Diego de Landa was a 16th century Spanish Franciscan friar and the second bishop of the Yucatan who struggled to convert the Mayan people to Christianity. He launched an brutal inquisition against the Mayas to force them to adopt Catholicism, torturing thousands and killing over 100, during which he burned thousands of native religious images and painted books. His excessive actions were eventually stopped and he was tried in Spain for his conduct in the Yucatan.