Landscapes of Inequality in Ebtun, Yucatán, 1800–1890

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper, I examine the postcolonial social transformations of Yucatec-speaking communities located southwest of Valladolid, Yucatán, occasioned by the Caste War (1847–1901), a violent rebellion and revitalization movement intricately related to processes of decolonization following Independence. How did Native leaders negotiate the imposition of liberal and anticlerical political-economic policies after independence? Did the Caste War affect wealth disparities among these rural communities? How did they emerge from the Caste War and rebuild the socioeconomic fabric in the twentieth century? Using the wills and testaments from the Titles of Ebtun and nineteenth-century censuses from the Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán, I calculate GINI coefficients to analyze variation in household material wealth, social mobility, and inequality in the nineteenth century. My results indicate that the strategies and practices through which community leaders accumulated and transferred wealth to descendant generations reproduced sociogeographic identities into the twentieth century.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Place-Making in Indigenous Mesoamerican Communities Past and Present

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32262