Yukateko

ETHNONYMS: Máasehual, Maya, Mayero, mestizos

Orientation

Identification. The term "Maya" is of indeterminable antiquity and today is usually used by the Yukateko to refer only to their language, not to themselves. For self-identification, the terms used are "Mayero," which refers to a speaker of Maya; mestizo, which in Spanish means "mixed people"; or "Máasehual," an adapted Nahuatl word that denotes "poor people."

Location. In pre-Columbian times and today, the Yukateko have inhabited much of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, including the states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Campeche. They live adjacently with other Maya groups such as the Kekchi and Mopan to the south near Belize, Guatemala, and the Mexican state of Tabasco.

Demography. It is difficult to enumerate the Yukateko population because classification criteria used by the Mexican government and those used by anthropologists differ, owing in part to the mestizaje, or Spanish/Maya "mixture" process, as well as the isolation of hundreds of communities. The best estimate is about 500,000, which suggests a recovery to near precontact levels.

Linguistic Affiliation. Yukateko belongs to the Maya Language Family and is believed to have separated from other languages about 1000 b.c. Although there are regional Maya dialectal differences identifiable by native speakers, the language used among all Maya is rather homogeneous, the result of frequent population movements during colonial and contemporary times.

History and Cultural Relations

Archaeological evidence indicates that the earliest known settlements in the Yucatán Peninsula were fishing villages on the eastern coast, suggesting a Maya presence in the area for many thousands of years. The earliest Yukateko historical records in the form of hieroglyphic texts date to the fourth century a.d., with earlier texts found to the south. These Maya were probably Ch'ol speakers with a large-scale system of trading and warring city-states, ruled by priest/kings, at centers such as Tikal, Palenque, and Copán, which flourished and then declined during what has come to be known as the Classic period, from a.d. 250 to 900. The Yukateko were also present at Cobá, Ek'Balam, Edzná, Dzibilchaltún, and other centers, although the cataclysmic collapse of this system seems to have resulted in less depopulation in Yucatán than in other Maya centers. In fact, there is some evidence that when the sites in the Guatemala region were abandoned, through some combination of environmental abuse and internal discord, Yukateko people moved south to fill the void.

By a.d. 1000, the emerging central-Mexican Toltec apparently established dominance during what is called the Postclassic period at the previously Classic Maya site of Chichén Itzá, increasing their control of the Mesoamerican trade network. Following the demise of the Toltec, beginning about AD. 1250, the Yukateko lived in regional chiefdoms until their first contact with the Spanish off the eastern coast in 1511. In 1526 Francisco de Montejo ("El Adelantado") began a military campaign that culminated in the official Spanish aquisition of the Yucatán in 1545, although many groups remained isolated. Thousands of years of indigenous cultural development were superseded by a European colonial system of encomienda (Spanish ownership of land inhabited by the Maya) ; forced religious conversion by Spanish friars, often through torture and Inquisition-style campaigns; and centuries of enslavement to the Spanish speakers.

Yucatán's attempt to secede from Mexico in 1846 and the use of Maya conscripts in the Yucatán militia led to a release of Yukateko resentment in what has come to be called the Caste War. Two years after the beginning of this organized Maya revolt in 1847, all Spanish-speaking Yukateko were driven to take refuge in the state capitals of Mérida and Campeche, but the arrival of the spring rains caused the Maya to return to the cornfields and thus to lose their military advantage. Skirmishes and retribution against the Maya continued until about 1910. During the Mexican Revolution, the Maya made their most recent attempt to "throw off slavery," by joining in local fighting against dominant landlords. Today, the development of tourism on the peninsula has put the Maya in increasing contact with North Americans and Europeans. The Maya generally regard these light-skinned people with respect for their socioeconomic prominence but consider their morality questionable or unclear.

