Las mejores historias no se inventan: se descubren. La de Chan Santa Cruz es una de esas narrativas que, cuando la conoces a fondo, te resulta imposible mirar hacia otro lado. Chan Santa Cruz, sometimes referred to as the Maya Free State, was a late 19th-century indigenous Maya state in the modern-day Mexican state of Quintana Roo
El contexto histórico
Chan Santa Cruz, sometimes referred to as the Maya Free State, was a late 19th-century indigenous Maya state in the modern-day Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It was also the name of a shrine that served as the center of the Maya Cruzoob religious movement, and of the town that developed around the shrine, now known as Felipe Carrillo Puerto. The town was historically the main center of what is now Quintana Roo, and it acted as the de facto capital for the Maya during the Caste War of Yucatán.
History Before and during Spanish colonization Before Spanish colonization, the people in the land that would become the Chan Santa Cruz state were predominantly indigenous Maya. Its northern reaches were likely part of the state of Coba during the Classic Period. After the Spanish began to occupy nearby areas, the Xiu Maya state in the western half of the Yucatán Peninsula chose to ally with the newly-neighboring Empire. The Itzá state continued to train and educate indigenous Maya leaders in t
Los hechos clave
When the Criollo class declared Yucatecan independence in the mid-19th century and began fighting over control of the resources of their infant state, the Maya leadership saw an opportunity to gain independence. Letters discovered in the 21st century show that they had been planning this action for some time. These letters were written orders sent through an established military chain of command, and were written in the wake of the death of the Batab of Chichimilla, Antonio Manuel Ay, on August 26, 1847 (6 Kaban, 5 Xul). The letters were written at a sanctuary plaza at Saki’, the sacred ‘white’ city of the north that was located near present-day Valladolid. Exactly three days after Ay’s death, the eastern Maya, now identified as Uiz’oob (meaning ‘loincloths’), rose up in a general revolt which nearly drove the Yucatecos entirely out of Chan Santa Cruz. This uprising, called La Guerra de las Castas by the Mexicans, reached its high tide in 1848. It resulted in the independence of the o
Dato clave: These negotiations resulted in a signed international treaty which was never ratified by either party.
Lo que revelan las investigaciones
The fall of the Maya free state From the late 1850s through 1893, the United Kingdom recognized the Maya free state as a de facto independent nation, even sponsoring treaty negotiations between the Mexican Hispanic Yucateco state and the Maya Cruzoob state. These negotiations resulted in a signed international treaty which was never ratified by either party. The Maya state had extensive trade relations with the British colony of British Honduras, and its military was substantially larger than the garrison and militia in the British colony. In contrast to the Yucatecans and the Mexicans, the British found it both practical and profitable to maintain good relations with the Maya free state for some years. All this changed after the Maya laid siege to and conquered Bacalar, originally the Mayan holy city of Bak Halal (meaning ‘decanting water’). They killed many British citizens, along with the entire Yucatec Creole garrison. It is unclear why the commanding general ordered a wholesale sl
Las implicaciones
Maya sacred books When Friar Jacobo de Testera arrived, leading the first of the Franciscan Missions to the Maya in the second half of the 16th century, he began a Mayan encyclopedia project. He intended to collect the prayers, orations, commentaries, and descriptions of native life as aids to the Spanish overthrow of Maya culture in general and the Maya religion, specifically. Diego de Landa’s famous Relación de las cosas de Yucatán contains much of the Spanish explanatory text of this encyclopedia without quoting any of the indigenous texts. The Maya elders who participated in this project, including Juan Na Chi Kokom, former leader of the Itza’ state in eastern Yucatan, were most likely willing volunteers who thought the project was a way to preserve Maya culture and religion. After the project was anathematized by the Roman Church, the former Maya collaborators collected and reconstructed as much as they could. They assembled the materials into a loose collection of texts, which is
Por qué esta historia importa
La historia de Chan Santa Cruz no es solo un relato del pasado. Es un espejo que nos ayuda a entender el México de hoy — sus contradicciones, su resiliencia, sus retos y su potencial. Conocerla es un primer paso hacia una conversación más honesta sobre el país y la sociedad que queremos construir.
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