Cajeme (1837–1887)

Cajeme (José María Leyva; b. 1837; d. 21 April 1887), Yaqui Indian leader. After leaving the Yaqui valley in southern Sonora in his youth, he became a dependable volunteer member of the state forces backing the liberal caudillo Governor Ignacio Pesqueira whenever there was a crisis, including campaigns against his own people in the late 1860s. Rewarding Cajeme with the post of district administrator of the Yaqui valley (1874), the Pesqueira government assumed he would help obtain the Yaquis's total and permanent submission. Instead, he mobilized them (and neighboring Mayos) to achieve the status of separate nations which the two tribes had long claimed was rightfully theirs. Cajeme restructured and disciplined Yaqui society toward greater economic security and military preparedness: instituting a tax system; controlling external trade; reviving the mission practice of community plots and institutionalizing the tribal tradition of popular assemblies as decision making bodies; amassing war material. But by the early 1880s, the advantage of political instability from Pesqueira's fall had given way to national and state governments united in their zeal to colonize the rich lands of the Yaqui and Mayo valleys, employing a large, unrelenting, military force to do so. Though Cajame was defeated and captured by Ángel Martínez at San José de Guaymas, and executed, Yaqui guerrilla resistance continued through 1910.

See alsoYaqui Rebellion, 1885–1898 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ramón Corral, "Biografía de José María Leyva Cajeme," Obras históricas, vol. 1 (1886), pp. 147-192.

Claudio Dabdoub, Historia de El Valle del Yaqui (1964), pp. 115-138.

Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821–1910 (1984), pp. 93-117.

Additional Bibliography

Zavala Castro, Palemón. El Indio Cajame y su nación yaqui. Hermosillo: Gobierno del Estado de Sonora, Secretaría de Fomento Educativo y Cultura, 1985.

                                         Stuart F. Voss