Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán: Liberals, the Second Empire, and Maya Revolutionaries, 1855–1876

By Douglas W. Richmond

The Yucatán Peninsula has one of the longest, most multifaceted histories in the Americas. With the arrival of Europeans, native Maya with long and successful cultural and diplomatic traditions of their own had to grapple with outside forces attempting to impose new templates of life and politics on them.  Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán provides a rigorously researched study of the vexed and bloody period of 1855 to 1876, during which successive national governments implemented, replaced, and restored liberal policies.
 
Synthesizing an extensive and heterogeneous range of sources, Douglas W. Richmond covers three tumultuous political upheavals of this period. First, Mexico’s fledgling republic attempted to impose a liberal ideology at odds with traditional Maya culture on Yucatán; then, the French-backed regime of Emperor Maximilian began to reform Yucatán; and, finally, the republican forces of Benito Juárez restored the liberal hegemony. Many issues spurred resistance to these liberal governments. Instillation of free trade policies, the suppression of civil rights, and persecution of the Roman Catholic Church mobilized white opposition to liberal governors. The Mayas fought the seizure of their communal properties. A long-standing desire for regional autonomy united virtually all Yucatecans. Richmond advances the thought-provoking argument that Yucatán both fared better under Maximilian’s Second Empire than under the liberal republic and would have thrived more had the Second Empire not collapsed.
 
The most violent and bloody manifestation of these broad conflicts was the Caste War (Guerra de Castas), the longest sustained peasant revolt in Latin American history. Where other scholars have advocated the simplistic position that the war was a Maya uprising designed to reestablish a mythical past civilization, Richmond’s sophisticated recounting of political developments from 1855 to 1876 restores nuance and complexity to this pivotal time in Yucatecan history.
 
Richmond’s Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán is a welcome addition to scholarship about Mexico and Yucatán as well as about state consolidation, empire, and regionalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9780817388218

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Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán

Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán

LIBERALS, THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND MAYA REVOLUTIONARIES, 1855–1876

DOUGLAS W. RICHMOND

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2015 by the University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Bembo

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover photograph: Yucatán map, 1861; courtesy of Special Collections, the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries

Cover design: Michele Myatt Quinn

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-8173-1870-3

E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-8821-8

For Caleb

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. A Confrontational Foundation: Yucatecan Conflicts from Antiquity to 1821

2. Liberal Oppression and Maya Resistance, 1822–61

3. French Intervention and the Second Empire, 1861–67

4. The Tragedy of the Restored Republic Era, 1867–76

5. Conclusions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

1.1   Upper portion of 1847 map of Yucatán by Carl Heller

1.2   Indian hut in Yucatán, with Indian laborers at work

2.1   Casa del Gobierno (Government House) at Mérida, Yucatán, with a portion of the Plaza de la Independencia, and the Iglesia de Jesús

