Bound in Twine: The History and Ecology of the Henequen-Wheat Complex for Mexico and the American and Canadian Plain

Chapter 3. Yaquis in Yucat

C h a p t e r 3 ❖ Yaquis in Yucatán Imported Slave Labor and the Sonora Connection Those who were caught were cast in jail, “Las embarcaciones ya se van” Was then made a song and tale, Yaquis taken to Yucatán. —Refugio Savala, from “The Yaquis in Sonora in 1904” A FTER Refugio Savala was born in a Sonoran village in 1904, Mexican soldiers took his mother from her tortilla stand and held her in jail to await deportation to the henequen fields of faraway Yucatán. Amazingly, unlike most of the other thousands of detained Yaquis, she talked herself free and hurriedly moved her family to safety in southern Arizona—a refuge (and hence the naming of her son) from the política deportadora, or deportation policy, of Porfirio Díaz. The story of Yaqui deportation from Sonora (in northwestern Mexico) to the Yucatán Peninsula is based on a complex set of factors. Decades of war between the Mexican military and the Yaqui nation, Mexico’s push for agricultural modernization, international business interests in commodity monoculture , and deep-seated ethnic hatred all merged to write a violent chapter in the history of early twentieth-century Mexico. Equally important, as we have seen, Yucatán’s henequeneros were in dire need of laborers, as the North American demand for fiber continued to expand exponentially. These factors and their noteworthy results, including what happened to the Yaquis’ land in Sonora when they were deported, add the Yaqui and Sonoran dimensions to the henequen-wheat complex and are a vital part of the story that needs to be understood in its broader context. Two opposite sides of Mexico’s vast periphery represented places that 68 B o u n d i n t w i n e President Díaz and his científicos were particularly interested in developing economically . One, as we have seen, was in the southeast, on the henequen-rich Yucatán Peninsula where only a few decades earlier a significant organization of rebel Maya known as the cruzob had been fighting for autonomy. The other was in the northwest, in the state of Sonora, where Apache, Mayo, and Yaqui Indians had been, according to Díaz and his advisors, blocking the path of economic modernization and progress. By the late nineteenth century, Díaz oversaw a “pacification” campaign to drive indios bárbaros (hostile tribes) from their homelands so that their lands could be open to modernization schemes, often funded by foreign investments. But, as one study has appropriately suggested , “the term pacification became a euphemism for genocide.”1 The Yaqui side of the pacification campaign in the northwest merits a brief review here as that native group’s destiny became tied directly to the economic development of Yucatán. The Yaqui homeland was in southern Sonora at the mouth of the Yaqui River, which drained much of the state’s eastern mountainous area and created a delta of some of the most fertile land in Mexico despite the harsh scrubland terrain (Figure 3.1). The Yaquis, related linguistically to Aztecan groups in south central Mexico, developed their own culture, Figure 3.1. Map of the state of Sonora, Mexico, showing the Yaqui River, its three major dams, and the Yaqui Valley. Courtesy Wenonah Fraser, Department of Geography , Brandon University. y a Q u i s i n y u C a t Á n 69 religion, tribal organization, and language.2 They thrived for centuries in this arid valley by developing a practical system of flood-plain irrigation using the Yaqui River’s seasonally cyclic runoff, learning to defend their resources and livelihood from invading forces that over the years included other native groups, Spaniards during the colonial era, and eventually the Mexican army.3 The first trouble with an independent Mexico came in 1825 when the Yaquis, under the leadership of Juan Banderas, had to confront a force of Mexican soldiers who came to collect taxes that the Yaquis refused to pay. Forging an alliance with other northern Mexican indigenous groups, they drove the Mexican soldiers away. Midcentury, however, the Mexicans redoubled their efforts and invaded Yaqui lands, destroying property and capturing and killing many Indians. Mexican soldiers burned 450 Yaquis to death inside a church in the village of Bácum in 1862 and killed 200 Yaquis at the Battle of Buatechive in 1885. Many more died when a smallpox...