Pedro Bracamonte y Sosa’s book is part of a series, Historia de los pueblos indígenas, intended for a Mexican audience, so it is not exclusively for specialists or graduate students. The series’ main objective, according to its editors, is to dispel the distorted view of Indians as an undifferentiated mass by revealing the rich diversity and plurality of Mexico’s culture and people. With that in mind, the author adopts Nancy Farriss’ theme of collective survival and identity among the Maya of the Yucatán peninsula.
Oppression in the form of the encomienda, which endured into the late colonial period, and the criollos’ racist attitudes and policies evoked a varied response among the Maya. Some escaped to the more isolated Indian ranchos of the south and east; there, the inhabitants historically remained far from the watchful eyes of the civil and religious authorities and thus able to practice openly their pre-Hispanic rituals or their version of Catholicism. Others could pass themselves off as non-tribute-paying mestizos; still others stood their ground.
From that southeastern frontier, the Maya sought to drive out the Spanish in the short-lived 1761 Quisteil uprising. The criollos resorted to the usual stereotypes by calling the rebels drunkards and savages. Later, the same eastern jungles became home to the cruzo’ob (rebel) state, a product of the Caste War of 1847. Independent Mexico, too feeble and too preoccupied with an aggressive United States, chose to recognize this autonomous Maya state as a república indígena. This throwback to colonial days was amply supplied with arms by British Belize and ably led by a powerful cacique class. But Maya in the northeastern quarter of Yucatán, where the criollos were stronger and the caciques weaker, did not have such luck. Through legal and extralegal means, their vacant lands, actually milpas lying fallow, fell into the hands of the liberal state and eventually to political favorites and soldiers. Even as some Maya turned themselves into yeoman farmers at the behest of short-sighted liberal policies, they often became indebted and consequently were forced to sell their holdings to neighboring landowners.
A dwindling communal base turned the Maya into permanent hacienda workers, especially as henequen became king. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Maya were no longer cultivating their milpas but instead buying their essentials from the hacienda store (tienda de raya). The Porfirista army occupied the cruzo’ob state and made it virtually one big prison. Finally, the Revolution of 1910 supposedly ended the most blatant oppression while placing the Maya on the collective ejido under state tutelage. Regardless of the changing political and economic circumstances, the Maya retained their own identity and distinctiveness through language, tradition, and a fairly resilient leadership structure.
This work should be valued primarily for its synthesis of the historical account and its recognition of variation, both in the region and in the Maya’s responses. And its 80 pages of documents might spark the curiosity of the specialist.
