Yucatán's Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War

Yucatán's Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War
Author: Terry Rugeley
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780292770782

"Social history that challenges earlier views of the Caste War. Examines the development of the social, political, and economic structure of the Yucatâan during the first half of the 19th century and profiles four towns involved in the Caste War. Emphasizes the eroding status of Maya elites as a key to the revolt"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Yucatán's Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War

Yucatán's Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War
Author: Terry Rugeley
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0292774702

Conflicts between native Maya peoples and European-derived governments have punctuated Mexican history from the Conquest in the sixteenth century to the current Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. In this deeply researched study, Terry Rugeley delves into the 1800-1847 origins of the Caste War, the largest and most successful of these peasant rebellions. Rugeley refutes earlier studies that seek to explain the Caste War in terms of a single issue. Instead, he explores the interactions of several major social forces, including the church, the hacienda, and peasant villagers. He uncovers a complex web of issues that led to the outbreak of war, including the loss of communal lands, substandard living conditions, the counterpoise of Catholicism versus traditional Maya beliefs, and an increasingly heavy tax burden. Drawn from a wealth of primary documents, this book represents the first real attempt to reconstruct the history of the pre-Caste War period. In addition to its obvious importance for Mexican history, it will be illuminating background reading for everyone seeking to understand the ongoing conflict in Chiapas.

Rebellion Now and Forever

Rebellion Now and Forever
Author: Terry Rugeley
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2009-06-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804771308

This book explores the origins, process, and consequences of forty years of nearly continual political violence in southeastern Mexico. Rather than recounting the well-worn narrative of the Caste War, it focuses instead on how four decades of violence helped shape social and political institutions of the Mexican southeast. Rebellion Now and Forever looks at Yucatán's famous Caste War from the perspective of the vast majority of Hispanics and Maya peasants who did not join in the great ethnic rebellion of 1847. It shows how the history of nonrebel territory was as dramatic and as violent as the front lines of the Caste War, and of greater significance for the larger evolution of Mexican society. The work explores political violence not merely as a method and process, but also as a molder of subsequent institutions and practices.

The Caste War of Yucatán

The Caste War of Yucatán
Author: Nelson A. Reed
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804740012

This is the classic account of one of the most dramatic episodes in Mexican history--the revolt of the Maya Indians of Yucatán against their white and mestizo oppressors that began in 1847. Within a year, the Maya rebels had almost succeeded in driving their oppressors from the peninsula; by 1855, when the major battles ended, the war had killed or put to flight almost half of the population of Yucatán. A new religion built around a Speaking Cross supported their independence for over fifty years, and that religion survived the eventual Maya defeat and continues today. This revised edition is based on further research in the archives and in the field, and draws on the research by a new generation of scholars who have labored since the book's original publication 36 years ago. One of the most significant results of this research is that it has put a human face on much that had heretofore been treated as semi-mythical. Reviews of the First Edition "Reed has not only written a fine account of the caste war, he has also given us the first penetrating analysis of the social and economic systems of Yucatán in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." --American Historical Review "In this beautifully written history of a little-known struggle between several contending forces in Yucatán, Reed has added an important dimension to anthropological studies in this area." --American Anthropologist "Not only is this exciting history (as compelling and dramatic as the best of historical fiction) but it covers events unaccountably neglected by historians. . . . This is a brilliant contribution to history. . . . Don't miss this book." --Los Angeles Times "One of the most remarkable books about Latin America to appear in years." --Hispanic American Report

Violence and The Caste War of Yucatán

Violence and The Caste War of Yucatán
Author: Wolfgang Gabbert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2019-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 110849174X

This book analyzes the extent and forms of violence in one of the most significant indigenous rural revolts in nineteenth-century Latin America. Combining historical, anthropological, and sociological research, it shows how violence played a role in the establishment and maintenance of order and leadership within the contending parties.

Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán

Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán
Author: Douglas W. Richmond
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2015-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0817318704

Synthesizing a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán offers a fresh study of the complex and violent history of Mexico's easternmost Gulf Coast region that expands and revises perceptions of liberal as well as Second Empire politics from 1855 to 1876.

