Juan Bautista Vega, Chapter 5
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| Monument to Juan Bautista Vega, Av. Benito Juarez and Calle 120. A subdivision in Cozumel bears his name. |
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:
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.
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