Renegades, bandits, and thieves

In a little known outpost of the great British Empire, a little known hero of the forgotten Maya people, who are themselves, descendants of a once-great empire, Marcus Canul is commemorated for his efforts to retain his peoples', the Icaiche Maya's, majesty. In the district capital town of Orange Walk in Northern Belize, a small monument marks his passing on September first, eighteen seventy-two, and he remains largely forgotten or ignored, as do the histories of his people, the Battle of Orange Walk, and the Mayan resistance in general. But Orange Walk Town came into being as a logging camp from which mahogany and other hardwoods were floated down the New River to Corozal Bay in the eighteenth century. The town began to develop around eighteen fifty when Mexican refugees from the Caste Wars in Yucatan began arriving, and the British colonial authorities welcomed their agricultural experience, with which they established northern Belize's first sugarcane plantations. This sugar boom lasted through the eighteen seventies; when tensions began to rise between the settlers and the local Icaiche Maya. British loggers had been encroaching on lands the Icaiche considered their own along the Rio Hondo, which today forms the Belize/Mexico border. Moreover, the British had been supplying arms to the Cruzob Maya, who were bitter enemies of the Icaiche. And in eighteen seventy-two the War of the Castes came to Orange Walk; when a force of some one hundred and fifty Icaiche Maya attacked the town's British garrison. After several hours of fierce fighting, the Icaiche were repelled and Marcus Canul was fatally wounded. The attack was recorded in history as the last significant armed Maya uprising in Belize.

While the British portrayed Canul and his band of renegades as bandits and thieves, he was revered among most people in Belize, Mexico, and Guatemala as a freedom fighter seeking justice for his people, and compensation for losses they suffered in what today would be seen as 'ethnic cleansing'. While the British were consolidating their settlement and expanding their logging of mahogany, logwood, and other hardwoods back in the eighteenth century, they began to encounter more determined resistance from the indigenous communities. And as they brought in African slaves, they expanded a campaign to subjugate or drive out the Maya by burning their homes, villages, and crops. But the Maya retaliated with raids of their own. With the Yucatan Caste War in full swing in Mexico, resulting in the decimation of the Yucatan Maya population, a massive exodus of Maya to northern Belize occurred leading to a series of attacks and counter-attacks between the Maya and British forces. Marcus Canul emerged as an indigenous leader and demanded that the British pay rent for the land they occupied, and compensate for the crops they had burnt. After Canul's renegades defeated a British detachment, killing five, and wounding sixteen others, things got out-of-hand, and the British determined to subjugate the Maya, or drive them out altogether by further burning their houses and crops. But Canul and his men fought on, eventually taking Corozal Town in eighteen seventy. In eighteen seventy-two they attacked the British barracks in Orange Walk on the New River, and Canul was finally subjugated and killed. With their charismatic leader gone, this was the last major attack on British forces by indigenous Maya resistance elements.

The Caste War in the Yucatan began with a revolt by the native Maya against the European-descended residents, called Yucatecos, Who had long retained political and economic control over the region. A lengthy war ensued between the Yucateco in the northwest of the peninsula, and the independent Maya in the southeast, with regular skirmishes and raiding between them. In the eighteen fifties, the British recognized the Maya state because of the value of its trade with Belize. In addition, by eighteen sixty-seven, the Maya also occupied parts of the western Yucatan, including the District of Peten in Guatemala, where the Xloscha and Macanche tribes were allied with them. Growing investment in Mexico however, resulted in a change in British policy, and in eighteen ninety-three they signed a new treaty with the national government which recognized its control over all of the Yucatan, formalizing the border with Belize, and terminating the colony's trading with Chan Santa Cruz, the then capital of the Maya state, which extended from the border north to Tulum on the mainland behind the Chinchora Atoll reef. The war officially ended in nineteen and one, when the Mexican army occupied the Maya capital of Chan Santa Cruz, and subdued the surrounding areas. And another formal ending was again signed in nineteen fifteen; when a new Mexican general was sent to take control of the territory. And he introduced revolutionary reforms that addressed some of the persisting grievances. Frequent skirmishes continued, however, with smaller settlements that refused to acknowledge Mexican control of their territory until nineteen thirty-three. And non-Maya remained at risk of being killed if they ventured into the jungle area that remained largely under the control of the rebels.

The war seemed to be rooted in the defense of the Chan Santa Cruz Indian communal lands against the expansion of private ownership, which had accompanied a boom in the production of henequen, or agave, an important industrial fiber used in making rope. Upon discovering this new-found value in the plant, the wealthier Hispanic Yucateco residents established extensive plantations to cultivate it on a large scale. And not long after the henequen boom, a boom in sugar production also led to additional wealth for the ruling class. They expanded their sugar and henequen plantations by encroaching on Maya communal lands. And typically mistreated their Maya workers, abusing and underpaying them. In their correspondence with the British in Belize, Yucatan Maya leaders most often cited oppressive taxation as the immediate cause of the war. Jacinto Pat, for example, wrote in eighteen forty-eight that "what we want is liberty and not oppression, [as it was] before we were subjugated by the many contributions and taxes that they imposed on us." Pat's companion, Cecilio Chi, added that promises made by the rebel Santiago Iman, that he was "liberating the Indians from the payment of tax contributions," as a reason to resist the central government. But Iman, himself, continued to levy such taxes. Over time, two groups of Maya emerged in the conflict against the ruling class. One group was called the Cruzob, and occupied the area directly north of the Rio Hondo. The same region occupied by Chan Santa Cruz. The Cruzob believed in a "Talking Cross" which told them what to do regarding the conflict. This talking crucifix was, however, really the work of one of their leaders, Manuel Nahuat, who was a ventriloquist. The Cruzob, who were said to be the more bellicose, purchased arms from the British in Belize and fought against the Mexican Government.

