Wednesday, December 30, 2020

God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World by Cullen Murphy

Intensely thought provoking, this extremely in-depth and well researched book covers more than a thousand years of mind control and takes you up to the present day.

Recommended reading for all free-thinking people.

Excerpts:

Torquemada, who was the head of the Inquisition.

No series of events in recent times has produced more invocations of the Inquisition than the prosecution of the war on terror since September 11, 2001. The enactment of tough new legal instruments, the use of extralegal surveillance, the detention without trial of suspected enemies, the reliance on torture in interrogations, the pervading atmosphere of religious suspicion: taken together, these developments help account for the fact that a Google search of “inquisition” today yields upward of eight million entries.

In the year 1231 Pope Gregory IX appointed the first “inquisitors of heretical depravity” to serve as explicit papal agents. Thus began what is called the Medieval Inquisition, which was launched to deal with the menace posed to the Church by Christian heretics, notably the Cathars of southern France. The newly established Dominican Order, whose priests and nuns are identifiable to this day by their white habits, was instrumental in combating the Cathar heresy. Its founder, Dominic Guzmin, is the man celebrated in the 1963 song “Dominique,” by the Singing Nun (said to be the only Belgian song ever to hit No. 1 on the American charts). The inquisitors solicited denunciations and, as their name implies, conducted interrogations. Their efforts were highly localized, there was no central command. The inquisitors were aided in their work by the papal bull Ad extirpanda, promulgated in 1252, which justified and encouraged the use of torture, wielding philosophical arguments that have never wanted for advocates and that would eventually echo in the White House and the Justice Department. Within a century, the work of the Medieval Inquisition was largely done. One modern writer, reflecting on what makes inquisitions come to an end, calls attention to a simple reason: an eventual shortage of combustible material. The Dominicans were nothing if not thorough. As a Catholic growing up with many Jesuit friends, I remember hearing a comment about the difference between Dominicans and Jesuits: Both orders were created to fight the Church’s enemies, Cathars in the one case, Protestants in the other.

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It

Book Review - Five Stars

The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It by Shawn Otto

Snookered: Corporate greed of Big Tobacco contrived an ingenious end game to bank forty years worth of ill-gotten gains at the expense of untold suffering by people from cancer caused by tobacco. An industry was born that would plunder the world into of an era of science deniers. It was discovered that the American public could be sold anything, even a war, and buying politicians was cheaper than paying taxes or employees.

This huge but fast moving book gave honest answers to why anti-vaccination, climate change and a host of other happenings led to a science denying divided country.

I loved this profoundly honest and extremely well researched book. I consider it to be a “must read.”

Excerpts:

Political and religious institutions are pushing back against science and reason in a way that is threatening social and economic stability.

Inaccessibility makes science and technology more into a matter of belief than know-how, making people more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.



Throughout 2009 and 2010, raging battles were fought in GOP primaries throughout the country as energy-industry-funded groups recruited and promoted Tea Party candidates to run against Republicans who had voted for the cap-and-trade bill, utilizing evangelical Republican foot soldiers, and knocking the offenders out with relatively small investments. Climate science became equated with Obama and socialism in Republican talking points, and the technique of bashing science or promoting brazenly anti scientific positions became a political identity statement. By late 2010, fully ninety-four of one hundred newly elected Republican members of Congress either denied that global warming was happening (it was all a vast hoax by scientists, they said) or signed pledges to oppose mitigation.



A classic example is the intellectual flight from fascist Europe in the years leading up to World War II. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Berlin was the world capital of science, culture, and art, and these aspects fed off one another. Persecution, particularly of Jews, homosexuals, and artists’ spurred emigration that turned the United States into an intellectual mecca.



Science took an important leap in public consciousness during World War II, when it transformed from an exploration of nature into a means to win the war for democracy and against the tyranny that had overtaken Germany, Italy, and Japan. Radar and the atomic bomb were both Allied inventions that had major impacts on the war’s outcome, as did sonar, synthetic rubber, the proximity fuse, the mass production of antibiotics, and other key wartime innovations, with many of the efforts led by emigrants from an increasingly antiscience Third Reich.

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Savages & Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire through Indian Territory

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

Savages & Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire through Indian Territory by Paul VanDevelder

An in depth look at the driving forces and historical powers, both religious and political, behind the mentality that drove American founders to expand and perpetuate their greed for expansive land acquisitions they called, Manifest Destiny.

This book is a classic of historical revelations that needs to be read and comprehended. I loved its numerous comparisons to humanistic worldly happenings.

Excerpts:

The southerners, including President Andrew Jackson, were hearing none of it. They wanted the Indians’ land, not their trust and friendship. By 1830, southern legislatures were determined to remove Indian tribes from their midst, and they were ready to use whatever means were necessary to accomplish the task. As historian Morgan Gibson has pointed out, nineteenth-century America was a sociopolitical environment controlled by fiercely ethnocentric leaders and followers who, despite all rhetoric to the contrary, regarded all other races and peoples as subhuman.


On July 8, 1970, Richard M. Nixon became the first president in history to deliver a speech to Congress on the subjects of federal Indian policy and Native American rights. After characterizing the termination era of the Eisenhower administration as “a national disgrace,” Nixon challenged lawmakers to join him in writing a new story for Indian country. “The American Indians have been oppressed and brutalized, deprived of their ancestral lands, and denied the opportunity to control their own destiny, yet their story is one of endurance and survival, of adaptation and creativity in the face of overwhelming obstacles.


The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 prompted an abrupt and dramatic return to the nihilistic paternalism of the past. The cause for that turnabout was neatly summarized in an article published in Forbes magazine that observed, with searing, atonal irony, “Now, at a time when the United States seems to be running out of practically everything, Indian reservations constitute one of the least-known repositories of natural resources on the continent.”


a secret committee made up of industry experts and their counterparts in conservative think tanks, such as the Rand and Heritage foundations, called the Strategic Minerals Consortium. The SMC was charged with the task of studying the problem of mineral scarcity and finding a way to gain easy access to mineral treasures in Indian country, Secretary of the Interior James Watt came up with a plan of his own, one that was eerily reminiscent of the strategy devised by Congresswoman Beck, Senator Watkins, and Commissioner Myer thirty years earlier. Watt proposed that Congress use its plenary power over the tribes to declare all treaties null and void. Then, the Indians should be moved off their reservations and into closer proximity to white citizens, in urban centers, where they could be more easily assimilated into mainstream society.


By 1983, however, most tribes had stepped into the modern era. By then, thanks to the Indian Education Act passed by Congress a decade earlier, thousands of young Indians had been trained as chemists, biologists, and lawyers in the white man’s colleges and universities. Rather than disappearing into urban America after graduation, many returned to their reservations with the intent of protecting their natural resources, their treaties, and their tribal sovereignty.

