Researchers working on Yucatán’s past have benefited from the state’s abiding commitment to historic preservation. Archives and libraries, each one bursting at the seams with primary materials, honeycomb Mérida, in large part due to the region’s fractious political past. Regional elites struggled with a distant federal government and among themselves for power and resources, enlisting the support of the main-stream and ephemeral press and the courts, publishing broadsides and pamphlets, and utilizing other methods of persuasion—many of which subsequently found their way into the public domain. This anthology, which includes essays by the director of the state’s Archivo General and three young scholars, effectively mines the state’s patrimony to document how disgruntled Yucatecans made their voices heard and resisted the hegemony of the region’s political class during the Restoration (186776) and the Porfiriato (1876-1911).
Three of the essays treat dissident members of the regional elite, largely of the liberal persuasion,...
