A Brief History
During the last fifty years, a great deal of research has been undertaken to discover more about the great ancient societies of the Yucatán. Huge sections of their daily lives (and particularly why they came to abandon their cities) are still shrouded in mystery, but great strides have been made in deciphering their hieroglyphs and stelae (inscribed stone pillars). Despite these mysteries, there are few places in the world where the past feels as close as it does in the Yucatán. The thatched huts that appear in 1,000-year-old carvings at Uxmal can be seen today in every roadside village. The stone metates, or grinding dishes, which grace many a kitchen in town or village, are identical to those left as offerings to the rain gods in centuries past. Away from the cities, the people still speak the Mayan tongue, and their religious beliefs still bear the imprint of the ancient rituals of their ancestors. And, perhaps most striking of all, the distinctive hooked nose and sloping forehead of the ancient Maya, whose stony profiles look down on the visitor from the carved walls of their ruined cities, are still reflected in the features of the local people.
The Maya
These people’s ancestors arrived in Central America many thousands of years ago. Small bands of Asiatic hunters migrated across the Bering Strait land bridge before 12,000 b.c. and gradually spread southwards through the Americas. During the Archaic period (after 5,200 b.c.), these people settled in what is now modern Mexico. They developed a primitive agriculture, domesticating cattle and cultivating corn, beans, chili peppers, and squash (a pumpkin-like vegetable) in burned clearings in the jungle. Over time, a society developed that was so successful they could devote time to activities other than simple food cultivation. These people, known as the Olmec, are considered to be the first Mesoamerican culture, the one from which all others evolved. They developed a calendar based on a 52-year cycle. They also constructed pyramids for worship.
By 1500 b.c. the group that came to be known as the Maya settled in an area which stretched from the Pacific coast to the southern Yucatán, taking in modern-day Guatemala, Belize, the western parts of El Salvador and Honduras, and the Mexican state of Campeche. In the succeeding centuries they migrated into the northern Yucatán — what are now the modern Mexican states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and part of Tabasco.
Though their antecedents are still shadowy, they were much influenced by the Olmec. They developed and refined the Olmec calendar and counting system, and improved their building practices. The whole Yucatán peninsula witnessed the flowering of classic Mayan civilization and a society of great sophistication; with its magnificent pyramids, temples, and palaces decorated with wall paintings and carved low-reliefs, a written language of hieroglyphics, and complicated medical procedures to heal the injured or the sick. Mayan astronomers tracked the movements of the heavenly bodies, predicting eclipses and marking the times for the planting of the new corn. In fact, corn came to symbolize life for the Maya — in their myths of creation, mankind was formed from lumps of maize dough. Elaborate rituals grew up around the preparation of the milpas (cornfields) and the planting and harvesting of the crop whose success depended on the coming of the annual rains. These rituals were undertaken by a small number of initiates who controlled the knowledge of the Maya. Because the region has no surface rivers, rain was a precious resource and the Maya saw any stock of water, such as the limestone water holes or cenotes, as holy places. The rain god Chaac was a very important deity, whose image can be seen at every Mayan site.
But there was a dark side to this sophisticated society. The Maya viewed their gods not as benevolent guides but as changeable spirits in need of constant appeasement. To incur the wrath of the gods would result in drought, a loss of crops, and certain starvation. To keep the gods happy, the people offered sacrifices at their great pyramid temples. The ceremonies were overseen by a powerful caste of high priests. Grain and animals were used, but the gods came to demand more, and a cult of human sacrifice grew. The Maya went out on raiding parties, taking hostages from the surrounding lands to use in their bloody ceremonies. The murals and reliefs at Mayan cities tell gory tales of beheading and the tearing out of human hearts to appease the lords of the underworld. Archaeologists dredging the Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá have recovered dozens of human skeletons, thought to be the remains of victims sacrificed to the rain god.
Mayan civilization in the northern Yucatán reached its peak around a.d. 900–1200. For reasons still unknown — perhaps civil war, drought, or disease — the great cities were abandoned. By the time the Spaniards arrived in the early 16th century the jungle was reclaiming the pyramids; the richly painted murals of warriors, Mayan lords, animals, and gods were already crumbling and dissolving in the warm rain. The priest caste seemed to have vanished, along with their knowledge. The only people the Spanish found were farmers.
