The Mexican Revolution In Yucatan, 19151924

James C Carey

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367293840
• eBook ISBN: 9781000303315
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Focusing on the lives of two revolutionary leaders, Salvador Alvarado and Felipe Carrillo Puerto, this book shows how the Mexican Revolution affected the State of Yucatan, a region that had boasted of its independence from Mexico City and where a dominant social minority had long refused meaningful change for the indigenous population. Dr. Carey co

I
The Peninsular Scene in 1910

"On that day dust will cover the earth . . . plague will cover the face of the land . . . a cloud will arise . . . a strong man will seize the country . . . ."

Chilam Balam, Mayan Prophecies

Two historic conditions plagued Yucatán at the close of 1910: its political, social, and economic life remained largely independent of the Mexican nation, and most societal patterns still reflected a peninsular "feudalism." This book demonstrates how Salvador Alvarado changed the first condition and how Felipe Carrillo Puerto played a major role in transforming the second. Chapter one introduces the reader to the Peninsula, sketches the background of the two problems, and shows how revolutionary movements from northern Mexico encouraged unrest within this southeastern part of the nation.

Yucatecan Separatism

The State of Yucatán, the best known and most economically advanced section of the Peninsula, has retained the name "Yucatán," but in ancient times the entire region under Mayan influence was known as the "Land of Mayab." its ancient city of T'ho rested where the modern capital of Mérida rises, just nine meters above sea level, Mérida is located at a point which is north of Mexico City but almost due east of that national center. The principal port, Progreso, lies on the sea lanes at just about the midway point on a straight line between Havana, Cuba, and Vera Cruz. As long as water transit was the only practical way to travel to Mérida (this was true well into the twentieth century), Havana was in much closer contact with Yucatán's capital than was Mexico City or Oaxaca.

For the great majority of people who live on the Peninsula this is still a hard land on which to make a living, for the thin soil is but a few inches of cover over the limestone--all of relatively recent origin in geological terms. Man has always been set sharply against nature in Yucatán, yet the ancients worked diligently to put themselves in harmony with their natural surroundings. Fray Diego de Landa, in his Relacíon de las cosas de Yucatán said, "Yucatán is a land with the least land that I have seen." The area is remarkably flat, almost without rivers, and thus the underground deposits of water (cenotes) have and still hold an important place, even religious significance, in the lives of the Mayas. The State of Yucatán presents a rather drab spectacle other than for Mérida, some of the beaches, and the amazing ancient cities (most of which are set back in the interior).

The old and the new are strangely mixed in the psychological, philosophical, and physical aspects of the area, Mérida is something of an exception, for it is more foreign than Mayan. Yet even there, women of all classes may be seen wearing the huipil, a modern version of the ancient sack dress. On the south side of Merida's central plaza is the oldest standing residence of a conquistador; there, the palace of Don Francisco Montejo, built in 1549, has a facade on which Mayan Indios are kneeling in submission before their European masters. Modern government and business structures crowd the center of the capital city; yet on the outskirts there can still be found the ancient-style thatched roofs on houses. At the east side of the great plaza* is the cathedral with the ordinary pair of towers in the Spanish style. But crowning the towers are conical extensions, proper Mayan symbols, as these two projections are phallic in appearance and were once the sign of Zamná. For many ancients, Zamná was a god, priest, or chief, and the phallic form had deep religious significance, as can be seen in various ruins across the Peninsula.¹ One wonders if sixteenth century indigenous workers were able to surreptitiously add this touch to European ideas of church architecture.

The Mexican State of Yucatán is today but a portion of the cultural peninsula of ancient times. Pieces have been periodically torn away until now Mérida politicians are accustomed to saying, "The good soil was given to others, and they have left us nothing more than the rock."² Unfortunately there is a great deal of truth in what they say. Belize (British Honduras) and the Guatemalan Department of Petén had been separated from the Yucatecan heartland prior to the national period. Campeche State was separated in 1862, and the separation left bad blood between Yucatecos and Campechanos. The last sharp insult came in 1902 when Porfirio Díaz and the national government created the Federal Territory of Quintana Roo from part of Yucatán.

The isolation of the Peninsula, its dismemberment, and the earlier Mayan cultural identity have in various ways nurtured separatism, or sectionalism, or regionalism. In many respects, separatism was a Yucatecan tradition before there was a Mexican nation, and the various disengagements of territory served to strengthen such a consciousness at the very time that closer union with the Mexican nation should have developed.³ Consciousness of Yucatecan unity was strongly influenced by the fact that Mérida, as most of Yucatán, was isolated from much of the world, bordered on three sides by water and populated by Mayas steeped in their own village and regional culture. It seems that Spain had never fully conquered Yucatán; and yet it has been correctly pointed out that its colonial society was dependent directly on Spain, not on New Spain. Yucatán did not play a real role in the independence movement against Spain; the governor resigned without a fight.⁴

