Colonialism’s End? The archaeological consequences of the Grito de Dolores

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Jenks.

While the struggle for Mexican independence was a relatively remote concern for colonists in New Mexico, its consequences were immediate and profound. After Mexico opened its northern border to trade with the United States, commerce between the two countries brought American merchants and merchandise to and through New Mexico, creating new economic opportunities for local residents and introducing numerous changes to their daily lives. These opportunities came with a cost; 25 years later,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Minette Church. Christine Kray. Jason Yaeger.

In 1810, British Honduras was a set of coastal settlements, served by the British Foreign Office rather than the Colonial Office, with only usufruct logging rights ceded by Spain in treaty negotiations of 1783/1786. The Foreign Office used the new independence of Mexico, the Federal Republic of Central America, and later Guatemala, as opportunities to renegotiate terms, arguing they were no longer bound by treaties with the now defunct New Spain. At the time of these renegotiations, some Maya...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rani Alexander.

The Caste War of Yucatán (1847-1901) is widely regarded a "successful" revitalization movement in the Americas. Construction of historical memories that emerged from the golden age of peasant studies in anthropology highlight redress of colonialism’s socioeconomic disparities, the birth of a new religion, and return to traditional lifeways, which recall the glories of the prehispanic era. But what is the basis of these interpretations? Were the entangled social, economic, political, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn E Sampeck.

The idea of "nation" in Latin America invoked discussions of ideal citizens. The colonial metamorphosis from social classification—the casta system--to racial thinking centered on defining places, social and geographic, for and by Afro-Latin Americans. In cases such as Cuba, political efforts aimed to end racism and build "raceless" nations, while others, such as Mexico, enthusiastically embraced indigenous heritage but at the same time elided or even rejected African descent, creating what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Hernandez.

In the century after Independence, Yucatán experienced unprecedented industrial, economic, and social transformation derived from henequen production and export. During the presidency of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911), an ambitious modernization project was launched to unify the nation. It fomented capitalist industrialization of all production sectors, the introduction of railroads, and the opening of new commercial markets. Yucatecan hacendados obtained federal concessions and invested in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel W. Palka.

Tobacco became a major commodity in the Spanish colonies in the late colonial period. But the importance of tobacco increased in post-independence times when the new republics developed their economies and free markets. The ingestion of tobacco also reached new highs at this time. Lacandon Maya in the remote forests of Mexico and Guatemala entered globalization by mastering tobacco cultivation and exchange. The Lacandon produced superb, cheap tobacco that they traded for foreign goods. Tobacco...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Alston Bridges. Roberto Gallardo.

The impact of the Industrial Revolution affected El Salvador far more slowly in the pre-independence period due to the Spanish trade monopoly. Yet Atlantic World demand for commodities such as balsam, cacao, coffee, indigo, and sugar steadily increased through the early Republican period of independence, encouraging entrepreneurs to invest in the technologies of the nineteenth century. Technologies like the steamship and railroad inextricably connected El Salvador to global markets, resulting in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Meierhoff.

In the late-nineteenth century Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal.  Unlike the numerous Yucatec refugee communities established to the east in British Honduras, those who settled at Tikal combined with Lacandon Maya, and later Ladinos from Lake Petén Itza to form a small, multiethnic village in the sparsely occupied Petén jungle of northern Guatemala.  This paper discusses the analysis of the mass-produced...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maggie Morgan-Smith.

A legacy of oppression exists alongside the memory of agentive acts of residence among laborers and their descendants at the site of Rancho Kiuic, Yucatan, México. Owned and operated by several generations of Maya-speaking families from the Late Colonial through National periods, the Rancho offers a setting for exploring the responses to and experiences of the Caste War of Yucatán (1947-1901) and agrarian reform among communities outside of centralized population centers. Excavation data from...