In the Wake of Cortés
The first recorded Europeans to arrive in the Yucatán, in 1511, were doubly unfortunate: a group of Spanish sailors survived a shipwreck on the coast of what is now Quintana Roo, only to be sacrificed by the Mayan natives. However, two were allowed to live as slaves and one, Gonzalo Guerrero, went native and married the chief’s daughter. His children were the first mestizos — the people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood who now make up 55 percent of the Mexican population.
In 1517, an expedition led by Francisco Hernandez de Cordobá landed on the west coast of the Yucatán, near Campeche, but were beaten back by a hail of arrows from the hostile natives. However, the following year, ambitious, young Captain Juan de Grijalva discovered the island of Cozumel and skirted the coast of the peninsula, hearing tales from the Indians of the great civilization of the Aztecs. Here, they told him, you can find a city made of gold.
Grijalva’s stories focused Spanish attention on central Mexico, and in 1519 Hernan Cortés landed in Veracruz, to start an expedition that would end in the conquest of Moctezuma and the Aztec Empire. Though he had begun his campaign without the King’s authority, once news of the treasures captured by Cortés reached Madrid, a royal warrant was dispatched to legitimize the victory and create “New Spain” — the latest Spanish colony. However, it was left to Don Francisco de Montejo, “a gentleman of Seville,” following in the great conquistador’s wake, to take possession of the Yucatán in the name of the Spanish king.
Arriving on the coast in 1527, Montejo’s forces were hindered by the dense jungle and withering climate, and were met by fierce resistance from the natives. To make matters worse, news of great riches discovered in Peru led many of his men to desert in search of greater rewards. The campaign went so badly that by 1535 the Spaniards had been completely driven out of the Yucatán.
In 1537 another force, under the command of Montejo el Mozo (the Younger), Don Francisco’s son, set out to plant the Spanish standard on Yucatecan soil. At first ill fortune dogged them; the dwindling force was besieged in Champotón, on the west coast, for two miserable years. With reinforcements, the Spaniards managed to establish a beachhead. A band of only 57 men, led by Montejo el Mozo’s cousin (yet another Don Francisco), marched inland to take the Mayan village of T’Ho. The Indians gathered their forces for one last great battle, and thousands of them fell upon the Spanish camp, now defended by 200 men. The horses and superior weaponry of the Spaniards gave them the edge, and they slaughtered hundreds of Indian warriors. After the battle, local chiefs made peace with the invaders and, on 6 January 1542, the Montejos founded the Spanish city of Mérida on the site.
The Caste War
Under Spanish rule, land was taken from the Maya and turned over to tobacco and sugarcane plantations, and the once-proud Indians were reduced to farm laborers. Franciscan friars, such as the 16th-century Bishop Diego de Landa, were dispatched from Europe to spread the Christian faith throughout the peninsula, though they were met with some resistance — any similarity between the early Yucatecan churches and military fortresses is not accidental. Eventually, the Maya accepted the new faith, but combined it with elements of their old beliefs. Unfortunately, Landa saw it as a sacred duty to destroy the old Mayan ways, and he was responsible for the burning of many chronicles relating to their beliefs and culture.
In 1821, Mexico declared its independence from Spain. Tension had been simmering for decades, fostered by Spain’s treatment of her New Spanish-born colonists, or criollos (deemed to be second-class citizens compared to those born in the homeland). Her trade laws decreed that everything produced in New Spain must first cross the Atlantic to Spain before being traded with a third country so that the proper taxes and tariffs could be collected. The geography of the northern Yucatán region separated it physically from the rest of New Spain, and fewer colonial landowners settled here than the area around the new capital (now Mexico City). Furthermore, this isolation led to the development of a strong independent streak for both colonists and indigenous peoples. The Yucatán declared its independence in 1821 but did not join the fledgling country of Mexico until 1823. In 1840, it changed its mind, and withdrew from the union. This was the catalyst for the oppressed Maya to take up arms against their colonial oppressors.
