. The rebel Maya almost drove the whites off the peninsula in 1848 and the rebellion didn't fully die down until the 1930's. The much more recent Zapatistas are also almost entirely Maya.
 
This is OTL to an extent.

I think my felow Latin Americans here are leaving this pretty clear: Latin America already has many states with deeply entrenched and very strong cultural roots based on our Native American peoples.

Spain may have conquered us, but they never destroyed us completely!

Nope, just cucked us into abandoning our gods for a dead rabbi on a piece of wood, forced their language on us and have us, their descendants, fetishizing Spain and its rape of the Americas as some holiday worthy of celebrating.
 
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In Peru a native/mixed noble caste which claimed descent from the Inca nobility, while Christianized, remained significant landholders and maintained a lot of their traditions and traditional dress up until a failed rebellion in the 1780s. Either tone down the 'reforms' which pissed 'em off or have the revolt push the colonial administration out...

Edit: Beaten to it, but the big point is that it wasn't just rural subsistence farmers maintaining pre-conquest traditions but also a sizable chunk of people as far up the food chain as native-blooded people could easily rise...

Having the rebellion succeed would probably tick most of the OP's boxes. Unless the OP means stuff like Maya writing and calendar under 'culture'... this would require more butterflies.
 
Having the rebellion succeed would probably tick most of the OP's boxes. Unless the OP means stuff like Maya writing and calendar under 'culture'... this would require more butterflies.
Landa, in 1560s, had Maya codices burnt.
WI he, instead, orders Catholic cathecism and devotional works translated in Maya hieroglyphs, and printed? How would a 1560s printing press in Maya hieroglyphs look like?
 
Landa, in 1560s, had Maya codices burnt.
WI he, instead, orders Catholic cathecism and devotional works translated in Maya hieroglyphs, and printed? How would a 1560s printing press in Maya hieroglyphs look like?

This... isn't just a challenging AHC, it is challenging period. The Mayan writing system is part-Syllabary, part-logograms. There are much more symbols than the Latin 26, and said symbols are arguably more complex (thus harder to cast or carve) as well. Making a Adapting Gutenberg's printing press to the Mayan languages would be a significant technical challenge.

This makes me wonder BTW, if a surviving (or newly independent) Maya state would end up converting to the Latin script anyway, due to it being simpler to write and print?
 
This makes me wonder BTW, if a surviving (or newly independent) Maya state would end up converting to the Latin script anyway, due to it being simpler to write and print?

Very very likely for those exact reasons. Maya script would maybe remain used in temple and grand buildings ala hieroglyphics, but I can't see it being used everyday. Unless it becomes Simplified Maya and starts to resemble OTL Asian scripts :)
 
This... isn't just a challenging AHC, it is challenging period. The Mayan writing system is part-Syllabary, part-logograms. There are much more symbols than the Latin 26, and said symbols are arguably more complex (thus harder to cast or carve) as well. Making a Adapting Gutenberg's printing press to the Mayan languages would be a significant technical challenge.
I found an estimate of:
150 syllabograms
550 logograms
100 glyphs representing proper names of places and persons (gods).
Of the total of 800, about 300 were "commonly" used.

Yes, much more than the 30 Latin letters... but also significantly less than the 2000 or so commonly used Chinese hieroglyphs in Chinese, Korean or Japanese (how about Vietnamese?).
In East Asia, movable type was repeatedly used throughout 2nd millennium - ceramic, wood and metal, China, Korea and Japan. Mainly in major projects, which justified the need for the large type set. Which is why woodblock printing prevailed for popular works in small-scale printshops.

With the around 300 common hieroglyphs of Mayan, how would the balance between woodblock vs. movable type go?
 
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