Taming the Maya Jungle: Decauville Railroads in 19th and Early 20th Century Yucatán

Summary

Starting in the nineteenth century, industries like henequen, chicle, hardwoods and sugarcane required the installation of narrow-gauge railroads across the Yucatán Peninsula. Mules, horses or people pulled low and flat, four-wheeled wooden carts along these rails, which connected haciendas, ports, and remote jungle camps. These rails brought supplies from "civilization" or commodities out of the forest for distribution. This paper will explore the role that railroads played during this period. For the elites who ran commodity industries, Decauville rails were part of the modernizing infrastructure used to "tame" the jungle and speed up labor production. For the workers, the rails were laid atop stone roads built by their ancient ancestors, along jungle paths that their families had walked centuries, or through agricultural fields on lands formerly theirs. They were a tool used to exploit labor in a brutal process of forest and agricultural extraction for global commodity consumption, and a symbol of their loss of property rights, resources and the ability to feed their own families. And yet, in some cases, the rails that traversed into the forest allowed Maya workers to be away from the watchful eye of managers, hidden away in the untamable forest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 18751