For Maya communities in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, time is marked by war—specifically the Caste War, an insurrection led by Maya and mixed-race peasants that began in 1847.^[1] Bolstered by divinations from the Speaking Cross, Maya rebels resisted occupation for over fifty years. As one of the most successful Indigenous insurrections in the Americas, the Caste War continues to shape contemporary Maya peoples’ struggles for autonomy. I examine the legacy of this war and what it tells us about settler colonial violence and Indigenous dispossession in the peninsula. I ask in this moment, what might this war teach us about settler colonial violence in Gaza and more broadly?

By the mid-nineteenth century, Maya leaders and their communities were facing land encroachments, competition from commercial agriculture, and increased Church taxation (Rugeley 1996). Revolt was seen as a way to wrest power and resources away from the Mexican government and elite and end the “epoch of slavery” (época de esclavitud) during which Maya people worked in peonage on haciendas. Armed with rifles purchased from the English in Belize and their devotion to the Speaking Cross, the rebels, referred to as Cruzo’ob Maya, gained steady control of the peninsula. They were eventually defeated after the Mexican government sent reinforcements to the peninsula. Cruzo’ob Maya created fortified strongholds in southeastern Yucatán where they continued to resist colonial and settler colonial impositions. Tixcacal Guardia is one of these garrisons. A retinue of armed Maya rebels guards the sanctuary of the Speaking Cross. For Maya people, time is cyclical; the past keeps informing the present. As such, war remains imminent in Tixcacal.

The community of Kuchmil (a pseudonym), with whom I have collaborated for three decades, identify as devotees of the Speaking Cross. Under their patronage, I was granted permission to visit Tixcacal in 2001. We watched the rebels perform their morning military exercises as we waited for the village leader to approve for us to enter the fenced sanctuary. The community is noted for being wary of outsiders, who they fear may be spies; these fears are not unfounded since archaeologists and anthropologists, like Sylvanus Morley and Alfonso Villa Rojas, worked as spies or in other capacities for their governments. At the time, I considered this resistance to be a vestige of war and colonial domination. But the fenced sanctuary and the military training take on a different valence if we examine them through a settler colonial lens. Cruzo’ob Maya live in occupied territory; to quell resistance, the Mexican government created the Territory of Quintana Roo in 1902 and proceeded to allocate “uncolonized” lands in this region to mestizo settlers from other states (cf. Collier 1994). Additionally, the construction of the international tourist center of Cancún is a settler colonial project intended to attract half a million settlers and develop the coastline, called the Riviera Maya, through tourism. The recent construction of the Maya Train, a megadevelopment project, intends to accelerate this development throughout the peninsula. In response, Maya communities have rallied to defend their territory from environmental damage and further land encroachments (West 2023).

Prophecies of an impending war no longer seem like vestiges of the past; instead, they can be read as warnings of a new epoch of slavery and dispossession under tourism. Tourism economies are not innocuous; they are settler colonial projects (Aikau and Gonzalez 2019). This became evident when President Trump proposed to forcibly remove Palestinians from Gaza to develop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Removing Palestinians, however, and creating a gentrified tourist landscape will not erase the region’s history of settler violence because tourism also generates powerful anti-colonial movements—as is happening in the Riviera Maya and as Jennifer Kelly (2023) has shown in Palestine.

For Cruzo’ob Maya, independence from Mexico meant freedom.^[2] In a sense, they sought a two-state solution. After losing the war, retrenchment did not signify defeat, but rather it provided an opportunity for strategic negotiations to build potential alliances (Sullivan 1989). Today Maya people’s quest for self-determination has been reimagined in the face of Mexican nationalism and settler colonialism. It is grounded in what Maya anthropologist Ana Rosa Duarte Duarte (2018) refer to as self-subsistence autonomies organized around the concept of k’ax: everyday practices and social relationships that make up Maya life and make resistance possible under colonial and neocolonial projects, and I add, under settler colonial projects. These resistance tactics remain under the radar of state surveillance and have made it possible for Maya communities to thrive. Indeed, Maya demands for autonomy have become more vociferous in the face of megadevelopment projects and settler domination. As discussions of a two-state solution recede and the world considers what a future in Gaza might look like, Maya communities show that quests for autonomy may be quelled, but they find other means by which to continue the struggle.

Notes

[1] Some scholars argue that the Caste War is a misnomer because these rebels included mestizos and mulattos. They prefer the term “Social War” (Gabbert 2004; Kray 2023).

[2] For a discussion of the Maya meanings of freedom, see Kazanjian 2016.