to regain independence from Mexico during the 1800s (Alisky 1980). Living away and apart from Mexico, Yucatecans developed their own cultural institutions, including regional literature, music, theatre, and food (Terry 1980; Vargas Cetina 2010b).
During the long span of Porfirio Díaz's 30-year dictatorship, the Yucatecan government created its own regional pedagogic strategies. For example, it was involved in the organization of regional fairs, which brought together Yucatecan producers from different towns and villages, and facilitated the recognition of shared interests among members of the elites of Mérida and of other cities and towns of Yucatán (Gobierno del Estado de Yucatán 1880). Under central Mexican instruction, and with the acquiescence of the Yucatecan government, geographers helped to establish the contours of Yucatán's natural environment as they conducted professional surveys of the territory and its natural resources (García Cubas 1887; de Zayas Enríquez 1908). To enhance their economic control of the region, the wealthy families of Mérida and the northern area of Yucatán built one of the most dense railroad networks of its time (Wells 1985, 1992). Besides aiding in the transport of henequen, these lines facilitated the mobility of Yucatecans, who, traveling from one city or town to another, helped to make their culture co-extensive with that of the Yucatecan territory.
The twentieth century witnessed ongoing efforts to construct all-embracing narratives in order to establish and reinforce Yucatecan identity. Under the auspices of the state government, regional intellectuals put their talents together into the composition of a Yucatecan encyclopedia (Enciclopedia Yucatanense). The resulting 12 volumes (9 being published between 1944 and 1947, and 3 between 1979 and 1981) reflect the efforts of Yucatecan people to forge a distinct society and culture (Echánove Trujillo 1944-1947; García Canul et al. 1979-1981).16 The content of the volumes includes descriptions of Yucatán's geography and its wealth of natural resources (fauna and flora); the history of the peninsular indigenous people; the history of colonization, conquest, and independence from Spain and Mexico, including regional archaeology; the history of the development of an array of cultural institutions and arts (music, dance, opera, literature, handicrafts, food), which the authors proclaim to be Yucatecan in spirit; and the biographies of prominent Yucatecans. These volumes provide an account of Yucatecan people and history as developing in relative isolation from the rest of Mexico,17 while being connected to the US, the Caribbean, and Europe through trade. It was mostly to these other regions of the world that the members of the Yucatecan elite traveled in search of business opportunities, education, and culture. If, like Wells and Joseph (1992), we find coincidences between central Mexican and Yucatecan cultural inventions, these can probably be explained with reference to the Francophilia that characterized North American, Latin American, and Asian elites throughout the turn of the century (see Higonnet 2002; Levenstein 2000; Needell 1987).
Yucatecans, therefore, developed their own tools to nourish the sense of peoplehood that gives shape to Yucatecan identity. In addition to the ‘dis-semi-nation' of narrative accounts of the history of the region, Yucatecans recreated—and continue to recreate—their own local cultural forms on a quotidian basis. In Mérida, for example, City Hall organizes weekly festivities in which local artists perform Yucatecan cultural productions: every Monday, Yucatecans and tourists can witness jarana dances in the main plaza of the city; every Tuesday, at Olimpo, a municipal theatre, musicians perform trova songs; and every Thursday, at Santa Lucia Park in downtown Mérida, there are dances, poetry readings, and musical performances. Monuments and statues of Yucatecan members of the regional pantheon invoke the past: a statue dedicated to the Maya rebel Jacinto Canek is located at the exit from Mérida to the port of Celestún (see fig. 1.2); a statue memorializing Justo Sierra O'Reilly is situated in the Paseo Montejo, which, at its northern end, features a Monument to the Fatherland (crafted by a Colombian sculptor) that blends Maya and Aztec elements.18 In a new, sprawling neighborhood named Francisco de Montejo (the name of the Spanish conqueror of Yucatán)—an area that Yucatecans perceive as being occupied primarily by central Mexicans (see Quintal Ávila 2006)—the statue of a woman, referred to locally as La Mestiza, crowns a large fountain. At elementary schools, children sing the Yucatecan anthem along with the Mexican one. The only regional holiday celebrated all over the state, but not in the rest of Mexico, is the birth of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the socialist governor of Yucatán who was murdered in 1924 by soldiers following the orders of local elites, in collusion with the central Mexican authorities. These pedagogical instruments point to both the performative aspects that challenge the homogeneity and dominance of Mexican nationalism and the icons that deepen the sense of fraternity among Yucatecans. In so doing, they promote a strong sense of cultural uniqueness and difference from Mexican society and culture.