2.2   President Benito Juárez in 1858

2.3   Henequen plant (Agave fourcroydes)

2.4   General Pedro Ampudia, a well-traveled Mexican military leader

2.5   Yucatán map, 1861

3.1   Emperor Maximilian

3.2   Empress Carlota

3.3   Public square at Izamal, Yucatán, with artificial mound in background

3.4   José Salazar Ilarregui

4.1   Customhouse at Progreso port, Yucatán

Acknowledgments

I must extend my gratitude to many kind souls who offered their time to aid in the preparation of this book. First and foremost are my best two friends in the profession who have commented on each chapter. Joe Stout and Mike Smith have consistently pointed out blunders in terms of writing and areas where additional research had to be carried out. Terry Rugeley, the preeminent scholar of nineteenth-century Yucatán, has also provided needed information as well as correctives based on his massive research. Dan Waterman of the University of Alabama Press and Wendi Schnauffer have been patient editors. Brett Spencer of the Gorgas Library at the University of Alabama provided helpful suggestions. Copy editor Dawn Hall reviewed the manuscript thoroughly. Project editor Jon Berry shepherded it into the light of day. Ben Huseman and Cathy Spitzenberger of the University of Texas at Arlington Special Collections Division processed most of the illustrations found in this study. Maritza Arrigunaga, the curator of the Yucatecan Collection at the University of Texas at Arlington, helped me navigate my way through the microfilm reels that she photographed in Mérida back in the 1970s. Having this magnificent resource only minutes from my office made things easier. During my visit to the state archive in Yucatán, the patient and helpful staff directed by Piedad Peniche Rivero also pointed out documents to analyze. Additionally, I must thank fellow historians John Hart, Paul Hart, Gilbert Joseph, Rodolfo Ruz Menéndez, Mark Saka, Michael Thomason, Eric Van Young, Allen Wells, and several others who I may have forgotten. The Southwest Studies Center at the University of Texas at Arlington also provided research assistants who dug up interesting material for me. I will always remember the efforts of Jimmy Bryan, José Delgado, David Filewood, Whitney Jwanowski, and Melody Woods. The Center as well as Beth Wright, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UT Arlington, provided several useful travel grants. Maureen Ransom Carty of the Instituto de Cultura de Yucatán attended a presentation of mine in Mérida and offered helpful suggestions in addition to sending me the Instituto’s helpful guide. Thanks also to Hortensia Calvo, director of the Latin American Library at Tulane University for a very pleasant visit to New Orleans. There are many UT Arlington students who provided insights during various courses that I taught over thirty-six years. To those students, too many to name, I extend my gratitude. If I have forgotten someone, I apologize.

Introduction

Yucatán has been characterized by constant conflict. Opposing religious beliefs, ethnic and cultural intolerance, competition for natural resources, regional separatist movements, boundary disputes, and personal political clashes all caused conflict. Conflicts on a local scale can escalate into global conflict. France, Britain, and the United States became involved in Yucatán’s internal quarrels as well as its Caste War. Export commodities such as henequen and coffee became paramount in the nineteenth century when they threatened communal farming traditions among the Maya and other indigenous peoples. The economic, cultural, and social impacts of conflict at the national and international levels took place between France, Yucatán, the Mexican government, and Belize/British Honduras.

This book seeks to remedy the lack of a specific study of Yucatán from 1855 to 1876. During this epoch of generally liberal rule, Yucatán experienced tremendous conflict on the local and international level. Yet despite being a formative period in Yucatecan as well as Mexican history, these years have been overlooked.

The background to the mid-nineteenth-century conflicts begins with the Maya. An older generation imagined a Maya empire that never existed. Warfare raged, alliances shifted, dynasties appeared and vanished. Recurring strife characterized the Classic Age of Maya civilization and artists featured it in striking murals. Various paintings depict raids against communities from the battles to the final sacrifice of prisoners. The light of scholarship has now revealed city-states, dynasties, and long-ago wars. Gone forever is the image of the Maya as peaceful, primitive farmers practicing stargazing religious rites in the quiet of their jungles. What emerges is a portrait of a vivid, warlike group of kingdoms.

The Spanish managed to put a lid on the peninsula after they entered the scene, but resentments and resistance continued. The European civilization set down by the Spanish invasion produced harsh conflicts with the Maya that continued well beyond 1855. In fact, the Spaniards never conquered all of eastern Yucatán, and that situation would endure until 1900. After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, Maya insurgents battled the whites and their mestizo (mixed Indian-white) allies.

The main focus of this book is the implementation of a liberal ideology that some of the white population accepted. Liberals insisted upon regional autonomy, curtailing the privileges of the Catholic Church, free trade, and individual liberties. In their determination to establish a new system that would end the colonial communal traditions, the liberals committed the fatal error of assaulting Maya village lands as well as placing public land up for individual purchase. This resulted in the Caste War, the largest peasant revolution in nineteenth-century Latin America when many Mayas decided to destroy the existing state government and wipe out the whites. Eventually government forces halted the Maya, but fighting nevertheless continued until the end of the century. The liberals returned to power in 1855 and continued to attack the church and the Indians with increased zeal. They failed because their policies alienated the Maya as well as Catholics with the result that a French-supported Second Empire regime attempted to improve conditions.

