Yucatan Peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula is the northern portion of Mesoamerica that divides the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea in the extreme southeast of North America and the northern part of Central America, with a territory of approximately 181,000 km². It is made up to the north by the Mexican states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche, and to the south by Belize and northern Guatemala (the Petén). For the purposes of this article, the peninsular bordering demarcations are: to the southwest, the Laguna de Términos in the state of Campeche; to the northwest the Celestún estuary and the port of Sisal in the state of Yucatán; to the northeast, Cabo Catoche in the state of Quintana Roo; to the south, the folded belt of the department of Petén, Guatemala; to the southeast, bordering the Maya mountains, the coast of the Gulf of Honduras. It is properly the territory that it occupied during the Spanish domination, from the beginning of the XVI century until the beginning of the XIX, the General Captaincy of Yucatan.
In most of this territory, with the exception of the southern part and the coasts, it is limestone and hard land, devoid of rivers and important mountains, in which the water, to return to the sea, breaks a gap in the subsoil once the water table has been reached, forming cavities and interior water holes known as cenotes, which the ancient inhabitants of the region, the Mayans, used as a vital water reserve.
In the northern part of the coast, about 7 km east of the port of Progreso, there is a small summer and fishing town called Chicxulub where It is estimated that a meteorite from the Baptistina family fell 65 million years ago, which formed a gigantic crater —the renowned Chicxulub crater—, approximately 180 km in diameter and which according to the most recent hypotheses had, among other consequences, the extinction of the dinosaurs from the face of the earth.
In the northeastern part of the peninsula, the most calcareous and wildest, henequen, a plant native to the region, has been cultivated since time immemorial, and since the middle of the century XIX gave rise to an agro-industry, which for many years was the main peninsular economic activity.
Toponymy
The name assigned to the peninsula originated during the first explorations of the conquerors from the Iberian Peninsula. The versions that agree that this name would have resulted from a confusion between the Mayan inhabitants and the first Spanish explorers around 1517 are reliable:
- According to one of them, it was all the consequence that a Hispanic explorer, interjecting a Mayan indigenous person, wanted to know the name of the region. The indigenous probably replied Ma'anaatik ka t'ann which in the Mayan language yucateco means I don't understand. or I don't understand you..
- It is also said that the Spanish gave the name of Yucatan to the region because the Maya answered their questions with the phrase uh yu ka t'annwhich in maya means He hears how they speakAnd the Spaniards understood Yucatan.
- Other versions indicate that Yucatan comes from the Maya Ci u t'ann, which means I don't understand..
- The encyclopedia Yucatan in Time, on the record corresponding to Bartolomé Colón, brother of Cristóbal, says that on the occasion of a voyage carried out by the Genoese navigator in August 1502, he met with a group of Mayas who sailed the Caribbean on a boat on a commercial mission, off the coast of what is currently Honduras. That after exchanging goods, the indigenous, pointing to the far shores of their land, said:
Yuk'al-tan mayab, which was the linguistic designation of his nation, and which literally means "everyone who speaks the Mayan language." In his report, Bartolomé Colón picked up that sentence and wrote Yucathan maian, to designate the land it had opposite, from the north coast of Honduras, to the east coast of the peninsula. This is how Castilian acquires the first geographical name with which the land of the Mayas should be appointed. This is, according to Antonio Mediz Bolio, the most reasonable etymology of the name of Yucatan, to which the most capricious and picturesque origins have been attributed.
In any case, the Hispanics understood something similar to the word Yucatán that today names this peninsular region and the Mexican state of the same name.
