Tales From The Yucatan

Caste War of the Yucatan by Jeanine Kitchel

The above is a copy of one of the few remaining photographs of the original Yucatan Caste War Mural at the Corozal Town Hall painted by Manuel Villamor in the 1950s. The mural captures the unvarnished civil convulsions that led to many Hispanic settlers fleeing to northern Belize. They established a new society that today makes up the majority of Belizeans. Sadly, this mural was destroyed when the artist covered it up with a more politically correct version in the 1980's. In the 1990's he was allowed to further paint over the second mural to render an even more politically correct anti-colonial version. The artist who is now 76 and lives in Mexico, wants to, but does not have the energy to paint over the mural a fourth time.

From 1847 until the early 1900s, the Caste War of the Yucatan made it impossible for a light-skinned person to walk into the eastern Yucatan or the territory of Quintana Roo and come out alive. Only indigenous Maya could safely roam here; any Spanish or Mestizo would be killed on sight. What caused the fierceness of this Maya uprising which lasted over half a century?

No single element alone instigated the rebellion, but as in most revolutions, a long dominated underclass was finally pushed to its limit by an overbearing uberclass that had performed intolerable deeds. These included changing the status of public lands which the Maya used for farming, breaking contracts, and enforcing cruel and unfair work conditions on the local peasants. Added to this was the timing of Mexico's successful break with Spain, which led to numerous changes in the Yucatecan government, including arming the Maya to help fight the Mexican war against the United States in Texas. For the first time ever, the Maya were allowed to own guns.

As a bit of background, Spanish invaders battled 19 years to conquer the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula. Unlike the Aztecs in central Mexico who succumbed to Cortez in less than two years, the Mayans were not easily overtaken. But by 1700, a once robust Maya population had fallen to 150,000 due to disease, displacement and famine. As peace reclaimed the area, however, the Yucatan Peninsula's combined population of Maya, Mestizo and Spanish ballooned to a whopping 580,000 by 1845. More people on Yucatan soil meant more food was needed, and thus began the battle for land.

The history of the caste war, not unlike Mexico's dramatic history, is complicated to say the least. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, the Yucatan, a former territory, joined the Mexican Union. But by 1839, the Yucatecan elites chafed under federal authority and revolted against the new government, severing ties to Mexico, and enlisting the services of the Maya, offering promises of land, along with freedom from taxes, according to Terry Rugeley, author of Yucatan's Mayan Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War.

The Yucatan generals armed the Maya, and with their help, the revolution was a success.

CHANGES
But a few years later, the new Yucatan government made sweeping changes, including the suppression of monasteries separating church and state, and adopting new land and property rights, which included a clause allowing former public lands to be cultivated and sold. Over the next seven years, Rugeley states, several hundred thousand acres of land once used by Mayan peasants was taken from them and transferred into the ownership of the colonial and church elite, who felt the uncultivated lands were barely used by the Maya. To the Maya, however, forest land was sacred and far from vacant, as it housed the deities of the wild places and the guardians of the corn, and to the Maya, corn was the divine food, Rugeley states.
So not only were ancient lands stolen from the Maya but the promise of deeded land for combat duty was reneged on and never awarded them. The elimination of church taxes, another pledge, was also ignored, leaving the Mayans embittered. By 1843, Yucatan had waffled again and rejoined the Mexican Union, but retained these newer land laws as well as division of church and state that had been set up during the interim government.

With the church on its own and receiving no state funding, the clergy imposed hefty fees, called obventions, on the indigenous Maya when performing marriages or baptisms. The Maya became easy targets for recouping the church's lost income.

At the same time, water rights protection was removed and cenotes (limestone sinkholes that served as reservoirs to the dry, often bleak landscape) which had supplied an area's water for centuries suddenly became private property. On a parched peninsula, things were changing rapidly.

Next: Part Two