Friday, December 18, 2020

Our 51st Wedding Anniversary - December 20, 2020

 


Our 51st Wedding Anniversary

Jane and I were married December 20th, 1969. It wasn't the shortest day of the year but the longest night.

The very best years of my life have been spent with my very best friend and my sweet loving wife, Jane. We have actually been together for more than fifty five years and have lived our dreams to the fullest.

Ongoing adventures inspired us for even more and more of these marvelous shared escapades.

We began with canoeing, fishing, and camping and trips around Lake Superior to Niagara Falls, Florida, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Hawaii...never a dull moment.

Next I had an over-powering inspiration to to sail away, I knew this was going to be doable. The kind of boat I wanted was simply beyond our financial limits, so we would just build a boat. Easier said than done. Jane and I researched the subject and came up with a realizable five year plan. We were going where the wind blew, when the spirit moved us, and the price was right. I became keenly aware of the fact that youth only comes to you one time.

This intense life altering episode of our lives ultimately generated the Travel of Dursmirg series of books available in paper and digital editions, Sailing Beyond Lake Superior, Sailing the Sea Islands, Sailing the Florida Keys, and Sailing to St. Augustine.

I was laughed at behind my back and nicknamed Noah. My good friend Skip Koloski said to me, “Anybody that criticizes you has never had an original thought in their entire lives.” My dear old dad gave this useful bit of philosophy; “Friends are happy for your success, your enemies are jealous.”

Amazingly we encountered people who would say; “You are so lucky to have that 46-foot yacht, how did you get it?” My response was “We just didn't watch TV for five years.”

We lived aboard our dream boat for fifteen glorious years, the best years of our lives.

As the years advanced we had to change our game plan because of 22% runaway inflation devouring our hard fought savings.

We bought a handy man special apartment complex on four acres of park-like land adjacent to the tourist attraction, The Fountain of Youth, in Saint Augustine, Florida, with owner financing. Jane and I bought ourselves a huge job that paid about a nickel an hour with no vacation days. The first two years we owned the business every cent that came in went directly back into upgrades that we did ourselves. We only increased rents when we had a turn over and had renovated that apartment...there were 26 units. Our first year we had 26 turnovers, and the second year none. The Arab oil embargo gave us a real financial jolt. Heating oil was 16 cents a gallon when we bought the apartments. It then shot up to $1.30 a gallon. Our boiler burned 22 gallons an hour. This could have put us out of business. Our good friend Ed Weber was an instructor of heating and cooling systems and came to our rescue. With his ingenious innovations and adjustments we were able to cut the fuel consumption by two thirds, and he saved our business.

We needed a convenient place to dock our boat that was also our home. Each day we rowed ashore and then had a long bicycle trip to our new apartment business to start work before six a.m., not returning until after dark exhausted. We did extensive research on the subject and amazingly found what we were looking for across the street from our apartments. One glitch was that we would need to build a 540 foot long pier through the marsh. The land we would buy was contingent on our procurement of a dock building permit. We did our own soundings of the ground strata, and hired Harbor Engineering Company for the permits. I had done all of my own surveying, designing, and materials lists. Each pressure treated piling would need to be jetted down with water pressure to solid strata. The decking would be of prestressed concrete that was actually springy like our ferrous cement sailboat.

Three months of dock building while at the same time managing our apartment business, and we had our own private dock for or 46 foot sailboat that was also our home. Amazingly from our new dock we could sail out into the ocean in twenty minutes without having to go through any bridges.

Another interesting thing was that this creek was the same one that Ponce de Leon had sailed up looking for the Fountain of Youth more than four hundred years earlier.

Read about this amazing story in our book Sailing to St. Augustine.

The dock building project soon opened up even more adventures for us. We became commercial fishermen with our own shrimp trawler, Secotan, purchased a go-fast 26 foot Colombia sailboat El Barco, and we enjoyed several years more of fabulous boating adventures.

The tuning point in our lives came with another handy man special. We bought a VW camper van.

Traveling across the US, Canada, and Mexico plus extensively in Europe where we would keep one of our three camper vans and spend three to five months each year mostly bicycling using the van as our home base. From Norway and Sweden to Spain and Portugal and the British Isles to the East block countries. We biked, hiked, climbed the mountains, and sampled the beer, wine, and fabulous foods.

Living in Mexico has also been a part of the over half-century of our lives together.

Read more about our Yucatán adventures in our books, Yucatan’s Magic and Yucatan for Travelers.

Then click to take a tour of our house.

Now the corona virus has taken the lives of more that 3,000 American lives in a single day, that is more casualties than the entire terrorist attack on New York 9/11. These numbers continue to escalate each day and are expected to quadruple after the Christmas/New year festivities….thank you Donald!

Jane and I continue to enjoy our lives together appreciating every precious minute in our lovely tropical sanctuary in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico.

Photos from our two-week honeymoon trip to Mexico City and Acapulco.  We flew from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Dallas, Texas, and then to Mexico City. 









Saturday, December 12, 2020

2020 OUR YEAR IN REVIEW

2020

Our year in review, sharing more than 55 years together with my best friend, my wife Jane.

We started the year in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico, on the Caribbean coast where we booked an apartment with all the amenities for two months, from mid-November to mid-January, escaping the clamorous Mérida holiday season. This was a six hour bus ride south of Mérida, we traveled light, but as always brought our folding bicycles.

Our location was fantastic. With the central market a block away we indulged ourselves in fresh produce, sea food, and numerous great eats. Every morning early we biked to the nearby bay front to enjoy our sunrise breakfast in perfect serenity with nature at at it’s finest. Great Mexican coffee is conveniently available all across Yucatán at OXXO convenience stores, and we got our daily fix there.

Days we biked, exploring the areas many historical places, visited our grandchildren, sampled local eateries. Afternoons and evenings we stretched out in our hammocks reading books on our Kindle readers plus listening to audio books and noteworthy podcasts. We had a giant screen TV we didn’t use once, but the internet connection kept us tuned into the world and connected with family and friends.

Returning back home to Mérida our daily routine of biking out to breakfast and shopping the local markets for fresh food was a slice of paradise, and preparations for our annual Europe trip were set in motion.

Then corona virus arrived in Mexico from Spain and Italy and next a private jet and two charters of Mexican skiers arrived from Aspen, Colorado, infected with the virus and promptly spread the bug.

The American president confidently assured us that the China virus as he called it would disappear when the weather warmed up and everything would be back to normal by Easter...it was just the sniffles! As casualties increased daily with no end in sight, the Mexicans began to call this the Trump virus.