War Nerd

War Nerd
Author: Gary Brecher
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2009-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1593763026

“[A] raucous, offensive, and sometimes amusing CliffsNotes compilation of wars both well-known and ignored.” —Utne Reader Self-described war nerd Gary Brecher knows he’s not alone, that there’s a legion of fat, lonely Americans, stuck in stupid, paper-pushing desk jobs, who get off on reading about war because they hate their lives. But Brecher writes about war, too. War Nerd collects his most opinionated, enraging, enlightening, and entertaining pieces. Part war commentator, part angry humorist à la Bill Hicks, Brecher inveighs against pieties of all stripes—Liberian generals, Dick Cheney, U.N. peacekeepers, the neo-cons—and the massive incompetence of military powers. A provocative free thinker, he finds much to admire in the most unlikely places, and not always for the most pacifistic reasons: the Tamil Tigers, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Danes of 1,000 years ago, and so on, across the globe and through the centuries. Crude, scatological, un-P.C., yet deeply informed, Brecher provides a radically different, completely unvarnished perspective on the nature of warfare. “Military columnist Gary Brecher’s look at contemporary war is both offensive and illuminating. His book, War Nerd . . . aims to explain why the best-equipped armies in the world continue to lose battles to peasants armed with rocks . . . Brecher’s unrefined voice adds something essential to the conversation.” —Mother Jones “It’s international news coverage with a soul and acne, not to mention a deeply contrarian point of view.” —The Millions

The Power of God Against the Guns of Government

The Power of God Against the Guns of Government
Author: Paul J. Vanderwood
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804730396

"Writing in a narrative style reminiscent of Womack's Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, author explains a series of 1890s uprisings in Tomochic, in the border state of Chihuahua, against the Porfirians' determination to dictate who would control the lan

Moral Ecology of a Forest

Moral Ecology of a Forest
Author: José E. Martínez-Reyes
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2016-11-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816534624

Forests are alive, filled with rich, biologically complex life forms and the interrelationships of multiple species and materials. Vulnerable to a host of changing conditions in this global era, forests are in peril as never before. New markets in carbon and environmental services attract speculators. In the name of conservation, such speculators attempt to undermine local land control in these desirable areas. Moral Ecology of a Forest provides an ethnographic account of conservation politics, particularly the conflict between Western conservation and Mayan ontological ecology. The difficult interactions of the Maya of central Quintana Roo, Mexico, for example, or the Mayan communities of the Sain Ka’an Biosphere, demonstrate the clashing interests with Western biodiversity conservation initiatives. The conflicts within the forest of Quintana Roo represent the outcome of nature in this global era, where the forces of land grabbing, conservation promotion and organizations, and capitalism vie for control of forests and land. Forests pose living questions. In addition to the ever-thrilling biology of interdependent species, forests raise questions in the sphere of political economy, and thus raise cultural and moral questions. The economic aspects focus on the power dynamics and ideological perspectives over who controls, uses, exploits, or preserves those life forms and landscapes. The cultural and moral issues focus on the symbolic meanings, forms of knowledge, and obligations that people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and classes have constructed in relation to their lands. The Maya Forest of Quintana Roo is a historically disputed place in which these three questions come together.

Rediscovering The Past at Mexico's Periphery

Rediscovering The Past at Mexico's Periphery
Author: Gilbert M. Joseph
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2003-09-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0817350675

Surveys major trends in Yucatán’s currents in Mexican historiography, and suggest new departures for regional and local-level research Increasingly, the modern era of Mexican history (c. 1750 to the present) is attracting the attention of Mexican and international scholars. Significant studies have appeared for most of the major regions and Yucatán, in particular, has generated an unusual appeal and an abundant scholarship. This book surveys major trends in Yucatán’s currents in Mexican historiography, and suggest new departures for regional and local-level research. Rather than compiling lists of sources around given subject headings in the manner of many historiographies, the author seeks common ground for analysis in the new literature’s preoccupation with changing relations of land, labor, and capital and their impact on regional society and culture. Joseph proposes a new periodization of Yucatán’s modern history which he develops in a series of synthetic essays rooted in regional political economy.