Although the short-lived empire of Maximilian and Carlota traditionally has received negative interpretations, some scholars are discovering a different reality. I am one of those revisionists. Maximilian’s attempts to establish an empire in Mexico ended tragically. However, given the chaotic nature of Mexican politics combined with his enlightened attitudes, I propose that Yucatán would have fared better had the Second Empire survived. A benevolent monarchy completely committed to Yucatán, its culture, history, and economy, might very well have countered US influence and revived the indigenous communities. It is intriguing that the Second Empire responded to Yucatán’s socioeconomic needs better than the liberals. Yucatán supported Carlota and Maximilian more than any other Mexican state after they established their short-lived monarchy from 1864 to 1867. Therefore, I have taken special care to document the transatlantic causes for French intervention into Mexico.

The last portion of this study focuses upon the dreary Restored Republic era of 1867–76. This is an unpleasant period of self-serving repression when political conflicts degenerated into tussles that resembled knife fights in a ditch. Like the earlier liberals as well as the French, the Restored Republic liberals failed to subdue the Maya resistance in eastern Yucatán. This is partially because they continued to attack the Maya communal land traditions as well as the Catholic Church. Although the henequen industry seemed to offer a panacea of overall prosperity, other sectors of the economy dwindled. More importantly, working conditions became barbaric and US monopolies eventually absorbed the henequen plantations during the 1890s.

My interest in this topic began when the University of Texas at Arlington hired me to teach Mexican history in 1976. During the interview as well as afterward, it became apparent that the Central Library and, to a lesser extent, the administration wanted very much for me to use their Special Collections’ massive archive of over one million frames of microfilm regarding the history of Yucatán. Eager to obtain employment, I promised that I would devote myself to reading these items even though I needed to publish my PhD dissertation on Venustiano Carranza to secure tenure. Eventually it became time to turn to the Yucatecan archives. I started by researching Yucatán’s decision to break away from the 1846–48 US-Mexico War. With the background to the 1855–76 period fairly well established, I finally found time to research this murky era. It became clear that it had received little direct treatment. Why has this been the case? Mainly because it is an unhappy exercise in greed, foreign intervention, ethnic conflict, and disastrous mistakes of one kind or another. Although this is largely a somewhat melodramatic slice of history, it discusses the constant infighting among the Yucatecan elite and their inability to understand the Maya. I enjoyed putting the pieces of material together so that reasonable conclusions could be drawn.

Not surprisingly, the procedure to fulfill my research goals centered on a careful study of the documents at UT Arlington’s Special Collections Division. Similar to the extensive holdings of the Yucatecan archival collection at the University of Alabama, UT Arlington’s Yucatecan Collection is the largest repository of materials relating to the history of Yucatán in the United States. With 1,078 rolls of microfilm, the 1.5 million pages of documents are an incredible source for researching the conflicts that Yucatán has experienced. The filming followed archival arrangement rather than selective criteria. This approach enables researchers to examine entire sets of documents, which eliminates doubt as to whether other related items might also be present elsewhere. The Documentos del Congreso became particularly helpful. The session papers, agreements, and correspondence bring to light the peninsula’s historic record of semiautonomous indigenous communal life followed by the onset of a rapid capitalistic expansion that shattered the status quo.

1

A Confrontational Foundation

Yucatecan Conflicts from Antiquity to 1821

Yucatecan history has often been a chronicle of oppression and resistance. Beneath the peninsula’s tranquil surface there has always existed a deep current of conflict. Prior to the Hispanic invasion, various Maya kingdoms established control after intratribal friction characterized Yucatecan society. The colonial era raised the level of oppression when the Spanish conquistadors destroyed the Maya monarchies. Between whites and Maya peasants, cultural differences festered as a result of labor demands, excessive taxes, and land seizures. Access to land, water, and labor motivated much of the resistance that ripped through the Yucatecan peninsula up to Mexican independence in 1821 and beyond.