America became the world’s number one hot spot for virus with daily deaths reaching over 3,000 in a single day by early December. This is more deaths than from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The number is expected to quadruple after the Christmas/New Year holiday. Private hospitals in Mexico are now demanding huge deposits for admission that have driven many to sell their cars and homes.

Compounding this problem is the fact that Mexico does not require quarantine on incoming air passengers and the secretary of health did not order sufficient flu vaccine medicine for this year.

This will be a very interesting time in history, if we live!

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Word of Honor: A Peter Wake Novel by Robert N. Macomber

 

Book Review: Five Stars

Word of Honor: A Peter Wake Novel by Robert N. Macomber

The author delivers again in this breathtaking ongoing progression of America's naval influence as it expands into a world superpower. I especially loved the book’s fast moving pace of action taking the reader on a wild roller coaster ride of history. Peter Wake’s struggle, from heart warming love to poisonous personalities, kept me glued to this enthralling and mysterious narrative.

EXCERPT:

United States had invaded at the wrong place in Cuba at the wrong time of the year: the jungles of eastern Cuba during the summer fever season. Malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, typhoid, and dysentery had greatly weakened the regiments.

Word of Honor is part of the award-winning Honor Series of historical naval novels featuring Peter Wake.   

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Knickerbocker's History of New York by Washington Irving

 

BOOK REVIEW Five Stars

Knickerbocker's History of New York by Washington Irving

Written when New York was still New Amsterdam, this seventeenth century philosophic author with his extensive treasure trove of adjectives depicts early colonization along the Hudson River where peace and harmony with the Indians still prevailed. Laced with archaic spelling and old Dutch axioms makes for a good look back into an evolving history that formed one of the building blocks of America's original thirteen colonies.

Excerpts:

The question which has thus suddenly arisen is, What right had the first discoverers of America to land and take possession of a country without first gaining the consent of its inhabitants, or yielding them an adequate compensation for their territory? “a question which has withstood many fierce assaults, and has given much distress of mind to multitudes of kind hearted folk. And, indeed, until it be totally vanquished, and put to rest, the worthy people of America can by no means enjoy the soil they inhabit with clear right and title, and quiet, unsullied conscience.


The European worthies who first discovered America clearly entitled to the soil, and not only entitled to the soil, but likewise to the eternal thanks of these infidel savages, for having come so far, endured so many perils by sea and land, and taken such unwearied pains, for no other purpose but to improve their forlorn, uncivilized, and heathenish condition; for having made them acquainted with the comforts of life; for having introduced among them the light of religion; and, finally, for having hurried them out of the world to enjoy its reward!

Born in the USA: The Book of American Origins by Trevor Homer


 
Five Stars

Born in the USA: The Book of American Origins by Trevor Homer

A fascinating, interesting, and eye-opening look at the good, bad, and ugly things that made America a world leader.

I loved the well-edited, enlightening, and informative glimpses into this fast moving delivery of true history in the making that made the book a five star read.

Excerpt: Considering the atrocities performed by the defeated Nazi regime and the high financial cost of the war, it might have been understandable if America had insisted on large-scale reparations along the lines of those following World War I. For the first time in history, a nation-state decided to do the precise opposite. America was the only country left that could provide funding on a scale large enough to be meaningful. It was only America that could make a difference. In 1945, the USA lent Britain $3.8 billion and France $1.0 billion. Between 1948 and 1954, it gave further advances totaling over $16 billion to European countries, including former enemies, to promote economic stability. Sums such as these were enormous for the time. The United States, in effect, averted the paralysis of the world’s capitalism.

Thursday, October 29, 2020

100 Turning Points in American History by Alan Axelrod

 


BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

100 Turning Points in American History by Alan Axelrod

Fascinating, enlightening. and well-written. The fast moving book takes you across the wide spectrum of eventful happenings that brought the world to where it is.

I loved the engrossing presentation of facts which complemented historical pivotal points making this a pleasant and memorable reading experience.

EXCERPTS:

America had declared its independence, a turning point in the history of the world itself. Within it, however, was a turn not taken. For the “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America” proclaimed those states, commitment to liberty and the inalienable human rights for everyone” with the exception of those they chose to enslave.

The electric light gave birth to a whole new utility, and Edison invented every part of the system. It transformed America, the world, and civilization itself. Thanks to Edison, the United States was at the core of this great transformation.

Crown’s acknowledgment of the full and absolute independence from the British Empire of its lower thirteen American colonies. On November 30, 1782, a provisional treaty was ready to be ratified by the belligerents, and, on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was concluded. The United States, bloodied, took its place among the world’s family of nations.

1914. Most historians of technology credit the Highland Park facility as the first fully developed moving line ever installed. The idea was to move the work-in-progress from one worker to another until it emerged as a complete assembled dramatically decreased costs of production brought the price of a Model T to within the range of the working class. In 1908, Ford had turned out 10,607 cars. In 1916, 730,041, priced at $360 each. By 1927, the last year the Model T was made, Ford had produced fifteen million of them. Mass assembly line production transformed America into a consumer society, but it profoundly altered the relation of labor and management by changing the very nature of industrial work.

To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedidiah Jenkins, Book Review Five Stars

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

To Shake the Sleeping Self : A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia; and a Quest for a Life with No Regret by Jedidiah Jenkins

Much more than a bike ride or even an escape, this fast paced book reveals revaluations of human emotions interspersed with political, religious, and personal relationships. Wonderfully done and presented in a fascinating way that made it worthy of more than five stars.

Excerpts:

The pace of biking, even these few days in, was having the intended effect: time crawled. Days were eternal. When it would rain, it rained forever. When the sun came out, it would be hot forever. I was a kid again. It was incredible, too, to watch the land change in slow motion. Riding a bicycle gives the land a realistic scale. You notice every seam and crease. The distances between towns and farms and the height of hills, and the way a road will follow a river or instead cut straight over a hill you experience it all viscerally. You feel it all fitting together.

With the Internet connecting us all, the rest of the world feels closer, less alien. But I think that’s only true in our minds. The Internet does not bring Argentina one inch closer to me than before. That’s part of why I craved this trip. Knowledge alone is like an unearned memory, mostly forgotten. Just facts and two-dimensional images. I wanted to physically discover the world, the old-fashioned way. To cross over mountains to see what was on the other side. To hear languages I’d never heard. To take the photographs from National Geographic and put them out in the weather of human imagination.

You could say I was saved from misdirection by not being too handsome or too talented or too ambitious. 