Settlements

There is virtually no running water in the Yucatán Peninsula because of the karst (limestone-cap) topography with its maze of underground caverns; consequently, most settlements are found near naturally occurring sinkhole wells (Maya: c'ono'ot; Spanish: cenotes). Both the pre-Hispanic city-state and the colonial village or hamlet relied extensively on these cenotes for drinking water, although in the city-states, containment systems for rain water were built as well. Contemporary villages depend on wells dug in the twentieth century or on electronically run potable water systems installed by the Mexican government. The pre-Columbian village often clustered around a cenote, as did the administrative/ceremonial center of the nobility. Farmers and the general populace lived on the outskirts of such centers. Pre-Columbian centers, like contemporary hamlets, were constructed as quadrilaterals, with their four corners marking points aligned with the imagined four corners of the flat Maya earth. This quadripartate form provided a framework for integrating human living space within cosmological conceptions, through ritual activity that fostered human health and prosperity with supernatural assistance. Today, the thousands of communities, often isolated in the scrub brush of the north or the jungle of the south, can be contrasted with the few quasi-urban centers that also have considerable Maya habitation. In most of these, Maya is a lingua franca that many non-Maya must speak out of necessity.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. For most of the thousands of years of occupation of the peninsula, the Yukateko have relied upon slash-and-burn (milpa, or kòol ) horticulture. Evidence exists that pre-Hispanic Mayas supplemented kòol horticulture with other more intensive techniques such as raised fields. To make kòol, quadrilaterals of jungle are felled and burned in the dry spring. Planting occurs after the arrival of the first rains and continues for a total of three consecutive years. The fertilizing ash supplements the shallow soil. The field is then left fallow for fifteen to twenty years. This digging-stick-based system is perfectly adapted to the Yucatán environment, which does not favor mechanized agriculture. Maize, beans, and squashes have long been planted together. The maize tortilla (wah ) is a dietary staple, and fruits and vegetables are often grown in house gardens. Since pre-Hispanic times, and to a lesser extent today, salt has been produced from coastal lagoons.

Today wage labor supplements subsistence or income-producing agriculture. In the northeast, residual estates producing henequen provide agricultural employment. Tourist resorts provide many low-paying construction jobs. These jobs have great allure for Yukateko men, however, because urban merchants pay below-market prices for their produce simply because they are Maya, a discriminatory practice that limits the potential for economic success through agriculture.

Industrial Arts. Certain communities have a reputation for producing high-quality hammocks (k'áan ), hats, shoes, pottery, or huípil dresses, but such industry is highly localized.

Trade. Pre-Columbian trade networks were both sea and land based, with the latter depending exclusively on foot transport, owing to the absence of draft animals. Markets as centers for exchange were more common in the past than they are today, with private or government-controlled capitalism requiring Mayas to transport their wares to urban centers. Village-level exchange, often based on Mexican currency, is usually preferred, given the difficulties of transport.

Division of Labor. The Yukateko man is known by his profession of kòolnàal, or maize farmer, and is complemented by his wife, who is in charge of the domestic unit, usually venturing forth only to take her daily maize to the local grinder, collect firewood and water, go to market, go to church, or visit friends and family.

Land Tenure. In pre-Columbian times, land use was controlled by political and kin groups. Today, the Maya have access to both private land, if resources allow, or federal ejido lands, which were made available through agricultural reform after the Mexican Revolution.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Hieroglyphic inscriptions of the elite ruling class suggest that the centers of pre-Hispanic communities were inhabited by patrilineal and patrilocal extended families in which dynastic rulership would most often pass from father to son. Dynastic lineages are represented in great detail in hieroglyphic texts, tracing the right to rule back to cosmological creator deities and thereby linking kings with the supernatural realm and affording them divine authority. Spanish Conquest and subsequent subjugation removed this dynastic level from the social hierarchy, and a patrifocal system remains for the general populace.

Kinship Terminology. Both Maya and Spanish terms are used in a patrifocal bilateral system.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage is and has been expected of all adults, and in fact almost all Yukateko adults are married; those who are not are considered childlike in a number of contexts. Mexican law requires civil ceremonies for all, with those who can afford it also having a church service. In either, their parents' compadres, who are the couple's godparents, play a crucial role as they support and advise the couple, publicly and privately. First-cousin marriages are avoided. Postmarital residence is usually either neolocal or patrilocal, and divorce is uncommon.

Domestic Unit. Extended families are often still important, especially in maize production, but with wage labor at tourist centers increasing as an economic option, nuclear families, with spouses often separated for long periods of time, are becoming increasingly common.

Inheritance. As imposed by Spanish conquerors, Mayas acquire both of their parents' first surnames, with the father's being first. Property is divided only when both parents have died and the children have married.

Socialization. Parents seem quite lenient, and although Maya life is typically very demanding, great tenderness often exists between parents and children. A major paradox for parents is the conflict between maintaining pride in traditional culture and sensing the need for children to pursue economic opportunities outside the village. Toward this end, many parents will speak to their children in whatever little Spanish they know, although a high degree of Maya monolingualism is still evident. There is often great ambivalence for both parent and child if children leave, either to attend high school or to seek wage labor.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. The more complex hierarchy of the pre-Columbian period changed to a system of local governance at the community or regional level, which has persisted from colonial times to today, as a result of the social and physical isolation of the Indians by the dominant Hispanics. Local prestige is attainable with age, by being skilled, or by having likable personal characteristics, such as being able to converse well. Formally organized social events center on the church, as during certain fiestas, where gremios (religious groups) carry the burden (kúuc ) of celebrating their saint through the preparation of food and care of the saint's ritual paraphernalia. The socios, or those in charge of such groups, enhance their status by bearing this burden well. Organized cooperation is also characteristic of the ejido group, which is managed at the local level by the comisario ejidal, who coordinates access to federal ejido farmlands and assigns labor to be performed as service to the community.

