Book Review

The introduction to this book is quite right: who would believe that as recently as the middle of the last century in the Yucatan Peninsula the descendants of the ancient Maya rebelled and almost pushed the ladinos[1] into the Atlantic Ocean? And that the Maya controlled the eastern Yucatan until 1902? Nelson Reed brings to light this remarkable yet little known episode of Mexican history. He leaves nothing out: the reasons for the revolt; the catalyst that sent the Maya to arms; the barbarism practiced by both sides; the military stalemate; Mexican political stupidity; the inexorable spread of road and rail that spelled the end of the rebellion.

Reed begins his story with a description of the ladino and Mayan societies in the Yucatan and how they came into hostility with one another. Like so many conflicts, this one had economic causes that centered on the control of land. The Maya of the eastern Yucatan had always lived apart from the ladinos of Merida and Campeche: the urbanized westerners showed little interest in the jungle regions where the Maya lived. Sugar and henequen changed this: the jungle could now be turned to a profit. Whites and their ladino laborers pushed into Maya areas and competed with the indigenas for land and water. This meant war.

The whites on their comfortable haciendas were in no way prepared for the events of 1847-1848. The Maya had learned much from centuries of contact with whites, and they proved more than competent with rifle and machete. Through the tactics of massed assault and terrifying atrocity they pushed the stunned Mexicans into the white redoubts of Merida and Campeche. Reed takes the reader through defeat after stupefying defeat, each more terrible than the one previous. The formerly “civilized” region between the coast and the jungle was now controlled by the Maya, who then began wiping out all traces of the former inhabitants.[2] Only through extraordinary effort did the ladinos avoid being annihilated. Luck was also involved in their salvation: had the long-hispanicized western Maya risen up in solidarity with their eastern cousins all would certainly have been lost. True, there was another reason for ladino survival: the Maya left the field of battle to plant corn. Slaughter could wait while the Maya prepared next year’s harvest.

In her desperate straits Yucatan was forced to do the unthinkable: she turned to the Mexican state for help. The Peninsula had long prided herself on her political autonomy from the capital; indeed, in 1836 Yucatan had risen in rebellion against a new constitution and a new government that vowed to bring her more firmly under the control of the Federal District. Her revolt was noted but ignored for the time being by Santa Ana, who had more pressing concerns on the Texan frontier. Mexican political instability in the following decade guaranteed Yucatecan independence from federal control. Not even the Mexican-American War could bring the Yucatecans to embrace their fellow countrymen in their hour of need: the Peninsula declared neutrality in that conflict, thereby insuring her market for henequen. The Caste War changed all this, but only after the Yucatecans had tried and failed to enlist European support. Swallowing its pride the Peninsula asked for and received military and financial aid from the capital. Certainly the Mexican state was only too happy to bring its wayward province back into the federal fold.

Reed calls the years of 1848-1849 “ladino recovery,” and so they were. The fat, the weak, the cowardly and the lazy had been “burned away,” leaving a Mexican military force tested in combat and crying for vengeance. It proved that the Maya were not the only experts at cruelty and search-and-destroy: the Maya now learned that the road from Chan Santa Cruz to Merida also went from Merida to Chan Santa Cruz. Whatever hope the Maya had of reviving the ancient empire of Tayasal was abandoned, at least for the time being.[3] Certainly they need not have feared a complete re-conquest of their newly won areas, for the ladinos soon lapsed into the political bickering to which they were so prone. Time after absurd time, when complete victory appeared within reach, Valladolid, Merida and Campeche would revive their old rivalries. Troops were siphoned off the still violent frontier, hard-won border posts were abandoned and men and materiel were wasted as the ladinos engaged in internecine squabbles.[4] Not being so foolish as the Mexicans, the Maya took full advantage of the situation and inflicted a ghastly series of defeats on their enemy. The year 1854 resembled 1847 as again the Maya pushed toward the coast slaughtering, destroying and enslaving.

Certainly the Mexican position was not helped by the attitude of the British Empire. The English had settled the region immediately bordering the eastern Yucatan in 1662, and developed trade there in mahogany and dyewood. By 1850 settlement and economic links with much of Central America were well established. The outbreak of the Caste War gave the British a fine opportunity to weaken their Mexican competition and at the same time to make a tidy profit. Ignoring the protests of the Mexican government, they began selling arms to the rebellious Maya. In this reader’s mind it was this event more than any other that allowed the Maya to take the field for more than half a century.