Recommended Reading and Notable Authors: Yucatán, the Maya, Mexico and Spanish Colonialism


Recommended Reading

Notable five-star authors who visited Cozumel and the Peninsula of Yucatán

1842, explorer, author, and anthropologist John L. Stephens arrived in Cozumel on a small coastal sailing vessel from Yucatán shortly after Mexican independence and before the protracted Caste War. He became the first to chronicle Cozumel, Tulum, the Mayan temples, and wild jungle in the days of pirates in his 1843 two-volume publication Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. This excellent book is still in print and also available in the digital addition free from Gutenberg Press.

1947 Lilo Lenke, a German author arrived in Mérida, Yucatán and wrote a marvelously fascinating and factual book, Magic Yucatán, before the days of railroad or highways opened Yucatán to tourism and the outside world.

1958, Michel Peissel traveling by himself embarked on an adventuresome and audacious journey into uncharted wild and dangerous places on the recommendation of Germans he met near Mexico city. Each leg of his dauntless journey contained enough chancy astounding thrills to warrant a book by themselves. Crossing to Yucatán, getting through the uncharted jungle of Quintana Roo, surviving pirate attacks, living out of the jungle, discovering Mayan ruins, and trekking the Caribbean Sea coast relentlessly to Belize, formerly known as British Honduras, only to be jailed and extorted are a few of his exhilarating experiences.

Excepts for his book The Lost World of Quintana Roo:

“But the smuggling is now very much reduced, and as an islander told me sadly, "One hardly lives on smuggling today." Occasionally a few small boats dump whisky and perfumes from British Honduras on the islands. In the old days Isla Mujeres and Cozumel had been thriving pirate stations; here the buccaneers would wait in ambush as slowly the Spanish galleons, weighted down with Peruvian gold, would beat their way up along the coast and through the Yucatan Straits on their way to Cuba and Spain from Panama.”

Michel Peissel arriving at Cozumel on a 45 foot sailing schooner wrote:

“Judging from the rough weather that is characteristic of the straits between Cozumel and the coast, the dugout canoes of the Mayas must have been seaworthy craft and the oarsmen good sailors. From the summit of the waves I could catch a glimpse of the island which now appeared as a low gray streak on the horizon … At three o'clock we were up against the flat coastline of Cozumel and the small village of San Miguel came into sight. I was quite disappointed, for the village looked ugly, composed of an odd assortment of stone, cement, and wooden houses of various styles that were stretched along the waterfront.


Yucatán for Travelers, Side Trips from Valladolid and Tulum by John M. Grimsrud. A current look at the Caribbean Sea coast and the points of interest that tourists miss most. Narrated in philosophical short stories available in paper or digital editions.





Yucatán's Magic-Mérida Side Trips: Treasures of Mayab by John M. Grimsrud looks beyond the obvious tourist attractions to discover the unique Yucatán. 

The Caste War of Yucatan by Nelson Reed

Yucatan, A World Apart by Edward H. Mosley and Edward D. Terry

Time Among the Maya by Ronald Wright (Highly recommended

The Folk-Lore of Yucatan by Daniel G. Brinton

The Mayan Elites of the Nineteenth-Century Yucatan by Charlotte Zimmerman

The Cult of the Holy Cross by Charlotte Zimmerman

Yucatan’s Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War by Terry Rugeley

Links to: The Maya, Mexico and Spanish Colonialism:

Introduction and Chapter 1.

Prelude to the Caste War, Chapter 2.

A Brief History of the Caste War, Chapter 3.

While the Caste War still Smoldered, the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4.

Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5.

Lázaro Cárdena's Years, Chapter 6.

Recommended Reading and Notable Authors.




Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Lázaro Cárdenas Years, Chapter 6, Yucatán, the Maya, and Mexico and Spanish Colonialism

 

Lázaro Cárdenas Years, Chapter 6


Gift shop souvenir of El Pensamiento. 
Protracted political upheaval and instability made for a socialist turn by 1934 when México elected the social minded Lázaro Cárdenas president. He took immediate steps beginning with the establishment of the Territory of Quintana Roo and social oriented reforms including the nationalization of Mexico’s petroleum industry that became known as Pemex. Unfortunately the oil money that could have had a huge beneficial impact for the citizens such as Norway’s state-owned petroleum company, didn’t happen. Mexico’s unchecked corruption channeled the money to a select few and has kept Mexico a third world country burdened by poverty and inequality.



Under Mexico’s President Lázaro Cárdenas isolated Chetumal in the extreme southern end of the Territory of Quintana Roo became the capital of the Territory and received its first modern infrastructure. The population of Chetumal was then 2,790, and the only way to get there was by open boat south down the Caribbean coast from Cozumel Island or on horseback through the dense jungle which took five days from the end of the Mérida railroad line at Peto in the State of Yucatán. A paved road into Chetumal would not materialize for nearly forty years.

Big things began to happen in little Chetumal in 1937 when newly elected Méxican President Lázaro Cárdenas together with the socialist governor of Quintana Roo, Rafael E. Melgar, consummated public works projects.. Schools, a hospital, and a capitol building materialized with more on the way.

The elegantly ornamented and sculpted constructions stand to this day as a testimonial to successful social reform. The world famous artist and sculptor Rómulo Rozo made it a sensation.*

The Territory of Quintana Roo predominantly consisted of native Mayan who possessed and practiced as a collective community policing themselves from within where none ever went hungry unless all were hungry. With this political system they lived in peace and harmony with nature while maintaining their territory ecologically pristine.

In all of the Americas Quintana Roo was the last hold out against the intrusion of Spanish colonialism.

*Note; a truncated story about creative Rómulo Rozo in Mexico’s years of reform:

Born and raised in Columbia, South America, Rómulo Rozo took to art at an early age and went on to become an internationally acclaimed sculptor. At Seville, Spain, attending an art exhibition Rómulo met Manuel Amábilis Domínguez an iconic Yucatecan character of neo-Mayan architecture who lured Rómulo Rozo to Mexico to participate in the new socialist movement spearheaded by President Lázaro Cárdenas. This lasting friendship next lured Rómulo Rozo to Chetumal, Quintana Roo territory where he has become memorialized by his sensational artistic works of stone sculpture.

After completion of his work in Chetumal he was again lured onward by his friend Manuel Amábilis. Next it would be to the State of Yucatán at Mérida in the 1940s to work his sculpture art in the Park of The Americas that covered two square blocks near the city center designed by Manuel Amábilis.

In Mérida Rómulo took up the Yucatecan attire of a sombrero, white Guayabera shirt, long white trousers, sandals with Mayan style x-canche hule sandals that had thick heavy stacked leather soles that made a distinctive che-che-che sound and are still worn by the dancers of the Mérida Mayan folkloric ballet to this day. His greatest claim to fame in Mérida, the Monumento de la Patria on Paseo de Montejo is the centerpiece of a traffic circle on the avenue.

