Outside the Hacienda Walls: The Archaeology of Plantation Peonage in Nineteenth-Century Yucatán

2. The Birth of an Expedition

19 2 The Birth of an Expedition The journey to Hacienda Tabi spans a landscape full of tales from natural and cultural history. Air travel to Mérida from Houston or Miami offers sublime views of the Gulf of Mexico before its cyan waters give way to deep green matted jungle along the peninsula’s northwest coast. Minutes later, sun-bleached concrete rooftops of the sprawling state capital come into sight. From the city airport’s outer environs, one drives south across a stony plain accented by scrub brush and low woodland. The limestone surface, with its rocky outcrops and chunks of loose rubble, is a product of marine shell and coral that accumulated in primeval times when the area was submerged by the sea. Its presence makes a lasting impression. Diego de Landa, the sixteenth-century Spanish bishop, described Yucatán as “the country with the least earth that I have seen, since all of it is one living rock . . .”1 Expansive henequen plantations once checkered these flat hinterlands. The silhouette of a solitary chimney stack appears on the horizon every now and again to remind you. Along the roadside are occasional patches of the spiny plant, looking “like pineapples gone quite mad,” according to one imaginative observer.2 Each brown stalk roots itself in the ground with little need for soil. Because rainfall drains easily through the porous stone, there are no streams or rivers in the state. Over time, percolating precipitation dissolves the stone to a point where caverns and sinkholes form. Water deep belowground often emerges in the sinks, creating cenotes, the natural reservoirs of freshwater that have become popular destinations for divers and swimmers. The route to Tabi crosses a ring-shaped concentration of these cenotes. They dot the perimeter of a spectacular impact crater, formed sixty-five million years ago when an asteroid struck what is now the tip of the peninsula. Since publicizing the discovery in the late 1970s, scientists have suggested that the crater, called Chicxulub, was linked to a mass extinction event that saw the demise of the dinosaurs. However enticing, such speculation remains unproven.3 Chapter 2 20 Beyond the crater, the terrain shifts as one approaches a rocky ridge that separates the Puuc region from the northern plain. Known as the Sierrita de Ticul, the narrow stretch of hills runs nearly a hundred miles across the state and provides a scenic backdrop to the colonial towns of Ticul, Oxkutzcab, and Tekax (fig. 2.1). The hills reach only 330 feet above sea level. Yet they stand out so dramatically against the flat landscape that a Mérida tourist magazine—with a flare for hyperbole—has dubbed them the “Yucatán Alps.”4 The European Alps and the Puuc may have little else in common, but both offer memorable panoramas from their summits. As you scale the Sierrita and look back on the plains, church belfries in nearby towns rise above the forest canopy. The churches, a legacy of Catholicism’s immense power in colonial times, dwarf surrounding buildings. The sweeping views invite visitors to contemplate the region’s history. Across the Sierrita is a geologically unrelated district of haystack-shaped hills known as the Sierra de Bolonchen, or Witz in Maya. When seen in the distance, the unbroken carpet of trees on these hills has the appearance of deep ocean blue. Between these two hill ranges is the Santa Elena valley, a farming region suitable for growing a wide variety of crops. A thousand years ago, the witz and valley districts were some of the most heavily populated Santa Elena District Bolonchen District Muna Modern Town Prehispanic Site 0 5 10 Kilometers Ticul Santa Elena Uxmal Kabah Labná Sayil Kiuic Chacmultún Teabo Oxkutzcab Tekax TABI Puuc Ridge Yucatán Peninsula N Figure 2.1. The Yucatán Peninsula’s Puuc region, showing geological districts and the location of Hacienda Tabi. Birth of an Expedition 21 areas of the peninsula.5 The collection of local precolumbian sites—including Uxmal, Sayil, and Labná, now promoted as the “Puuc Route”—are a testament to that ancient concentration of people. Some have suggested that the secret to urban development in prehispanic times was the relatively deep and fertile soils of the Santa Elena valley. Extending one to two feet deep, this rust-colored earth known colloquially as kancab has long been associated with high levels of agricultural productivity. It may...