Political Organization. After the encomienda system of landlord rule ended with the Caste War and the Mexican Revolution, the new federal system became the political milieu for the Yukateko. The municipio is controlled by its largest community, which is called the cabecera, or head, and is governed by the municipal president. At the village level, a comisario (commissioner) represents local authority and is subservient to the president. He is elected for a multiyear term and is most effective if he is adept at negotiation and persuasion and refrains from trying to exert his power through coercion. Although mostly isolated in the bush and jungle of the peninsula, the Yukateko are integrated into the national political system, albeit at the bottom of the hierachy of power.

Social Control. Yukateko communities are noted for hospitality and reserved behavior, with theft and other crimes being almost unknown, except in the larger cities. The only type of village disruption might be an occasional display of drunkenness, which is either handled informally or by the police chief, who heads the community's guardia (unarmed police force). The guardia has a rotating membership, through which men fulfill their communal obligations and qualify for use of ejido land. Language also acts as a social-control mechanism: in the majority of bush communities, pressure is great for mestizos and Hispanics to speak Maya in public, strengthening Maya ethnic identity and countering external social domination.

Conflict. For some Maya and Hispanics, bitter memories linger of the killing that occurred during the Caste War. In general, however, violence across ethnic lines is very rare. Most Maya feel helpless in the face of Hispanic domination.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. The Pre-Columbian symbolic complex representing a worldview of the joined yet distinct realms of sky, earth, and underworld endures despite centuries of forced Christianization. Only recently have the Yukateko begun to call themselves "Catholics," because of the increased presence of various Protestant sects. The Catholic/Protestant division is a clear schism in the social fabric. Although from an external perspective Maya beliefs and ritual practices can be considered a syncretic mix of indigenous and European symbols, the Maya themselves make no such distinction, as they practice their religion daily.

Many pre-Hispanic deities are still significant today, although there is variation across the total population. The supreme creator deity of the past was probably a double-headed sky serpent representing the astronomical ecliptic. Today, Hahal Dios, or the "true god," is a syncretic combination of Jesus Christ and the sun. His assistants are the càak (rain deities) and the báalam (guardians), who, like all supernaturals, can punish as well as cure, "lest people forget that they exist." Punishments come to earth as illnesses in the form of "winds" and are expelled or prevented through elaborate ritual offerings.

Religious Practitioners. In response to the brutal crusades of the first Spanish priests, Maya shamans went "underground" and continued the traditional roles of curer, counselor, and diviner. Today called hmèen or ah k'ìin, this individual occupies a dual social status: mediating between humans and supernatural forces yet being an ordinary farmer.

Ceremonies. The central ritual has probably always been the rain ceremony, today called c'a càak, or "take càak," performed during the period of the summer when the maize fields are most in need of rain. The structure in time and space of this and all ritual activity is dependent on the four-corners concept, reflecting the centrality of the Maya worldview. Whether rain or a cure for an illness is being sought, the setting of the ritual—the maize field, community, house plot, or corral—is always a quadrilateral (i.e., a model of the cosmos). These hmèen-directed functions share this symbolic structure with public fiestas centered on the church.

Arts. The monumental architecture, carved hieroglyphic texts, pottery, and other aspects of Maya material culture are mainly responsible for the worldwide attention focused on the Yucatán Peninsula. Today, the huípil, or women's garment, with its embroidered floral patterns, is the most visible form of Maya artistry.

Medicine. A hmèen has a sophisticated awareness of medicinal plants. These treatments, however, are always administered in the context of ritual, and the combination of ritual healing and organic remedy has apparently proven very effective over time. Governmental clinics notwithstanding, the Mayan hmèen continue to gain recognition for their curative capabilities and are sometimes even sought out by Hispanic Yucatecos.

Death and Afterlife. It is evident from funerary remains that the rulers of the past confirmed their divine qualities through pictographic renditions of their anticipated after-life. Although the subterranean realm was a part of this spiritual domain, the flat-earth perspective and the constancy of astronomical motion within the earth and back into the sky added a celestial component to the assumed destination of souls. The contemporary hmèen still hold these beliefs, and general mortuary practices symbolically express the cosmological motion of the human soul after death.

Bibliography

Hammond, Norman (1982). Ancient Maya Civilization. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Redfield, Robert (1941). The Folk Culture of the Yucatan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Redfield, Robert, and Alfonso Villa Rojas (1962). Chan Kom: A Maya Village. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sosa, John R. (1989). Cosmological, Symbolic, and Cultural Complexity among the Contemporary Maya of Yucatán. World Archaeoastronomy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Villa Rojas, Alfonso (1945). The Maya of East Central Quintana Roo. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington.

JOHN R. SOSA