It took eleven years to complete this intricately detailed memorial depicting Mexican history, and the last two years Rómulo Rozo received no governmental financial support completing the Monumento de la Patria work by financing it out of his own pocket...a thankless endeavor.

Rómulo Rozo also left a lasting impression of Mexico with his sculpture El Pensamiento (the thinker). 

Photo from Wikipedia
Sculpture by Rómulo Rozo originally displayed in the Museum of Art in La Paz, Bolivia.

This is the image that was plagiarized after it was shown in an exhibition in the National Library in Mexico City in 1932. When it was on exhibition, somebody placed a bottle of tequila in front of it, took a photo, and it was widely circulated in newspapers around the world as the drunken or sleeping Mexican…an image still thought of today.

It is hard to find a Mexican gift shop that does not have a knockoff for sale. Few ever get to know the real story behind this eye-catching Mexican icon.

Monuments carved in stone leave a lasting memory and are difficult to eradicate.

Back to the story of Chetumal and what happened to social reform:

Here is what happened next after Juan Batista Vega paved the way to open up the territory of Quintana Roo to the non-Mayan. The spark of expansionism was ignited with Cancun as rich Spanish developers rushed in to build mega resorts. Construction cranes littered the landscape and it looked like the sky was the limit as resorts marched their way south along the beautiful Caribbean coast.

A surprise came in 1985 when a flood of refugees resulting from a catastrophic earthquake in Mexico City sent nearly 50,000 displaced persons into Yucatán. All needed housing and employment.

Three years later in 1988 a category five hurricane named Gilberto came ashore at Cancan driving ocean-going freighters into the downtown, flattening all the tall construction cranes like an angry giant whipping them frantically to the earth and completely removing windows, doors and furnishings including inlaid carpet from the already finished resorts up to the third floor. The storm didn’t quit here and flattened every electrical pole, tower, and wire from Cancun to Mérida. The hurricane also eroded the Gulf of Mexico beach front inland for two or three hundred meters, washed out the coastal road in thirteen places and wiped out all the coconut palm plantations along the Coconut Coast from Dzlam de Bravo to Sisal. Some coastal places along this north coast of the Yucatán peninsula would be without electric service for six months.

The devastation appeared at first glance like a golden opportunity for construction workers. Anyone wanting work got it. After six weeks with no pay the disgruntled workers became aware of the word shyster. We did have, however, one acquaintance that made millions on the disaster. The supplier of plate glass and mirrors from Mérida.

Now with the collapse of the tourist industry due to the Covid 19 virus we see that these resort owners to this day are also shysters of the very worst kind. Absolutely no social benefits are available to displaced workers. Rich resort developers have found that it is much cheaper to buy politicians than to pay employees.

My wife Jane and I have two Mexican children, Grisel,  36, and Guero, 45, both were working in the tourist related economy. Now they are desperately struggling to survive with no workers compensation or commodity assistance. Grisel had nine years employment with an all inclusive mega resort and they paid no unemployment or medical benefits after layoff. She has painfully became aware of the shyster. Guero on the other hand was a tourist guide and holds certification as a scuba diver. He lost two restaurants and a small hostel hotel due to Covid 19. He now ekes out a meager amount fishing off of the Caribbean beach where he had a jungle fishing camp.

Mexico has the very best politicians that money can buy.

Social justice and governmental integrity mix like oil and water.

There you have a brief overview of where colonialism has taken Mexico and the Maya from the Inquisition to capitalistic takeover. The last hold out, the Maya. are mostly overwhelmed.

Next read Notable visitors to Cozumel, and my recommended reading list.   Recommended Reading and Notable Authors.

Links to: The Maya, Mexico and Spanish Colonialism:

Introduction and Chapter 1.

Prelude to the Caste War, Chapter 2.

A Brief History of the Caste War, Chapter 3.

While the Caste War still Smoldered, the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4.

Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5.

Lázaro Cárdena's Years, Chapter 6.

Recommended Reading and Notable Authors.

Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5, Yucatán, the Maya, Mexico and Spanish Colonialism

 

Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5

 Monument to Juan Bautista Vega, Av. Benito Juarez and Calle 120.
 A subdivision in Cozumel bears his name.
Juan Bautista Vega became a crucial link in the ultimate opening of Quintana Roo allowing non-Mayan to enter.

The protracted Caste War would still continue to smolder on but this would open up one of the most scandalized land grabs since the arrival of the Conquistadors nearly four centuries earlier.

The opening soon brought about paved roads, land developers, mega resorts, and a crescendo of eager capitalistic investment in numerous money making enterprises.

The Mayan Talking Cross, a relic of the Caste War era, was a Mayan attempt to keep their brand of spirituality alive and is still continuously active occupied with manned temples and festive ceremonies at Tulum, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and Xocèn, home of the church La Iglesia Santa Cruz Tún of the Holy Cross Tún. Read more of this fascinating story in the book Yucatán for Travelers by John M. Grimsrud.

Juan Bautista Vega was born on Cozumel island off the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in 1884.

In 1896 Dr. Fábregas an adventurer and treasure hunter arrived in Cozumel with the intention of crossing to Tulum on Yucatán's mainland of Quintana Roo.

The Chan Santa Cruz Mayas controlled the region of Tulum and the entire Caribbean Sea coast. They had been in a bloody conflict with the Yucatecan Mexicans even before the Caste War in 1847. That war would continually smoldering on.

The Mayan “talking cross” had dictated that no whites should be allowed to enter their sphere of dominance. This edict was rigorously enforced.

In 1896, with money as the lure, Dr. Fábregas succeeded in finding a boat and crew to make the crossing to the Tulum shore from Cozumel Island. The then twelve year old Juan Bautista Vega was one of the crew along with his stepfather and one other “white” from Cozumel.

The Chan Santa Cruz Maya, known as the Cruzoob, were on hand to welcome the visitors. Upon disembarking on the beach at Tulum all were killed by the Cruzoob Mayan except twelve year old Juan who was taken prisoner. When the Maya discovered that Juan could read and write Spanish, they decided he would be useful to them in negotiations with the Mexican government.

Juan was taught Maya and endeared himself to his Mayan captors. He lived among the Cruzoob, became a general in their militia learning the war tactics handed down for three and a half centuries by the father of the first Mestizo, Gonzalo Guerrero who had married a Mayan woman, and became a tribal chief.

The mainland of Quintana Roo had remained an isolated and unexplored land because of the presence of the Cruzoob Maya. For over four hundred years the Mayas of Quintana Roo successfully repelled the Spanish and Mexican conquistadors until the last shots of the Caste War of 1847 rang out at Dzula, territory of Quintana Roo in 1935.