Eighteen-fifty-five saw a stalemate of sorts: the Maya retired to their stronghold of Chan Santa Cruz while the Mexicans abandoned any plan to re-take the eastern region. The area between their respective territories became a no-man’s-land, home only to the ambush, the sniper and the booby trap. There would be an occasional foray, a retaliatory strike, a guerrilla probe, but no massed movements of men and arms. The ladinos had not exactly given up all hope of pacifying the Yucatan; it was that they were occupied with political events that forced them to look beyond the narrow confines of their peninsula. All through the period discussed by Reed the political instability of Yucatan was only an echo of a similar but much larger idiocy in the Mexican capital. Campeche-born José María Gutiérrez, “citizen of the world, aristocrat and diplomat,” thought that only a European monarch could end Mexico’s political strife. After a series of overtures to continental royalty he settled on Maximilian of Austria. Somehow this reader was not surprised when he read that this imported crown, far from uniting the Yucatecans, only served as a source of new strife and turmoil and magnified their already existing political differences. The history of the western Yucatan during this period is a dreary list of instability, revolt, coup and counter-coup, all of this occurring with the Maya only a short distance away.

Isolated in their jungle hideout of Chan Santa Cruz, the Maya still kept themselves informed about the most recent ladino imbecilities. They had their own problems as well. Certainly they knew that the white advance was unstoppable, and that one day ladinos would push up against the very gates of Chan Santa Cruz. This fatalistic attitude, bread in despair and isolation, lead to their cultural degeneracy. This is best shown by the odd religious cult of the “Speaking Cross,” which was a bizarre mix of Catholicism and the Maya’s own ancient religious heritage. To this decay we must add the tremendous decline in Maya population: by 1890 only 10,000 were left, due to both a high death rate and an appallingly low birth rate. The 1893 treaty between Mexico and Great Britain, which ended official military assistance to the Maya, was the final blow to Mayan independence: the Maya were finished, and they knew it.

The ladinos had no pressing desire to move into the eastern Yucatan and so finish off the Maya which, by 1895, they most certainly could have done. They were content to begin enjoying life and prosperity again under the unaccustomed peace and stability of the Porfiriato. Markets opened up, foreign capital flowed into Mexico, and technological advancements made agriculture immensely lucrative. The merchants of Merida, of Campeche, of Valladolid, turned their eyes eastward and saw huge profits to be made if only something could be done about the Mayan nuisance. That “something” arrived in 1900, and its name was General Ignacio Bravo. Here was the irresistible march of orden y progreso made flesh. He was not one for timorous forays into the wilderness only to beat a hasty retreat; no, Bravo had come to stay. With his engineers and his rapid-fire carbines Bravo pushed into the Maya redoubt at the rate of ten miles a month. The Maya mustered what resistance they could, but what could they do with their antiquated muzzle loaders? Wherever Bravo went he built roads and forts, and his advance could not be stopped. The once huge expanse of Maya held areas shrunk to a small circle with one edge on the bank of the Rio Hondo facing British Honduras. When Bravo’s leviathan broke through this last Maya enclave it saw a skeletal and emaciated remnant of the people who had once dreamed of pushing the ladinos into the sea. The year was 1902; the Caste War was over.

Reed adds more to his tale: Bravo was followed a few years later by an even more irresistible force, chewing gum. The gringos had developed a liking of the stuff, and the chicle that formed its base flowed out of trees that thrived in the forests of the Yucatan. Smelling a profit, thousands of ladinos poured into the Yucatan to collect the sticky substance. Their presence changed forever the cultural makeup of the peninsula. The Maya were not stupid: rather than waste away into irrelevance and complete degradation they decided to collect chicle themselves. They bought land and tools and entered the economic system of the Yucatan. Slowly, perhaps imperceptibly, they changed. They became ladinos.

Which was just as well: for at last the Yucatan was truly part of Mexico, and she could now take her proper place in the cultural and political life of the country. Here, then, is the true value of Reed’s book: for until the events described in The Caste War of the Yucatan the peninsula was really a side-show to the general course of Mexican history. The Mayan uprising thrust it, perhaps unwillingly, into the modern age. Today the Yucatan is Mexico.

There is a train that goes from Mexico City to Merida, capital of the Yucatan. Its route takes it through much of the territory once controlled by the Maya during the Caste War. An interested traveler can visit the sites described in Reed’s book. The descendants of the Maya whose uprising pushed the Yucatan into fifty years of slaughter, terror and rapine are still there; they have the reputation as being the friendliest people in all of Mexico.

[1]Ladino is a term that refers to anyone who claims to be a part of the dominant Hispanic culture.

[2]Two thousand years before the Caste War the Roman Empire witnessed a similar event. The Emperor Augustus, believing the recently conquered region of Germany to be completely pacified, sent in colonists to settle there. The Germanic tribes rose up under one leader and pushed the Roman legions back across the Elbe and destroyed all Roman influence in the area. Rome, unlike Mexico in the Yucatan, never succeeded in re-conquering Germany.

[3]This was a Maya city on Lake Peten Itza in the Peten region of Guatemala. These Maya were not conquered by the Spanish until 1697. Tayasal was only a few day’s forced march from the Yucatan, where undoubtedly its tradition of independence and tenacity survived.

[4]This was not the only time the Mexicans failed to unite in the face of danger. Recall that when Winfield Scott was on the threshold of Mexico City the political parties in that sad capital were still debating over official policy.