The history of human beings is dominated by conflict, and it is the victors who write the stories of the conflicts.
There is nothing much written in British Honduras about the second half of the nineteenth century because the British, while they continued to rule the settlement of Belize, were involved in gun running to the Maya rebels of Noh Cah Santa Cruz in the eastern Yucatan, and ended up opening up the Corozal and Orange Walk Districts to Caste War refugees in order to continue their mahogany extraction in those Mexican border areas. The British do not want the Caste War story told, because their role in it was venal and inglorious, and the Catholic Church, which began to dominate Belize’s educational system in the twentieth century, also prefers for the Caste War to be forgotten, because they, the Romans, were the principal targets of the Maya rebels. This is so because the control and taxation (exploitation) of the Mayan villages by Merida and Campeche, was processed through the priests.
I have reached the point where I believe that no Belizean academic in the mainstream will discuss these matters publicly, because they have nothing to gain and something to lose. The twentieth century cooperation in B.H. between the Anglican British colonial government and the Catholic Church was against the historical grain, because ever since the sixteenth century the Anglican British and the Catholic Spanish had been bitter foes in the vast majority of international matters.
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1803) is considered the only successful slave rebellion in history, but the Mayas in the Yucatan were almost like slaves, and while they did not establish a separate state, it seems to me the Caste War, which began in 1847, is not a war the Maya lost. The Caste War, in more than one sense, is a war which has never ended.
The government of Yucatan first declared the Caste War over in 1855. But that declaration was vastly premature. On January 11, 1884, in Belize (City), a treaty was signed between the vice-Governor of Yucatan and a Chan Santa Cruz general recognizing Mexican sovereignty over Chan Santa Cruz (the rebel capital) in exchange for Mexican recognition of Chan (Noh Cah) Santa Cruz leader, Crescencio Poot, as “Governor” of the “State” of Santa Cruz.
In 1884, Mexico and Britain resumed diplomatic relations. That year, Porfirio Diaz, who had served one term as president of Mexico and ruled for another through a surrogate, was voted to his second term, after which he would rule Mexico without interruption for more than a quarter century. The year 1884 is significant, because when Benito Juárez, who was black, resumed the presidency of Mexico after the French Emperor Maximilian was executed in the early 1860’s, Benito broke relations with all who had recognized Maximilian, which included the British. From 1867 to 1884, therefore, Mexico and Britain could not decide on the boundaries of British Honduras.
I mention that Juárez was black, because the black issue in Mexico is intriguing. There are villages on Mexico’s Pacific coast which are “African”. “Stretch” Lightburn told me he has traveled through these places and seen these people. But Mexico, like Cuba, does not make allowance for ethnicity in its socio-politics. All Mexicans are just Mexicans, constitutionally speaking.
This brings me back to Crescencio Poot, on whom I want to focus in the remainder of this column. The 1884 treaty between Merida and Noh Cah Santa Cruz was cancelled when Crescencio Poot was killed the following year – 1885. Poot was the last of the great Caste War rebel leaders from 1847 – Jacinto Pat, Cecilio Chi, Venancio Pec, Florentino Chan and Bonifacio Novelo had all been killed.
The Caste War began in the Tihosuco–Tepich area, which is about 100 plus miles due north of Bacalar. The American researcher, Terry Ruggeley, reports that Tihosuco was considered about six percent black, the most African of the Maya villages in the Yucatan.It is logical to believe that some of the mulatto element in the Maya Yucatan was derived from runaway slaves from Belize. In 1773, for example, 19 of the fifty or so rebels in Belize’s greatest slave revolt, are reported by official British Honduras archives to have reached safety in Bacalar.
This is what Don E. Dumond writes of Crescencio Poot: “Poot’s biographer (Baqueiro 1887) reports that Poot’s mother was widowed before his birth and that the son took her surname, and he also indicates that Poot was handsome, exceptionally tall and well built, and unusually dark even for a sunburned Indian. In the course of Poot’s career a Belizean of color reported him to be ‘a black man’ (J. H. Faber to F. Seymour, Dec. 10, 1857) and an Indian woman described him as heavy in body and ‘in color almost black’ (statement of Monica May, J. Carbo dispatch, Aug. 1874). I presume him to have been mulatto.”
Crescencio Poot first entered history in August of 1847 when he was the young servant-protégé to the parish priest in Tixcacalcupul, some miles north of Tihosuco and south of Valladolid. Because of the priest’s tutelage, Poot was literate, fluent in Spanish and had some knowledge of Latin.
According to Dumond, “Maya rebels invaded Tixcacalcupul late in October (1847), put it to the torch, and killed fourteen vecinos and two priests, one of them Eusebio García Rejón, the protector of Crescencio Poot. The perpetrators were said to include workers from García Rejón’s own hacienda of Moh – which had been managed for him by Crescencio Poot – in resentment for his usurpation of terrenos baldíos in the region. Some would blame the murder on Poot himself, although he later denied it. In any event, the success of the raid led to a swelling of insurgent ranks as many local Indians, not hitherto involved, joined the rebellion. And Crescencio Poot was among them, at the head of the ex-workers from Hacienda Moh.”
The story of how Crescencio Poot, arguably the greatest Caste War rebel leader, joined the rebellion after it had begun in 1847, has a certain similarity to how Toussaint L’Ouverture, the greatest Haitian Revolution leader, joined that revolt after it had begun in 1791.