In 1847, a savage uprising known as the Caste War saw Mayan rebels massacre white settlers and take control of nearly two-thirds of the peninsula. By 1850 they had driven the Mexicans back to their strongholds in Mérida and Campeche. However, in an amazing turnaround, the Maya’s ancient beliefs became their undoing. Just when the Mexicans were on the point of surrender, the rains came early and the Indians, obedient to their gods, dropped their weapons and returned to their milpas to plant the sacred corn. The settlers called in reinforcements and wreaked a terrible revenge on the natives. One group of rebels, known as the Chan Santa Cruz, held out in the jungles of Quintana Roo around the city of Tulum, harrying the Mexicans and making the east coast of the Yucatán a dangerous area, off-limits until well into the 20th century.
The Henequen Boom
Life was difficult in northern Yucatán, as the lack of surface water and the limestone sub-surface made it difficult to grow commercial crops or raise cattle. However, in the late 19th century, the hacienda or plantation owners found a crop that grew successfully and was much in demand around the world — the henequen plant. The fibers produced by henequen could be made into rope and twine, indispensable for sea-faring and international trade. Yucatán was the principal producer, exporting their goods through the port of Sisal on the northern coast. Processed henequen soon became known around the world as sisal.
The money earned by the plantation owners was spent on grand mansions along Mérida’s Paseo de Montejo; they were filled with the best in furniture, porcelain, and artwork. The Indians, however, worked the land for a pittance. In the east, some scraped out a living by tapping the sap of the zapote or chicle tree and selling it to American manufacturers of chewing gum. Unfortunately, when the henequen bubble burst in the 1930s with the advent of synthetic fibers, the peninsula fell into an economic decline from which there seemed to be little hope of respite.
Meanwhile, under the presidency of Porfirio Diaz, Quintana Roo on the Yucatán peninsula’s eastern coast, named after Andreas Quintana Roo — a writer and independence movement leader between 1810 and 1821 — was declared a territory of Mexico in 1902. Government troops clamped down on rebellious Indians, who continued to resist until a peace treaty was finally negotiated in 1935. The overthrow of Porfirio Diaz in 1917 led to reform and a new constitution, including a bill of rights for Mexican workers. Many haciendas were broken up and returned to the people. But the Yucatán remained a backwater, largely forgotten and ignored. No overland route existed from Mérida to the rest of Mexico until 1949, when the first railway arrived. Before then, all commercial travel to and from the peninsula was by sea, and it was faster and easier to travel to Cuba or the US than to Mexico City.
Mexico’s Mega-Resort
Despite its considerable oil reserves and mineral wealth, debt, booming population growth, and grinding poverty have crippled the economy of modern Mexico. In an effort to bring more hard currency into the country, the government decided to promote tourism. A three-year study of various sites was conducted by a consortium of government and private interests, and the deserted island of Cancún won out: not only was it a beautiful spot, but its use would revive the flagging economy of the Yucatán and finally bring Quintana Roo into the fold. The territory was eventually granted statehood in 1974, the same year that Cancún opened to the public.
Cancún is now Mexico’s most popular holiday destination, pulling in almost three million tourists each year. New roads have appeared, and televisions and refrigerators are now the norm in villages that didn’t even have electricity 20 years ago. Despite creating a pocket of wealth for the region, Mexico itself suffered a number of crises in the 1980s and 1990s, including a drastic devaluation of the peso in 1995 following months of economic chaos. The US extended 40 billion dollars in loans to stabilize the monetary system. However, confidence in the politicians is still low, and the 22% increase in the price of tortillas, the basic food of the people, in early 2000 indicates that the problems are not yet over.
These questions are for governments based in Mexico City, many miles from the Yucatán. A greater question for the region itself: Can the development be controlled? What was a deserted coastline two decades ago is now a bustling Riviera. Coral reefs are being damaged by careless divers; lagoons that once teemed with tropical fish are now being polluted by suntan lotion; the beaches where sea turtles once laid their eggs are being taken over by sun-beds and volleyball nets; crocodiles and manatees that once cruised the coastal waters are now endangered species. Conservation areas such as Rio Lagartos, in the north, give hope for the future, but conservationists lost one recent battle, when they were powerless to prevent the International Pier at Puerto Maya on Cozumel from being built directly on top of North Paradise Reef. Cancún — in fact the whole Yucatán peninsula — is embroiled in an important struggle, one that is being faced all over the world — the battle between the conflicting demands of development and conservation.