This became the longest lasting insurrection in the history of the Americas because of two unique and important people, Gonzalo Guerrero father of the first Mestizo and Juan Bautista Vega, both of Spanish descent, whose stories coincidentally coincide.

The Juan Bautista Vega story continues when as an old man he encounters a very rich and politically well-connected auto dealer from Mexico City who was always looking for more opportunities to expand his financial empire and was not adverse to land grabs. Befriending Juan Bautista Vega, he sent him off to a Mexican military hospital to give him medical rehabilitation from dental, eye, parasite eradication, and everything else that could put the old man back into the very best of health. A fattened, indebted, and healthy Juan Bautista Vega was sent back to his jungle home three months later.

The rich opportunist businessman went one step further and gave as a gift a paved road onto Juan Bautista Vega’s remote jungle village home. This gracious gift would turn out to be a can of worms for the Mayan people who had been living in peace and harmony with nature in their jungle home for a centuries.

Thus began the opening up of the Quintana Roo jungle with roads and settlements that came with intensity in the 1970s when the sleepy little fishing village of Cancún opened as a resort mecca would soon became the worlds number one tourist destination. The name Cancún in the Mayan language ironically means, rattle snake nest.

Juan Bautista Vega had been instrumental in brokering a lasting peace between the Mexican government and the Cruzoob Maya with coercive prodding by the rich enterprising entrepreneurial businessman.

Back in 1926 Juan visited his “white” family in Cozumel, but then returned to his Mayan home on the mainland and lived the rest of his life among the Maya. Gen. Juan Bautista Vega died in 1969 not living long enough to witness the explosive growth that tourism brought to the Costa Maya beginning with Cancún fueled by international corporate conglomerates who like the conquistadors of old were not looking for employment but only plunder to extrapolate. Money was their god and motivator.

The environment would be indiscriminately exterminated. The world’s second longest corral reef was just one of many natural resources to fall victim. Water, air, and soil contamination made this paradise into an unhealthy place to live. It was said about Mexico the correct phonetic pronunciation should be; “make-sick-oo!”

Next we look back at social reform era beginning in the 1930s. Lázaro Cárdena's Years, Chapter 6

Links to: The Maya, Mexico and Spanish Colonialism:

Introduction and Chapter 1.

Prelude to the Caste War, Chapter 2.

A Brief History of the Caste War, Chapter 3.

While the Caste War still Smoldered, the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4.

Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5.

Lázaro Cárdena's Years, Chapter 6.

Recommended Reading and Notable Authors.

Sunday, October 25, 2020

While the Caste War Still Smoldered the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4, Yucatán, the Maya,

 

While the Caste War Still Smoldered the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4


Photo: Mérida, Yucatán, Cemetery. Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto was shot, along with his brothers, by firing squad at this site, Janurary 1924.

It took an invasion of Mexican federal troops to cool the Caste War, and then the capital city of Chetumal was created at the extreme south of the territory adjacent to British Honduras, known now as Belize with an undefined border. The population of isolated Chetumal in 1910 was 1,112.

After México’s nearly three hundred years of slavery, the Mexican-American War, the Yucatán fight for sovereignty, the protracted Caste War that begun in 1847, and simultaneously the turbulent revolutionary war that began in 1910 and went on nearly ten years, social reform began.

A synopsis of the Mexican Revolutionary War:
Not until Porfirio Dias brought stability to Mexico, beginning in 1876 that lasting until 1910, did the Mexican economy prosper. President Porfirio Dias however had a conspiratorial capitalist game plan for Mexico that ruthlessly exploited the Ingenious while enriching the richest using an iron fist plan of attack.

When the Mexican revolutionary war broke out in 1910 Americans owned more of Mexico than the Mexicans did. If that is not imperialistic it would be interesting to hear what they called their land grab shell game.

The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, ended the authoritarianism of Porfirio Diaz in Mexico and establishing a flimsy and fragile constitutional republic.

A word about José de la Cruz Porfirio Dias: He was born September 15, 1830, and died in exile July 2, 1915. He was a Mexican general and despotic politician serving seven consecutive terms as President, 1877-1910.

Dias’s military/political carrier included War of the Reform 1858–60, French intervention in Mexico 1862–67, where he became General of his republican troops against the puppet government of French backed Emperor Maximilian. He subsequently revolted against presidents Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, on the principle of no re-election to the presidency. Dias succeeded in seizing power, ousting Lerdo in a coup in 1876 with the help of his political supporters. Dias was elected in 1877. Dias then abandoned the idea of no re-election and held office continuously until 1911.

Dias has been a controversial figure in Mexican history. His regime brought "order and progress," ending political turmoil and promoting economic development. Dias and his allies comprised a group of technocrats known as Los Científicos, "the scientists." His policies benefited his cronies and foreign corporations. Bankrolling wealthy hacienda owners to acquire more and more land at giveaway prices, leaving small family farmers destitute. Shortly these augmentations became very unpopular causing conflicts. The peasantry were not going to share in any prosperity.

Dias ran for election in 1910, he was by then 80 years old. His failure caused a political crisis.

Dias declared himself the winner of an eighth term in office in 1910, his electoral opponent Francisco I. Madero called for armed rebellion against Dias and thus initiating the Mexican Revolution. Dias resigned by 1911 and went into exile in Paris, where he died four years later.

Back to the Mexican Revolutionary War story:

Revolutionaries jumped into the bloody battle with guns blazing and Francisco Madero, Pascual Orozco, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata all stepped up to the plate exterminating their land grabbing Mexican countrymen in this anxiety enhanced prolonged and deadly conflict. The life expectancy of presidents was abbreviated.

This turned out to be a very unhealthy period in Mexican history when assassinations were carried out indiscriminately. The infamous revolutionary general Poncho Villa had ninety women in his traveling entourage semiyearly shot to death because one of them didn’t show due respect to one of his officers.

A constitution was drafted in 1917 initiating reforms but violence continued into the 1930s.
Isolated Yucatán avoided much of the conflict of the revolutionary war.

Felipe Carrillo Puerto became governor of Yucatán backed by Salvador Alvarado. The social minded platform of workers rights, land reform and equality for the indigenous Mayan people gave the hopeful impression of equitable social justice.

Democratically elected in 1922 Felipe’s governorship was short lived, and he was assassinated by hard line corporate capitalists at the Mérida cemetery before a firing squad in January 1924. Murdered by capitalism.

Undercurrents of political upheaval smoldered into the 1930s.

Caste War hard liners were not ready to capitulate and surrender their ancestral homeland. In 1935, in a small village in Quintana Roo named Dzula, the last all out shooting battle of Caste War’s protracted conflict took place.

