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:
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.
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