A study of the development of human society in Yucatan during the colonial period, this book poses a challenge to a variety of accepted views, including the notion that Yucatan was largely isolated from the main part of Spain's New World empire and thus from international markets and the world economy - an isolation often cited as the principal reason for the extended survival of indigenous culture in the region. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Yucatan society was composed of both Maya and Spanish commonwealths, each with its own economic, social, and political organization. This book represents several new departures, both for what is known about colonial Yucatan and for colonial Latin American history in general. It forces the reader to rethink much of the received knowledge about acculturation, the hacienda, and inter-regional relations.
Few developments in the history of the Spanish colonial system in Mexico have been more carelessly treated or more often misinterpreted than the attempt to establish constitutional government in New Spain under the Spanish monarchy during the 1809–1814 and 1820–1822 periods. Yet the broad outlines of the Mexican constitutional system were laid then, largely through the insistent efforts of the Mexican deputies to the Cortes, the Spanish legislative body. Some of the delegates also grasped this opportunity to inform their countrymen and train them in the effectiveness of parliamentary debate and resolution as a more intelligent road to democratic and representative government. The 70 Mexican deputies (of the 160 elected) who actively participated in the sessions of the Cortes either helped draw up the Constitution of 1812, which initiated provisions for many needed reforms relating to military, religious, economic, educational, judicial, and governmental affairs in Mexico, or contributed to the enabling acts consequent to these provisions. The prime reason for calling the Cortes, however, and especially for inviting the participation of the Mexicans, was to attempt to maintain New Spain’s loyalty to the mother country, an unrealized objective in the long run, although much constructive discussion of this goal was offered by the Mexican delegates. These eight essays trace the establishment and implementation of the Mexican electoral system, both national and municipal, and of reforms in the economic, journalistic, religious, and military systems. They serve as an informative introduction to the revolutionary role the Cortes of Spain played in Mexican history and as a record of the contribution of Mexican delegates to the beginning of liberal reform in their country.
Coloniality in the Maya Lowlands explores what has been required of the Maya to survive both internal and external threats and other destabilizing forces. These include shifting power dynamics and sociocultural transformations, tumultuous political regimes, the precarity of newly formed nation states, migration in search of refuge, and newly globalizing economies in the Yucatecan lowlands in the Late Colonial to Early National periods—the times when formal Spanish colonial rule was giving way to Yucatecan and Mexican neocolonial settler systems. The work takes a hemispheric approach to the historical and material analysis of colonialism, bridging the often disparate literatures on coloniality and settler colonialism. Archaeologists and anthropologists working in what are today southeastern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras grapple with the material realities of coloniality at a regional level. They provide sustained discussions of Maya experiences with wide-ranging colonial endurances: violence, resource insecurity, land rights, refugees, the control of borders, the movement of contraband, surveillance, individual and collective agency, consumption, and use of historic resources. Considering a future for historical archaeologies of the Maya region that bridges anthropology, ethnohistory, Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, and Latin American studies, Coloniality in the Maya Lowlands presents a new understanding of how ways of being in the Maya world have formed and changed over time, as well as the shared investments of historical archaeologists and sociocultural anthropologists working in the Maya region. Contributors: Fernando Armstrong-Fumero, Alejandra Badillo Sánchez, Adolfo Iván Batún Alpuche, A. Brooke Bonorden, Maia C. Dedrick, Scott L. Fedick, Fior García Lara, John Gust, Brett A. Houk, Rosemary A. Joyce, Gertrude B. Kilgore, Jennifer P. Mathews, Patricia A. McAnany, James W. Meierhoff, Fabián A. Olán de la Cruz, Julie K. Wesp
Colonial and postcolonial change in Mesoamerica : an introduction / Susan Kepecs and Rani T. Alexander -- Mexico City, Mérida, and the world : Kondratieff waves on the periphery / Susan Kepecs and Patricia Fournier García -- Commodities production and technological change / Susan Kepecs, Patricia Fournier García, Rani T. Alexander, and Cynthia L. Otis Charlton -- Agrarian ecology and historical contingency in landscape change / Rani T. Alexander, Janine Gasco, and Judith Francis Zeitlin -- Archaeologies of resistance / Rani T. Alexander, Susan Kepecs, Joel W. Palka, and Judith Francis Zeitlin -- Religion and ritual in postconquest Mesoamerica / Judith Francis Zeitlin and Joel W. Palka -- Sociocultural identities / Judith Francis Zeitlin, Patricia Fournier García, Joel W. Palka, and Janine Gasco -- Historical archaeology in the basin of Mexico : the Otumba case / Thomas H. Charlton and Cynthia L. Otis Charlton -- Material culture, status, and identity in post-independence central Mexico : urban and rural dimensions / Patricia Fournier García -- Indigenous communities, colonization, and interethnic interaction in Tehuantepec, 1450 to the present / Judith Francis Zeitlin -- Anthropogenic landscapes of Soconusco, past and present / Janine Gasco -- Cross-cultural interaction and Lacandon ethnogenesis in the southern Maya lowland frontier, AD 1400 to the present / Joel W. Palka -- Agrarian ecology in Yucatán, 1450-2000 / Rani T. Alexander -- The longue durée, from salt to sea cucumbers : Kondratieff waves in Chikinchel, on the very far periphery / Susan Kepecs -- The underlying aim of historical archaeology : a conclusion / Susan Kepecs and Rani T. Alexander
Conflicts between native Maya peoples and European-derived governments have punctuated Mexican history from the Conquest in the sixteenth century to the current Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. In this deeply researched study, Terry Rugeley delves into the 1800-1847 origins of the Caste War, the largest and most successful of these peasant rebellions. Rugeley refutes earlier studies that seek to explain the Caste War in terms of a single issue. Instead, he explores the interactions of several major social forces, including the church, the hacienda, and peasant villagers. He uncovers a complex web of issues that led to the outbreak of war, including the loss of communal lands, substandard living conditions, the counterpoise of Catholicism versus traditional Maya beliefs, and an increasingly heavy tax burden. Drawn from a wealth of primary documents, this book represents the first real attempt to reconstruct the history of the pre-Caste War period. In addition to its obvious importance for Mexican history, it will be illuminating background reading for everyone seeking to understand the ongoing conflict in Chiapas.
Forests are alive, filled with rich, biologically complex life forms and the interrelationships of multiple species and materials. Vulnerable to a host of changing conditions in this global era, forests are in peril as never before. New markets in carbon and environmental services attract speculators. In the name of conservation, such speculators attempt to undermine local land control in these desirable areas. Moral Ecology of a Forest provides an ethnographic account of conservation politics, particularly the conflict between Western conservation and Mayan ontological ecology. The difficult interactions of the Maya of central Quintana Roo, Mexico, for example, or the Mayan communities of the Sain Ka’an Biosphere, demonstrate the clashing interests with Western biodiversity conservation initiatives. The conflicts within the forest of Quintana Roo represent the outcome of nature in this global era, where the forces of land grabbing, conservation promotion and organizations, and capitalism vie for control of forests and land. Forests pose living questions. In addition to the ever-thrilling biology of interdependent species, forests raise questions in the sphere of political economy, and thus raise cultural and moral questions. The economic aspects focus on the power dynamics and ideological perspectives over who controls, uses, exploits, or preserves those life forms and landscapes. The cultural and moral issues focus on the symbolic meanings, forms of knowledge, and obligations that people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and classes have constructed in relation to their lands. The Maya Forest of Quintana Roo is a historically disputed place in which these three questions come together.
