The San Pedro Maya and the Western Frontier of British Honduras

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Having fled the violence of the Caste War in Mexico, the San Pedro Maya occupied nearly two dozen small villages in the forests of western British Honduras and northeastern Petén from the 1850s to the 1930s. Archaeological and archival information attest to the fact that the western "border" of British Honduras was a colonial concept of little concern to the San Pedro Maya. Because the colonial administration had no ability to police this frontier zone, the San Pedro Maya moved freely between Mexico, Guatemala, and British Honduras. Ultimately, however, the colonial concern for the frontier and the San Pedro Maya’s disregard for it, among other factors, led to the forceful eviction of the Maya from their villages. In this paper, we present archival and archaeological data related to Kaxil Uinic and other San Pedro Maya settlements to explore how the Maya interacted with the border between Guatemala and British Honduras.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22912