The other group that emerged was the Icaiche, who were mostly Catholic and eventually signed a treaty with the Yucatecan Mexican leadership. This angered the Cruzob, and a new conflict broke out between the two Maya groups. The Chan Santa Cruz state stretched from north of Tulum to the Belize/Mexico border, and a considerable distance inland, and was the largest of the independent Maya communities of the era, but not the only one. Jose Maria Echeverria, a sergeant of the Mexican army taken captive by the Maya, resided in the town from eighteen fifty-one until fifty-three; and reported later that it had about two hundred Maya, and two hundred of European descent, all well armed and apparently fighting together. The Whites were under their own commander, a man "of reddish complexion". And there were also several outlying communities under their control; one contained about a hundred people, and the others, unknown numbers. An English visitor in eighteen fifty-eight thought the Maya had fifteen hundred fighting men in all. He noted that they took the "Santa Cruz" with them wherever they went and that its priests were prominent in their society. The Ixcanha Maya community had a population of some one thousand people, who rejected the Cruzob's break with traditional Catholicism. And in the years of stalemate, Ixcanha agreed to nominal recognition of the government of Mexico in exchange for guns to defend themselves from Cruzob raids, and a promise that the Mexican government would otherwise leave them alone. Mexico City gave Ixcanha autonomy to govern itself through eighteen ninety-four, following a treaty with the British in Belize that recognized Mexico's rule over all of the Yucatan north of the Rio Hondo, as they were more worried about the Chan Santa Cruz than any threat from distant Mexico City.

The other important group, the Icaiche Maya, who dominated the jungles of the lower center of the peninsula in the eighteen sixties. Under Marcus Canul battled the Mexicans, the Cruzob, and the British forces from nearby Belize. In eighteen ninety-three the United Kindom was enjoying good relations with Mexico's Porfirio Diaz administration, and British investment in Mexico had become of much greater economic importance than the trade between the Cruzob and Belize. The UK signed a treaty with Mexico recognizing Mexican sovereignty over the region, formalizing the border between Mexico and Belize, and closing their colony's border to trade with the Chan Santa Cruz "rebels". As Belize merchants were Chan Santa Cruz's main source of gunpowder and guns, this was a serious blow to the independent Maya. In previous decades, the Mexican army had twice managed to fight its way to the town of Chan Santa Cruz, but was repulsed both times. Then in nineteen and one, Mexican general Ignacio Bravo led his troops into the town to stay. Occupying it with a large number of forces over the next few years, and subduing surrounding villages. Bravo telegraphed the news that the war was over on May fifth nineteen and one. And while this is the date most frequently given for the end of the war, fighting continued, although on a much smaller scale. On December thirteenth that same year, the material for building the Decauville railway Vigia-Santa Cruz was ordered in New Orleans. It was officially opened on September fourth, nineteen and five. With their capital lost, the Cruzob split into smaller groups, often hiding out in small hamlets in the jungle. And their numbers were seriously depleted by deadly endemic diseases introduced by General Bravo's troops.

Inspired by the ubiquitous "Talking Cross" sect, the Maya of Chan Santa Cruz remained actively hostile to the Mexican government well into the twentieth century. For many years, any non-Maya entering the jungles of what is now the Mexican state of Quintana Roo were at risk of being killed outright. A combination of new economic factors, such as the entry of the Wrigley Company's chicle hunters into the region, and the political and social changes resulting from the Mexican Revolution, eventually reduced the hatred and brutality. In one form or another, war and armed struggle had continued for more than fifty years, and an estimated forty to fifty thousand died during the hostilities. The war was officially declared over for the final time in September nineteen fifteen by General Salvador Alvarado, sent by the revolutionary government in Mexico City to restore order in Yucatan, implementing reforms that more-or-less eliminated the conflicts that had been the cause of the war. Although the war had been declared over many times, records show that the last time the Mexican army considered it necessary to take by force a village that had never recognized Mexican law was in April nineteen thirty-three. Five Maya and two Mexican soldiers died in that battle for the village of Dzula, which was the last skirmish of a conflict that had really lasted for over eighty-five years. Today the Mexican state of Quintana Roo stretches south from the north-eastern tip of the Yucatan to its borders with Belize and Guatemala.

Since the late twentieth century, a similar conflict has existed in the Mexican state of Chiapas, in which indigenous people have effectively declared war on the Mexican government. The Mayan Zapatista Army (EZLN) on January first, nineteen ninety-four, the very day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect, issued its first of many declarations from the Lacandon Jungle, which included its Revolutionary Laws. The EZLN effectively declared war on the Mexican government, which they considered so insufficiently in touch with the will of the people as to make it illegitimate. The EZLN stressed that it opted for armed struggle owing to a lack of results achieved through peaceful means such as sit-ins, marches, and political protests. Armed indigenous rebels seized several towns in Chiapas, on New Year's Day demanding rights and recognition for their indigenous communities. The uprising, which lasted just ten days, took Mexicans totally by surprise but had a lasting effect on the national political equation. As was happening around the world, subjugated indigenous peoples were rising up against their oppressors, and demanding equal representation. No longer would the White Super-Man be their overlord, and the instrument of their displeasure. "Divide-and-conquer", which seemingly, had lasted forever, could no longer frustrate their ambitions. Predominantly in America, where Donald Trump, and his White nationalist minions. are breathing their last gasp. As demographics show that they can no longer claim a majority, and must inevitably, yield to the reality of Black-and-Brown dominion.

Howard A. Frankson -- Belize