Wayne M. Clegern

British Honduras and the Pacification of Yucatan

YUCATAN has been a relatively autonomous part of Mexico. The civilized northern tip of the peninsula, centering around the city of Merida, has been a kind of socio-political island equidistant by water from Veracruz, New Orleans, Havana, and Belize, British Honduras. South and east of this civilized area extends Indian territory which has remained quite primitive, quite isolated from the north, and in rather close contact with British Honduras further to the south. In the colonial epoch Yucatan was brought under Spanish dominion with considerable difficulty; only the crudest forms of surveillance could be maintained over Indians of the peninsula. With independence the limitations of the central governments control remained distressingly apparent. Whenever the government in Mexico City fell on hard times, as it frequently did, Yucatan as a whole tended toward autonomy. At such times the provincial government at Merida gained freedom from federal restraint but lost federal support, and in consequence usually lost control over the Indians of southern Yucatan.