Legacies of Resistance in Postcolonial Yucatán

Summary

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 religious asymmetries of the colonial era truly swept away? In this paper, I examine written and archaeological evidence of the Caste War’s aftermath in the area between Chichén Itzá and Valladolid, Yucatán. I compare how shifts in demography, migration, and socioeconomic inequality inscribed the landscape from the first decades after independence through the early twentieth century. My results indicate that social memories of the worsening disparities of the postcolonial era were reproduced and appropriated during post-revolutionary agrarian reform. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Colonialism’s End? The archaeological consequences of the Grito de Dolores

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 260