These secret combinations are presented as inherently antithetical to the prophets. Based upon Mesoamerican political structure in contrast to Nephite understanding, I offer some speculation about these secret combinations.
In the political hierarchies of the larger culture, power struggles exploded frequently among different groups seeking to improve their position in the hierarchy. Such an incipient power struggle is, I argue, the best explanation for Ammon defending King Lamoni’s flocks (Alma 17–19). Only recently have enough translations from monument inscriptions emerged to clarify Maya dynasties, but those king-lists indicate periodic disruptions that may point to such power struggles. For instance, Tikal experienced thirty years of dynastic instability during which the eventual heir was kept from the throne, and two other males were associated with the rule through a woman of the dynasty. The suggestion is that these two men attempted to use the dynastic woman to legitimate their own assertions of power. In the very next generation, a third man whose relation to the dynastic line was unclear also associated himself with a dynastic woman as justification for his rule.
The building blocks of such political intrigue may be seen when Dos Pilas (in the Petexbatún region, southwest Petén, Guatemala) collapsed in 761 C.E. The single authority fragmented into “local magnates, each of whom erected monuments and used the once restricted title ‘divine lord of Mutal.’” In Naranjo (also in the Petén just west of the Belize border), is evidence of an attempt to either create a new royal line or “bolster the pedigree of a lesser local lineage.”
Mesoamerican politics showed an undercurrent of competing dynastic lineages. Tilting the balance of power through secret alliances, or “combinations,” would be attractive in such a setting. This process becomes even clearer in later Nephite history; and Moroni’s editing of the Jaredite record focuses specifically on this very aspect.