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Hispanic American Historical Review 84.1 (2004) 143-144



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Caminos en la selva: Migración, comercio y resistencia. Mayas yucatecos e itzaes, siglos XVIII-XIX. By Laura Caso Barrera. Mexico City: El Colegio de México; Fondo de Cultura Económico, 2002. Maps. Tables. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. 423 pp. Paper.

Laura Caso Barerra has synthesized an enormous amount of material in this de-tailed account of how diverse sectors of Spanish colonial society extracted labor from the Maya of Yucatán. The Maya resisted in many ways, including flight to remote rural areas and to the independent Itza Maya confederation located in the forests of Petén, far south of Yucatán. Caso Barrera argues that escaping excessive labor demands was the major reason for flight, but the Maya also wanted to reconstitute their own theocratic culture. However, the Itza also exploited fugitives and tried to dominate semi-independent Maya groups such as the Tipuans in Belize, even while providing a zone of refuge for fugitives and actively encouraging Tipuans, fugitives, and "reduced" Maya to resist Spanish control. In turn, fugitive and semi-independent Maya blocked the Spanish conquest of the Itza. In addition to inspiring resistance and even fomenting rebellion, the Itza organized extensive trade relations among "reduced" Maya, fugitives, and themselves.

Political maneuvering among different sectors of Spanish (and Maya) society for control of Indian labor was complex. Links among ecology, trade, politics, and religion (both Catholicism and Maya astrotheocracy) were even more complex. But Caso Barrera admirably describes all this in a straightforward and lucid way, consistently stressing process over periodization and trying to tell the story from the Maya perspective.

Toward the close of the seventeenth century, 150 years after the conquest of Yucatán, colonial authorities decided to eliminate the threat the Itza posed to their control of Yucatán, to exploit Petén's presumed human and natural resources, to link Guatemala and Yucatán, and to thwart English incursions from Belize. In 1697 Martín de Ursua did conquer the Itza, but none of the other dreams came true: Petén lacked useful natural resources, the road was constantly in need of repair, and of some 80,000 Itza no more than a few thousand were ever "reduced." The rest of the survivors fled to the distant forests to reconstruct a simplified Maya culture. By the 1750s, there were few Itza remaining either under Spanish control or in the forests beyond their reach.

About half the book is devoted to Yucatán and half to the conquest and subsequent history of the Itza. Most of the story has been told before, although this does not lessen Caso Barrera's achievement, including original contributions to scholarship such as the discovery and translation of the first known seventeen-century documents written in Itza Maya and a description of the hitherto little-known role of the Sahcabchen, somewhat similarly interposed, as the Tipuans were, between the Spanish and the Itza along a wavering frontier.

There are some shortcomings. For example, ecological variables tend to be treated in a mechanical way, Maya agricultural production and its relation to the [End Page 143] environment are dated, and the extent and causal strength of the underground trade links among Itza, fugitive settlements, and Spanish-controlled northern Yucatán may be exaggerated. But these are minor issues compared to a (perhaps the) major flaw in an otherwise solid book. By implication and sometimes explicitly, Caso Barrera tends make unwarranted claims to originality. Despite an extensive bibliography, she does not, in my view, properly acknowledge the work of others, most noticeably the magisterial and, in many instances, more finely grained descriptions and interpretations of Nancy M. Farriss's Maya Society under Colonial Rule (Princeton University Press, 1984) and Grant D. Jones's Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule (University of New Mexico Press, 1989)and The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom (Stanford University Press, 1998). For example, in dealing with Tipu, Caso Barrera does cite Jones but hardly does justice to...

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