With independence, Yucatecos took the federalist route and resisted the centralist philosophy of government. In 1838, at Tizimín in the northeast part of the state, Santiago Iman led a revolt against centralism. At first, backed mainly by Indios, he gained support by proclaiming against the overseas use of troops (as in Texas) and against the payment of church obventions. Taking Valladolid to the east first and Campeche to the southwest last, Yucatán officials announced in June 1840 that they would remain independent as long as the Mexican Government was centralist. The Yucatecos drew up a new "sovereign" constitution (1841), and Mexico City authorities retaliated as best they could by declaring Yucatecan ships outside the law and closing mainland Mexican ports to the people of the Peninsula. The new flag of the so-called sovereign nation of Yucatán had, along with two red and one white stripes, five stars on a green field to represent the five departments. In 1843 Santa Anna sent an expeditionary army to Yucatán, hoping that a military lesson would settle matters. The Yucatecos hired the services of the Texas navy for 5,000 pesos per month.⁵ Although the Yucatecan military was able to stand off Santa Anna's expedition, the hard facts of economic reality obliged the Southeasterners to compromise. As might be expected, the centralist policy of the national government had economic, as well as political, aspects which rankled the Yucatecos.⁶ In perspective we note that in the mid-nineteenth century Yucatecos were separatist minded when Mexico was still a weak, disunited nation.

The argument has long continued as to whether or not Yucatán was separatist or regionalist. Some writers of recent times have claimed that it was the tyranny of Mexico City officials that encouraged separatism.⁷ A reading of the political history of the Peninsula does reflect considerable discontent with the appointment of non-Yucatecos as governors of the state. And, until well into the twentieth-century Revolution, a feeling of independence in one way or another prevailed both among the indigenous masses and among the influential businessman and large plantation owners (the latter referred to here simply as hacendados or henequeneros).

The stormy route of Yucatecan politics has been tortuous, in part because there has seldom been a clear idea of what was Yucatán, or even what was peninsular policy from the perspective of either Mérida or Mexico City. At times there has been a semblance of peninsular politics. In the 1920's the Socialist Party of the Southeast, headquarters in Mérida, had considerable influence in the neighboring states of Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas, and in Quintana Roo Territory as well. Even today in Mérida one can hear residents saying that there is no rational argument for the existence of Campeche as a separate state from Yucatán--yet it has been separate for more than 115 years. Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada wrote that a Campechano and a Yucateco were very similar, while Bernardino Meno Brito saw the two as very different in intellectual and emotional aspects.⁸ There is no real significance, historically, in placing these matters under a hard-and-fast label of "separatist" or "non-separatist." The Yucatecan struggles against Santa Anna, and later against the French Empire, have been cited as proof of Mexican patriotism by those who claim that Yucatán was regionalist and Mexican but not separatist.

Politics aside, surely a significant degree of isolation prevailed as long as the quickest way to travel from Mexico City to Mérida was to go by land to Veracruz and then take passage on a ship from there to Progreso, which is approximately twenty miles from the capital city. The railroad, Ferrocarril del Sureste, which crossed Chiapas and Tabasco to Campeche and Yucatán was initiated by President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1936; but it was not opened until May of 1950. These factors (especially isolationism) created, or at least encouraged, an awareness of Yucatecan music and a regional theatre.⁹ Such things were discussed from time to time in the Mérida newspapers.

The Caste War

If not all of Yucatán was separatist, part of it was so for an extended period of time. From 1847 on through the rest of the century a significant segment of the indigenous population fought for its independence. The Caste War of approximately seven years and the following Mexican campaigns against the Chan Santa Cruz Indios* are filled with tragic and colorful incidents. The causes of the Caste War of Yucatán are many and include resentment born of European domination over a once glorious Mayan culture. There were the Spanish and later Mexican unfulfilled promises of land, the attempt of the indigenous volunteers to help the Peninsula try to separate from Mexico, and the Indio animosity at having a sugar economy pushed upon them.¹⁰ Corn was sacred to the Mayas. The white man's "violation" of land from the Maya point of view should not be overlooked.

In this brief background sketch, there is no intention to include more than a scant summary of the Caste War. The war was far too complex for that. Rather, here are included several incidents encouraging separatist attitudes that are not commonly known to general readers in the English language. In 1848 the Yucatán Government hired 938 United States volunteers, most of them from the Thirteenth Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army, mustered out at Mobile, Alabama.¹¹ The politicians at Mérida had high hopes that these "fierce"* white soldiers could push the little Indios back to their homes in the bush. But fierce guerrilla tactics and the odd ways of the Maya as at the Battles of Peto, Ichmul, and Culumpich soon convinced the volunteers that this was not their kind of war. With sixty or seventy killed and 150 wounded the rest soon left the contest.

Another by-product of the war was the sale (mainly by Yucatecan politicians including at least two governors) of Indios as slaves to Cuba. There were many reasons, some of them even appearing to be justifiable at the time, for this slave enterprise carried on between 1849 and 1861.¹² War prisoners were a problem, food was...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• About the Book and Author
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Yucatán (Map)
• List of Governors
• Abbreviations For The Notes
• Chapter I THE PENINSULAR SCENE IN 1910
• Chapter II TO HAVE OR NOT TO HAVE A REVOLUTION
• Chapter III GENERAL ALVARADO LEADS A CRUSADE
• Chapter IV SOCIAL REFORMS OF A REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT
• Chapter V SOCIALISM, HENEQUEN, AND CARLOS CASTRO MORALES
• Chapter VI "DON FELIPE" AND THE LEAGUES
• Chapter VII THE "SOCIALIST OF MOTUL" IS GOVERNOR
• Chapter VIII THE DERAILMENT OF A REVOLUTION
• Chapter IX REPERCUSSION AND RECRIMINATION
• Chapter X REFLECTIONS
• Henequen: Exports, Prices, Values
• Selected Bibliography
• Index