It is likely that the first narrator of the version of "I don't understand you" was Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinía, who at the end of chapter 8 of Treatise III of his Historia de los indios of New Spain says:
(...) because speaking with the Indians of that coast, to what the Spaniards asked of the Indians, they answered: "Tectetan, Tectetan", which means: "I do not understand you, I do not understand you": the Christians corrupted the word, and did not understand what the Indians said, "Yucatan is called this land"; and the same was in a Cape that made the land.Brother Toribio de Benavente, History of the Indians of New Spain
For his part, the Franciscan friar Diego de Landa, who was bishop of Yucatán, in his Relation of the things of Yucatán written in 1566, refers verbatim:
(...) That when Francisco Hernández of Cordoba came to this land leaping at the tip that he called Cape Cotoch, he found certain Indian fishermen and asked them what land that was, and they answered him. cotoch, which means our houses and our homeland, and which is why he put that name to that end, and asking them more for signs than how that land was, they answered kiuthánWhat do you mean? Say it.; and that the Spaniards called it Yucatan, and that this was understood of one of the old conquerors named Blas Hernández who went with the Adelantado the first time...Diego de Landa, Relationship of the things of Yucatan (1566)
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, in his True history of the conquest of New Spain, affirms that «Yucatán» means «land of yuccas», a plant that was cultivated by the Mayans and that constituted a important food supplement for them.
Original region name
Before the arrival of the Spanish in the Yucatan peninsula, the name of this place was Mayab. In the Mayan language, ma ya'ab which means a few (ma means no and ya'ab, many). It was the place that the Mayans had selected in their pilgrimage and qualified for a few. It had been and still was, upon the arrival of the Europeans, a very important region for the Mayan civilization, which had found the stronghold in which it developed there, particularly during the so-called postclassic period, although the settlements of the Mayan civilization more remote in the region are estimated towards the s. III d. C. and even before, as stated after the relatively recent determinations in archaeological sites such as Komchén, Dzibilchaltún and Tipikal). It was then that the first migrations from Petén first settled in the Bacalar region. Later, towards the s. V d. C., they began to move to the west of the peninsula, founding among other cities Chichén Itzá, Izamal, Motul, Ek Balam and Ichcaanzihóo (also called T'Hó), currently Mérida, the state capital today.
The Maya cities in the area continued to exist after the collapse of the cities of the original Maya region, and some of them were still inhabited when the Spanish arrived at the turn of the century XVI. Currently, a large number of archaeological sites that cover various periods of the development of the Mayan civilization are preserved in an extraordinary state.
Since the Spanish conquest, in the early part of the 16th century, and up to the middle of the XIX the Yucatan peninsula, made up of the current states of Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo, constituted a single political-administrative entity, the General Captaincy of Yucatan. At the dawn of independent Mexico, in 1823, a first Republic of Yucatan was configured that adhered to the Federal Republic of the United Mexican States. Later in 1841, as a result of cultural and political conflicts, linked to the federal pact that had been broken, Yucatán declared itself independent of Mexico to give itself a second Republic of Yucatán, also ephemeral since in 1848 Yucatán would be reintegrated into Mexico. Fifteen years later, in 1858 (although the government of Benito Juárez did not recognize the fact until 1863), in the middle of the caste war, the Mexican state of Yucatán would be split for the first time, establishing Campeche as an independent state.
At the end of the war itself, during the Porfiriato, in 1902, the state of Yucatán was divided again to create the federal territory that would later become the current state of Quintana Roo.
The Mayans in the Peninsula
It was the Mayans who established the first pre-Hispanic cities on the peninsula, although there may have been previous minor inhabitants and settlements (ca. 8000 BC) that seem to be demonstrated by relatively recent paleontological discoveries (Lol-Tun). Regarding the Mayans, it is known, however, that the first of them came down from Petén to settle in the southeastern region of the peninsula in the area of Bacalar, Quintana Roo, and that they did so around the year 250 AD. C. They were the Chanes, a Mayan people or tribe that preceded the Itzaes, who later, around the year 525 AD. C. began to move towards the east of the peninsula, founding Chichén Itzá, Izamal, Motul, Ek Balam, T'Hó (Ichcaanzihó), today the City of Mérida and Champotón.