Dzula today.  


The precise end or the Mexican Revolutionary War became hard to distinguish with all of Mexico’s war ravaged turmoil.

Next we look at Juan Bautista Vega and his part in the opening up Quintana Roo. Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5.



Links to: The Maya, Mexico and Spanish Colonialism:

Introduction and Chapter 1.

Prelude to the Caste War, Chapter 2.

A Brief History of the Caste War, Chapter 3.

While the Caste War still Smoldered, the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4.

Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5.

Lázaro Cárdena's Years, Chapter 6.

Recommended Reading and Notable Authors.


A Brief History of the Caste War in Yucatán, Chapter 3, Yucatán, the Maya, Mexico and Spanish Colonialism

 

A Brief History of the Caste War in Yucatán, Chapter 3

Mayan Leader Jacinto Pat.
The Spanish Conquistadors took 19 years to get a foothold in Yucatán and did not totally subdue the Maya.  

By 1535 the Maya had driven every last Conquistador out of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Conquistadors regrouped, enacted the clever game plan that Hernán Cortés successfully used against the Aztec. And they established the city of Mérida by 1542.

The Christian Conquistadors could not or would not conquer the eastern Yucatán Peninsula.

A word about the free Mayan people of the eastern Caribbean side of the Yucatán Peninsula: They are community-minded with a social conscience for one and all with the philosophy that those who worked the land owned the land. They were not united as a nation with the other Mayan groups and often engaged in feuds that made divide and conquer possible.

Spiritually the Mayan people established their civilization and worshiped the same gods several thousand years before the notion of Christianity was conceptualized.

The town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto has a long and tortured historical past but little remains today to tell the agonized story that I will summarize in this presentation from a Mayan point of view. Remember; peaceful places have no history.

The capitulated Indigenous Mayan of western Yucatán under the Spanish Conquistadors were beaten, tortured, degraded, brutally enslaved. and starved nutritionally and spiritually while they attempted to protect their families, homeland, and way of life.

What would it take to push these long suffering people to say; “enough is enough?”
The opportunist Yucatecan Spanish conquerors had no problem putting a gun in the hand of the Mayan people when they had a political ax to grind with the Mexicans, but could instantaneously change tactics when these cannon fodder services were no longer needed.

The eastern Yucatán Peninsula would remain in Mayan hands for more than four hundred years due to men such as Gonzalo Guerrero and Juan Bautista Vega.

Of great importance to the Maya independence was the assistance that came from their southern neighbor, British Honduras, now known as Belize. The British had been at war with the Spanish and took every opportunity to exasperate them. Thus by being a supplier of arms and ammunition to the independent Maya of eastern Yucatán a lucrative trade was developed. The Maya could supply natural rubber harvested from their jungle forests. Sapote trees were in abundance and the sap from these trees was a key ingredient in chewing gum and rubber products which they bartered with the British for guns and ammunition. Their virgin jungle forests also provided exotic lumber that the British made into a profitable enterprise.

THE CASTE WAR

The so-called “Caste War” in Yucatán cost 300,000 lives; it ended up reduced to historical ill-feelings, with no political peace, and no armistice. It is, of course, one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of the peninsula. There are many theories regarding the motives that caused the war to start, one of which is that the outbreak was due to the build up of hatred and bitterness among the Mayan faced with tyranny from whites who exploited and abused them for centuries.

The following are excerpts from Nelson Reed’s book The Caste War of Yucatán.

Yucatán’s only natural resource had been the land and the people to work it. Now the land was recovered, but not the people, and there wasn’t enough food for those that survived. Taking their chances with snipers and the machete as they harvested rebel Mayan fields, the soldiers weren’t happy to see that same corn wasted on captive savages. They didn’t take prisoners except under direct command, or occasionally for a five-peso reward.

With these facts in mind, Yucatán Governor Barbachano took a step for which his name is still bitterly remembered in Mexico. He begin selling the Maya to Cuba. There were many apparent justifications: Barbachano claimed it was to save their lives; they were rebels and thus liable to the most severe punishment (execution, or as was decreed by Congress, ten years’ banishment); they were sold on a ten year work contract; and finally the state needed money. But still, it was nonetheless slavery.
The Maya held out though the war officially ended in 1855 after 247,000 were killed. End of excerpts.

The Maya were not capitulating, they were fighting for their homeland, their freedom and their families. At their capital of Chan Santa Cruz, today known as Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo, a religious cult sprang to life and was organized by Venancio Puc and called The Talking Cross. Puc was judge and jury, priest, general, and absolute commander of his new religious sect, interviewing all visitors, appointing all chiefs, and ordering assassinations. Puc made it perfectly clear that there could be no treaty or compromise with the whites and ordered all prisoners brought to Chan Santa Cruz for execution.

Ultimately Puc was killed and his Talking Cross fell silent. Puc’s loyal military followers discovered the deceit of the Talking Cross and attempted to expunge the fraud of the Cross that only spoke for thirteen years and died with Puc
I don’t want to kill the intrigue of this extraordinary story by telling you all. I do however encourage you to read this history and discover a true narrative stranger than a fairy tale.

Quintana Roo territory did not become a Mexican state until 1974 and until recently was a duty free territory rift with smugglers and contraband goods.

During the years of the Caste War Mexico was a political mess of changing governments. In the 1860s and 1870s Presidents Santa Anna and Benito Juarez were in and out of office interspersed by Emperor Maximilian of the Hapsburg's. Not until Mexican President Porfirio Dias brought stability beginning in 1876 that lasted until 1910 did Mexico prosper. Porfirio Dias had a capitalist game plan for Mexico that was to ruthlessly exploit the Ingenious and enrich the richest.

The Maya continued to resist. In 1899 Mexican General Ignacio Bravo came to Yucatán to crush all of the Maya with British complicity. The British had been supplying guns and ammunition to the Maya but had a change of heart and cut off their cooperation, thus leaving the Maya nearly defenseless.
In 1901 Mexican federal troops conquered the Mayan capital city of Chan Santa Cruz, and the government established Quintana Roo as a federal territory.

During the course of the war the Maya that could be rounded up were sold off to Cuba as slaves and the city of Tihosuco was totally abandoned for the next 80 years. Read more the Caste War here: Yucatan for Travelers by John M. Grimsrud
 

In 1915 Mexican revolutionary General Salvador Alvarado was sent into the Yucatán to restore order. This was five years after Porfirio Dias fled Mexico during the bloody revolution or civil war. The war murdered thousands and dragged on for over ten years.

Yucatán had become Mexico’s most prosperous state due to the booming henequen and sugar industries.

