In describing the customs of the Mayas inhabiting the Verapaz province (including the Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz) of 16th-century Guatemala, Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas mentions sexual relationships, regulated by customary law, between unmarried young men and boys, as well as similar relations prevailing among adolescents receiving instruction in the temples. Chin, together with Cu, Cavil ('idol'), and Maran, is mentioned as the name of the male deity said to have demonstrated homosexual intercourse with another 'demon', and thereby to have introduced such relationships: "From that time on some fathers gave their sons a little boy to be used as a woman; and if someone else took the boy, they demanded pay as is done when someone violates another's wife." Institutionalized pederastic pr