Industrial Heritage and Henequen Landscapes: The Social Spaces along the Conkal-Progreso Railway in Northern Yucatan (1886–1950)

Summary

From the second half of the nineteenth century the Yucatecan henequen industry experienced an extraordinary growth that would result in a "Gilded Age". The most notorious vestiges of this era are the henequen haciendas, which were dispersed across the entire peninsula and whose ruins evoke nostalgia for an era of industrial and commercial splendor. By the end of the century, new developments in communications and construction industries also appeared. Yucatán’s accelerated economic growth, tied to the henequen boom, resulted in new transport infrastructure such as the railroad, which became the force behind the growth of agricultural, industrial, and commercial production on the peninsula. A narrow-gauge railway that ran from the town of Conkal to the Port of Progreso is a clear example of a capitalist project of that epoch which brought changes to the Yucatec landscape and the social relations that impacted native populations. This paper focuses on the survey and register of archaeological evidence along this railway using modern technologies such as UAV’s, as well as excavation, and material culture analysis. Our goal is to illustrate how economic boom and industrialization had drastic environmental, social, and cultural repercussions within indigenous communities of the Yucatan peninsula.

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): 21158