Governor Alvarado canceled all ‘debt labor’ and freed 60,000 Mayan and their families following 350 plus years of slavery. The Caste War did not end here.

Cult of the Talking Cross

The story of the Cult of the Talking Cross (La Cruz Parlante) and the start of our journey along the route of Caste War sites begins in the seldom visited Mexican town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the former Chan Santa Cruz, Quintana Roo. This is where the Talking Cross prophesied victory to the Maya and told them they were the chosen race, the true Christians and the children of God. Although final victory never came, the Cross helped the Maya resist the Mexicans for fifty more years. Chan Santa Cruz was the capital of the Mayan territory during the Caste War that began in 1847. No Caucasians were safe here during the time of the conflict.

Chan Santa Cruz was invaded and overrun by Mexican federal troops in 1901, and the Chan Santa Cruz Maya retreated to the jungle to fight a guerrilla war that caused the federal troops to capitulate by 1915. The Maya only returned to their old city of Chan Santa Cruz to fill wells poisoned by federal troops and tear up the railway tracks connecting to the Caribbean Sea. The Chan Santa Cruz Maya then lived in relative peace and harmony with nature in their jungle territory.

In 1936 some of the Mayan communities signed treaties with the Mexican government. At that time, the capital of the territory of Quintana Roo was relocated by Mexican President Cardenas to its present location of Chetumal.

Today the city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto is almost too peaceful and quiet. It remains the home of one faction of the Cult of the Talking Cross, a relic of the Caste War and of the Mayan attempt to keep their brand of spirituality alive.

The Mayan church of Balam Nah where the religion of the Talking Cross was practiced was constructed during the Caste War. It is now open for business as a Catholic church.

Ironically, the large church in Chan Santa Cruz was built by slave labor. It was appropriately put up by captured Creoles (Mexicans of Spanish descent) under the Mayan whip during the Caste War. It has the distinction of being the last Mayan temple ever built. The indigenous Maya had been enslaved from the mid-1500’s under the Inquisition crazed Spanish. They had been forced to tear down their sacred temples and erect countless cathedrals and convents for the Spanish for more than three hundred oppressive years.

The Caste War had been a long time in coming and the Cult of the Talking Cross was a direct result of the Mayan attempt to regain their old religion. The Mexican government recognized the Cult of the Talking Cross as a legitimate religion in 2002. Before that time the priests of the Cult were considered by Mexican civil law and the Roman Catholic Church as practicing witchcraft. The former democratically elected governor of Yucatán, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, a Mexican of Spanish heritage, dedicated his life to rectifying many of the wrongs done to the Maya.

When the right-wing conservatives snatched power in Yucatán, the then governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto and his brothers were marched out to the Mérida cemetery and executed by firing squad as they stood before their graves. That was 1924. With the popular governor dead, the Mayan hope for social justice died, but the Caste War continued to smolder among the Maya.

Tihosuco

When author Ronald Wright arrived at the Mayan controlled church in Quintana Roo territory at Tihosuco, the priest was chasing a large pig out of the vestry. He was a Spaniard from Barcelona. “The people here are better than in Spain,” he said. “When Mayas get drunk they speak to God, when Spaniards drink, they deny him.” Ronald Wright, Time Among the Maya, 1989.

The Tihosuco church is a bizarre relic of the Spanish Conquistadors. It collapsed in 1841 and was rebuilt, and then it was partially demolished by the Maya of Chan Santa Cruz in the Caste War. After that Spanish controlled Tihosuco was abandoned for 80 years. To this day, the church remains in a state of frightful time-warp with its aged battle scars.

Looking out from the altar to the rear of this one-of-a-kind church, you are confronted by a shocking revelation. This otherwise complete structure has an entire wall missing, and it has been gone since the 1850s. If symbolic implications are intended, then this edifice conveys an almighty message.

At the time Ronald Wright visited Tihosuco, the church and the statue of Jacinto Pat were the only two points of interest, but recently the Mayan Caste War museum has opened. We were told by friends not to miss it. We were in luck in that Carlos Chan Espinosa, the administrator, was there. Carlos is the man who makes this place work. He also aids the local community by bringing such valued services as food and lodging to visitors. Area homes are opened to travelers so that they can sample the home life of the region. This was positively splendid, and Carlos located a place for us after we had bicycled in on our Caste War fact finding rote. The Mayan Caste War museum is on a side street across from the town plaza.

The Tihosuco museum has an extensive presentation on the Caste War and also a Mayan herb garden complete with many medicinal plants. Ongoing seminars and lectures plus numerous interactive community events keep the museum a vital part of the public community information exchange.

Jacinto Pat, a Mayan leader of prominence and large hacienda owner, was one of the driving forces that inspired the Mayan people to fight in what is known as the Caste War for their homeland, independence, and liberty. Jacinto Pat is perpetually remembered with a commemorative statue in the main plaza of Tihosuco.

At nearby Tepich, the town has one claim to fame, and that is their home town hero, Cecilio Chi who rallied his fellow Mayans in May of 1847 to rise up against the oppressive Mexican land owners in order to gain their freedom from subjugation.

Adjacent to the church is a forlorn graveyard where the town hero, Cecilio Chi, was buried in 1848.

The Caste War now had its first true martyr, and the long suffering Mayan people would pick up Spanish war tactics that Gonzalo Guerrero had passed on to them nearly three hundred years earlier. Enough was finally enough and this would spark the longest lasting Indigenous uprising in the history of the Americas.

At nearby Valladolid the Spanish residents forbid any Mayan people to enter the city and this is where Cecilio Chi was tortured and hanged.

The inscription on his statue reads: “Glory to Cecilio Chi, Liberator of the Mayan nation and immortal symbol of justice and liberty.” This monument is in Tepich’s small park adjoining the main highway.

Abutting the church is a forlorn graveyard where the town hero, Cecilio Chi, was buried in 1848.

The mainland of Quintana Roo had remained an isolated and unexplored land because of the presence of the Cruzoob Maya. For over four hundred years the Mayas of Quintana Roo successfully repelled the Spanish and Mexican conquistadors until the last shots of the Caste War of 1847 rang out at Dzula, territory of Quintana Roo in 1935. This became the longest lasting insurrection in the history of the Americas.

The Mexican Revolutionary War story continues this ongoing narrative. While the Caste War still Smoldered, the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4.

Links to: The Maya, Mexico and Spanish Colonialism:

Introduction and Chapter 1.

Prelude to the Caste War, Chapter 2.

A Brief History of the Caste War, Chapter 3.

While the Caste War still Smoldered, the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4.

Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5.

Lázaro Cárdena's Years, Chapter 6.

Recommended Reading and Notable Authors.