The impressive Maya civilization experienced clashes throughout the Yucatecan peninsula since its beginnings about 1800 BC, along riverbanks in what is now Belize and northern Guatemala. Claims to divinity, the right to tax, labor drafts, military conscription, and the competition for resources led to violent clashes.¹ Any discussion of Yucatán must include consideration of its geography and climate. Fought over since the emergence of the first Maya communities, the Yucatecan peninsula can be considered one immense battlefield—were it not for the beauty of this landscape, its architecture, and its varied cultures. It is located on the eastern coast of Mexico, jutting out to the Gulf of Mexico. Although situated in what many consider the tropics, Yucatán’s climate is basically arid and hot. The rainfall increases somewhat as one moves south and reaches its highest levels in very southern areas where rain forests appear. But their swamps become prone to flooding, making large-scale agriculture difficult. The rain falls during a three-month period, after which increasingly arid weather prevails with the driest interlude taking place before the rainy seasons renew in the spring. Coastal areas are also prone to periodic hurricanes, which can devastate entire shorelines.

The land itself differs, with soils not found in the rest of Mexico. A thick layer of limestone forms the bedrock throughout most of Yucatán. On top of this is a thin layer of topsoil. This combination of limestone and topsoil results in rain water passing quickly through both the soil and limestone, which prevents the formation of rivers.² In addition, irrigation ditches dug into the limestone rarely hold sufficient water. The thin topsoil made plowing nearly impossible. The land has been described as the country with the least earth that I have ever seen, since all of it is one living rock.³ The reporter also states, I have always thought that when God made Yucatán His original purpose was to use it for Hell. He neglected to give it any water or soil.⁴ Water, which seeped through the limestone, flowed through channels deep within the rock, making it very difficult to obtain. Sometimes the roof of a channel would collapse, forming a sinkhole known as a cenote. These became prime sources of water. Additionally, water pools formed on the rock surface. The Maya called them sartejanas, which became additional water sources despite their tendency to evaporate.

Maya leaders in the villages and evolving cities made it possible for most citizens to have access to land and to use productive methods to cultivate crops. Not all the land used was communal or under direct royal control. The pre-Hispanic Maya did not buy and sell property, but one could occupy unused land and claim it. The upper class managed to control the most desirable lands despite not owning the property outright. The nobility instituted composting, terracing, irrigation, and canals that resulted in the production of purified salt, honey, wax, cotton, chocolate, and smoked deer meat. Clashes between different groups became inevitable. The desire for food, slaves, and secure boundaries as well as the shifting nature of agriculture provoked the Maya to engage in large-scale warfare against rival kingdoms. These conflicts also caused the Maya to become an exceedingly aggressive society in a landscape of feuding city-states.⁵

Central to understanding the Maya conflicts is their religion. As did the ancient Greeks and Aztecs, the Maya worshipped many different gods. Worldly phenomena, such as mountains, rivers, and other parts of the earth that contained spiritual power, became a vital category. Other deities displayed not only human characteristics but also animal ones. These gods could be capricious as well as benevolent. Therefore, the Maya sought to satisfy them as part of a circular relationship between themselves, nature, and the deities. Thus Maya religion often became ritualized in the form of oppressive ceremonies in order to please the gods. Priests inspired confidence in these ceremonies by encouraging offerings to the gods.

Pre-Hispanic Day of the Dead ceremonies lessened the fear of death and even promoted a positive attitude toward confronting the end of life. A belief that death is not final often cast it into a comfortable companion. The foundation for Day of the Dead rituals evolved from the traditional Maya practice of ancestor veneration. Placing the remains of family members within a home, field, or orchard demonstrated exclusive ownership of such places and served a decisive role in daily activities, assuring that ancestral spirits could observe domestic life. According to tradition, souls are allowed to return to earth once a year, finding their way to ancestral homes by means of family or friend’s foods left on altars or at gravesites. Like the Celts, who celebrated their New Year on November 1, Yucatecans honor the souls of dead children on that date and acknowledge the return of adult spirits on the next day. Maya society also cleans the bones of their ancestors during Day of the Dead festivities.⁶ This unusual veneration of death and its constant presence in daily life became oppressive in terms of an inclination toward fatalism and conflict.

