Remembering the Rancho: Insights into Social Memory at Rancho Kiuic, Yucatán, México

Summary

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 household and religious contexts and oral histories with the community’s descendent population suggest the Rancho served a complex role among its laborers and neighbors during the tumultuous decades following independence.  Memories of the Rancho as both a refuge for Maya-speakers escaping violence and famine, and as a reflection of the hacienda system writ small, merge in the formation of a descendant community identity in the present. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 558