Later, there were other large Mayan urban centers in the Yucatan, although each city had self-government and military force (with similar organization to the Greek polis), all identified as Maya. In the peninsula the three main pre-Hispanic cities were, apart from Chichén Itzá, Uxmal and Mayapán. They formed the Mayapán League, which was a kind of confederation to have mutual support in terms of trade and defense of their borders. The power developed by the Triple Alliance did not last long, as Hunac Ceel Cauich, lord of Mayapán, fought and defeated Chac Xib Chac of Chichén-Itzá, who fled and settled on Lake Petén-Itzá, north of present-day Guatemala, according to the account of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel.
Many current peninsular cities were originally Mayan towns: Mérida, (T'Hó); San Francisco de Campeche (Akimpech); Chetumal, (Chaktemal), etc. In the same way, many current names are inherited from the Maya people to modern Yucatecans: Canul, Cauich, Couoh, Pech, Chi, Ay, Pat, Ucán, Tzec, Yah, Ixbá are surnames that are still used today. preserved in the middle of the XXI century and have their origin in the ancient Maya.
Discovery of the Peninsula
When referring to the discovery of the Yucatan peninsula, one speaks of the historical event carried out by Europeans, by order and commission of the Spanish Empire, at the dawn of the century XVI, during the process of exploration and conquest of the territories of Mesoamerica. It is obvious that the term discovery is used as regards what refers to the Spaniards themselves who were then exploring territories unknown to them. In a strict sense, you cannot discover a territory that was already inhabited.
In 1513, Juan Ponce de León had already conquered the island of Borinquén, present-day Puerto Rico, and had "discovered" Florida. He and Antón de Alaminos, who accompanied him on this latest "discovery", suspected then that to the west of Cuba they would find new lands. Under their influence, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, then governor of the island of Cuba, organized an expedition under the command of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba and with the participation of captains Cristóbal de Morante and Lope Ochoa de Caicedo to explore the seas west of the island.
This expedition set sail from the port of Ajaruco on February 8, 1517, heading for Havana and after circling the island and navigating south-west through what is now known as the Yucatan channel, it reached the mainland on March 1, to the Yucatan peninsula. There are discrepancies regarding the place where the participants of this first expedition arrived. Some affirm that it was Isla Mujeres. Bernal Díaz del Castillo says that it was Cabo Catoche where they saw a large city that he called Greater Cairo.
Conquest of the peninsula by the Spanish in the 16th century
The conquest of Yucatán carried out by Francisco de Montejo with the help of Alonso de Ávila, both experienced ex-captains of Cortés, began in 1527. This was a very difficult task. The first campaign carried out by the east of the peninsula between 1527 and 1529, as well as the second campaign, carried out by the west of the peninsula between 1530 and 1535, were repelled by the Mayan tribes, who in an organized way attacked the Spanish positions in the royal city of Chichen Itza.
Francisco de Montejo, who had achieved the title of Adelantado for the Yucatan peninsula, also had interests in the governorates of Guatemala, Chiapas and Tabasco, which distracted his attention for five years, so he suspended the conquest activities between 1535 and 1540.
It was Francisco de Montejo, the young man, and Francisco de Montejo, the nephew, who managed to gradually subdue each of the Mayan tribes in each jurisdiction (Kuchkabal) of the ah Canul, tutul xiúes, cocomes, cheles, cupules, and others in a third campaign that began in 1540 and ended in 1546.
Francisco de Montejo, met with his son and nephew in San Francisco de Campeche in 1546 to exercise his governorship, but a new rebellion of the Mayan tribes broke out in coordination in the region, for which the Montejos had to carry out a task of reconquest in the entire eastern part of the peninsula for one more year, achieving its goal in 1547.
Viceregal period
Despite the fact that from this conquest the peninsula began what could properly be called the viceroyalty stage, characterized by Spanish rule over the region, a state of latent instability did not cease to exist in the territories that had been mayans.