Yucatán and the Caribbean
Although today it is almost impossible to overlook the ties between Yucatán and other Caribbean societies (Shrimpton Masson 2006), this had not been the case for a long time. In general, the literature on the Caribbean tends to favor the study of societies in which the numbers of the Afro-Caribbean population dominate over those of the indigenous groups, who were massacred by the Spanish conquerors or by Creole Spaniards and later by Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, and French colonial settlers (Mintz 1996; Puri 2004; Serbin 1994; Simpson 1962; Trouillot 1992). For example, Gaztambide-Géigel (1996) argues for a restrictive definition of the Caribbean to include only those societies with a strong African component, that is, former slave societies. He claims that to extend the term to other societies in Central and South America is an imperialist maneuver designed by US intellectuals. In turn, Torres-Saillant (2006) pays little attention to continental nations that claim to be part of the Caribbean, and he is somewhat intrigued by the fact that the government of the state of Quintana Roo, on the Caribbean side of the peninsula, organizes an annual competition on Caribbean literature (ibid.: 19-20).19 A notable exception is the study of Arciniegas ([1946] 2003) who took a longue durée approach to the study of the history of the Caribbean, prefiguring Braudel's study on the Mediterranean.20 Arciniegas paid close attention to the centuries of Spanish domination and colonization of the islands and the societies in Central and South America that bordered the Caribbean Sea. His account also examines the imperialist actions of the British, French, and Dutch (and later of the US), who wrestled with the Spaniards for control of the trade routes (see also Gilbert 1977; Hinckley 1963; Marichal and Souto Mantecón 1994; Sluiter 1948).
Figure 1.2. Monument to Jacinto Canek, Canek Avenue, Mérida
Photograph courtesy of G. Vargas Cetina, 2007.
The displacement of people of Spanish origin from most of the Antilles allowed for their replacement by other European peoples, and African slaves (and later indentured Asian labor) took the place left vacant by the indigenous people, who could not withstand the military and bacteriological warfare launched by the Europeans. Although for a long time the domination of the Caribbean was a contested matter, the region was finally divided among different European powers and the United States. Smuggling became a common activity, competing with the formal trade in sugar, fruits, coffee, cacao, vanilla, and spices (Palmer 1932; Shaw 1943). While, in general terms, the literature tends to overlook the relationship of Yucatán with the Caribbean islands and surrounding lands, Yucatecans continued to trade with different islands (mainly Cuba) and with the US states of Louisiana, New York, and Texas. Yucatecans sold Mayas as slaves to Cuba, and in return Cuba sent migrants to take advantage of the henequen boom. British Honduras (today's Belize) kept an open channel in order to smuggle weapons to the Maya rebels, but also to transport diverse commodities of British and Dutch origin to the states of Yucatán and Campeche (Sullivan 1989). Vargas Cetina (pers. comm.) has found that Yucatecan musicians traveled to Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, New Orleans, New York, and France, and that musicians from those regions often visited Yucatán. Since these paths are necessarily bi-directional, it can be safely assumed that when Yucatecans returned home, they came with new commodities, a reformed taste, and transformed forms of subjectivity.
Edible commodities were part and parcel of the Caribbean trade for all involved—for the Americans, British, Dutch, French, Germans, and Spaniards, for the inhabitants of the