The Maya also had a taste for human sacrifice similar to the better-known traditions of the Aztecs. They believed that the world would end if such sacrifices were not performed. Thus human sacrifice became common. A well-known method was removing the heart of the victim using a sharp obsidian knife. In this ceremony, four laymen from the nobility held the legs of the person being sacrificed. Carvings and paintings indicate grotesquely costumed priests pulling the entrails from a bound and apparently living victim. Other violent methods incorporated the use of a large stone or stake, to which the victim would be tied. Decapitation, as well as flaying victims and using their skin as garments, also took place. Hurling bound victims off a cliff also happened. Young females were sometimes drowned in wells, while others were painted blue and shot full of arrows.⁷ Although citizens volunteered to sacrifice themselves in these bloody ceremonies, violent military campaigns eventually produced the majority of victims.

Another religious ceremony with violent characteristics was the pok-a-tok ball game. The Maya took this game seriously because it enabled a forum for destroying opposition throughout the peninsula. Participants wearing protective gloves and belts played this game. But the task of hitting a six-inch rubber ball through a hoop twenty to thirty feet in the air was probably a lucky extra point arrangement. The unpleasant reality was that this goal had to be met using only fists, elbows, and buttocks to propel the ball. Scoring became a desperate goal because the losers of the game, particularly during special events, were decapitated and the visitors received the heads of their vanquished opponents. Although the Maya considered ball courts a locus for interaction with the underworld and a recreational activity representing the struggle between evil and benign religious forces, prisoners of war had to play a game in which the outcome had been predetermined. Once the competition ended, which recreated the defeat of a vanquished city-state, the captives had their hearts torn out for blood sacrifice.⁸

During the Classic Maya age, generally accepted as extending from 200 BC to AD 900, various Maya kings ruled as intermediaries between heaven and earth. The system of kingship actually extends back in time more than previously thought. Kings functioned as religious leaders as well as monarchs who controlled their people in war and peace. The monarch became the center of all religious ceremonies and was the only one deemed capable of creating social order by unifying the cosmos. The king interpreted the universe as a world tree whose center axis coexisted in heaven, earth, and the underworld, and a horizontal crossbar representing the earth that became materialized in the ruler himself. Kings wore a ceremonial dress proclaiming them to be the world tree. Because monarchs dressed like gods, it often became difficult to determine who was king or god.⁹

For a noble to become a king, a bloodletting ritual was conducted for his accession to the throne. These gory rituals served to unite kingdoms on the path to war with neighbors. Bloodletting required a Maya monarch to draw his own blood for the gods. The Maya drew blood from everywhere on their bodies: their ears, noses, tongues, and genitals. Bloodletting scenes prevail in Maya scriptures. At Yaxchilán, the wife of Shield Jaguar is seen pulling a thorn-lines rope through her tongue. By participating in such ceremonies, kings could see visions of an ancestor or god. The visions the Maya experienced through bloodlettings often became hallucinations caused by massive blood loss and shock. Thus the response of the brain to blood loss caused these hallucinations to appear very real to most participants.¹⁰ These oppressive rituals quickly faded from Maya culture after the Spaniards arrived.

To a certain extent, the Maya monarchs used religion as a pretext for warfare. War thus became an event of ritualistic importance. Often there was a need for captives to be used to entertain the public at the ball games as well as to be sacrificed. The kings needed to prove their worthiness as warriors, collect more tribute, and increase taxation. The monarchs erected monuments based on their conquests, which provided detailed accounts of their victorious military campaigns. An example of this can be found at Yaxchilán, where rulers Shield Jaguar and his son, Bird Jaguar, erected temples emphasizing their triumphs.¹¹

In Mayan warfare, it became more important to capture enemy leaders than to kill them on the battlefield. Capturing an opposing king was the strategic goal in Mayan warfare. This objective made sense because the loss of a ruler could often cause the abandonment of a city. Abducted nobles usually faced summary execution. Bitter struggles, such as the violent campaign between Copán and Quiriguá, led to the beheading of