In fact, it was not until 150 years later, in 1697, that Martín de Ursúa was able to subdue the Mayan tribes of the Itzáes and the Couoh (kowoj) in Lake Petén Itzá where they had retreated, in a back to its remote origins. Still in the middle of the XVIII century, in 1761, there was a Mayan uprising led by Jacinto Canek in the town of Cisteil that was bloodily repressed by the colonial government.[citation required]
During the 17th and XVIII, through an arduous and tenacious task of Franciscan rulers and missionaries, it was possible to consolidate Hispanic domination over the region and, despite this, in 1848, already in the stage of independent Mexico, there would have been another fierce war began, called the Caste War, which was the epilogue, so to speak, of the Mayan rebellion in the peninsula against their European conquerors.
The Peninsula today and its attractions
- Mayan archaeological sites: Chichén Itzá (Yucatan); Edzná (Campeche); Calakmul (Campeche); Becán (Campeche); Uxmal (Yucatan); Dzibilchaltún (Yucatan); Mayapán (Yucatan); Cobá (Quintana Roo); Tulum (Quintana Roo); Ek Balam (Yucatan); Izamal (Yucatan); Also, the Puuc Route, located south of the state of Yucatan, slightly north and along the mountain range called Sierrita, on which are the ancient Mayan cities of Loltun, Labná, Kabáh, X-lapac and the Uxmal, already cited. All these names only indicate the most renowned sites, although there are others, countless, in the process of being discovered and excavated and even many unexplored.
- Insulas corresponding to the coast of the peninsula: The island of Carmen and the Alacranes reef in the Gulf of Mexico. In the Caribbean Sea: Cozumel, Isla Mujeres, Contoy Island, Holbox, Chinchorro bank, among others.
- Sea and tourist ports: Chetumal; Tulum; Puerto Morelos; Playa del Carmen; Cancun; Puerto Juárez; Río Lagartos; Las Coloradas; Telchac Puerto; Chicxulub; Puerto de Progreso de Castro; Puerto de Sisal; Celestún; Ciudad del Carmen; San Francisco de Campeche; Champotón.
- Virrein cities of: San Francisco de Campeche declared World Heritage, capital of the state of Campeche, where the remains of the ancient wall that surrounded it prevailed, with its historic bastions, doors and batteries; Mérida, capital of the state of Yucatan, the most important city of the region; Tekax; Palmal; Valladolid, in the south, center and east of the state of Yucatan, Bacalar in the south of
- The Route of the Virrenal Churches which were built over three centuries (XVI, XVII and XVIII), mainly by the order of the Franciscans who had under his care the encomienda and the evangelization of the Mayas who lived on the Yucatan peninsula following the Spanish conquest in the middle of the centuryXVI.
- The Henequenn Estates where it flourished and operated for a century and a half, from 1850 to the end of the centuryXX. the famous Henequenn agro-industry of Yucatan. Dispersed in the northeastern portion of the peninsula, many of them have been reconstructed and rehabilitated for tourist purposes.
- About a thousand linear kilometers of mangroves and wetlands along the coastline of the peninsula with an enormous and unique biodiversity.
- A large number of cenotes or subterranean rivers of interest for speleobuzos and generally for speleology, some converted into spas that can be visited.
Main cities of the Peninsula
Yucatan: Merida, northwest of the peninsula
Quintana Roo: Cancun, in the northeast of the peninsula on the coast of the Mexican Caribbean.
Campeche: San Francisco de Campeche, west of the peninsula, in the gulf that bears its name.- Campeche: Ciudad del Carmen, in the extreme southwest. on the island with the same name.
- Quintana Roo: Chetumal, to the southeast end of the peninsula on the Caribbean coast.
- Quintana Roo: San Miguel de Cozumel, on the island of Cozumel.
- Quintana Roo: Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun, on the Caribbean coast.
- Yucatan: Tizimin, in the livestock region, northeast of the state of Yucatan.
- Yucatan: Valladolid, in the eastern part of the State of Yucatan.
- Yucatan: Puerto Progreso, on the Gulf coast, 30 km north of Merida.
- Yucatan: Izamal, One of the oldest cities on the peninsula, 70 km east of Merida.
- Campeche: Champoton, southwest of the peninsula, south of San Francisco de Campeche.
