When was yucatan founded

Read more One of the most important painters of Mexican art during Read more While there are many talented Mexican painters specializi Read more Cochinita pibil is the most famous dish originated in Yuc Read more There are several dates that are considered important in Read more During the 19th century, the country had many battles, no Read more. Baja California Baja California has had a This condition was disapproved in by Congress, which caused the state to declare independence again in After a series of conflicts with Mexico, the Constitution was restored, paving the way for the reincorporation of Yucatan.

This reincorporation took until , while internal conflicts between Yucatecans such as the War of the Castes were mitigated. Caste War Everything seemed to indicate that Yucatan would remain independent. However, suddenly, in , when Santa Anna was still president of Mexico, an internal war broke out, driven by the Mayan population against the whites. This rebellion is known as the War of the Castes. The situation was critical: the Mayans managed to advance, and the war became bloody on both sides.

With the war, the Yucatecans could not find any solution. By that time, the Mexican Republic offered to provide economic and military support to stop the Indians and their rebellion, thus being able to retake control over the villages.

The so-called Cocom dynasty named after the Mayan Cocom tribe and kingly family ruled until the midth century. The post-classic Maya period ended around A. Most cities were abandoned, but those that remained continued their inter-city military conflicts.

The first Spaniards to visit the region were the survivors of the Pedro de Valdivia c. Guerrero married the daughter of the Chetumal chief and their son was the first officially recorded Mestizo mixed Indian and Spanish in Mexico.

He returned to Cuba. There he was informed of the existence of the region that was initially considered an island. Francisco de Montejo c. A third attempt in proved successful. Gaspar Pecheco, known for his cruel treatment of the Indians, completed the conquest on the western end of the region. Franciscan priests built more than thirty convents in an effort to convert the indigenous people to the Catholic faith.

Spanish oppression and the diseases brought by the conquistadors Spanish conquerors significantly reduced the Amerindian population from an estimated 5 million in to 3. The Spanish authorities controlled the region and prevented any insurgencies. After the Mexican Revolution in , where different factions fought for control of the peninsula, the revolutionary victors brought peace to the region.

The highest authority is the state governor, democratically elected for a nonrenewable six-year term. A unicameral single chamber legislature, the state congress, is elected every three years.

Its twenty-five members include fifteen legislators elected from single member districts and ten legislators elected by proportional representation. All are elected for nonrenewable three-year terms. The legislature generally meets once a year, but extra sessions can be called by the governor or by a permanent committee if the need arises. State services receive funding from the federal government.

Although formal provisions for separation of powers exist in the constitution, the overwhelming power historically exercised by the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party PRI prevented many of those provisions from being effectively enforced.

Immediate re-election is not allowed. Although some decentralization initiatives are producing positive results, the state still has a long way to go to achieve successful decentralization. There are three significant pressure groups working within the PRI: labor, the peasantry, and the "popular" sector, which includes bureaucrats, teachers, and small business people. Although the PRI dominated politics in the state since the end of the Mexican Revolution in , the gubernatorial elections gave the governorship to the conservative PAN.

The Superior Tribunal of Justice is the highest court in the state. Its six members are appointed by the state congress for nonrenewable four-year terms. Only qualified and experienced attorneys can be appointed to the highest state court. Their leader asked for my passport and wanted me to open the trunk. He discovered our cache of dirty laundry.

The show of force probably had to do with the disparities of wealth and the ethnic tensions between the indigenous Maya and the Mexican elite of Spanish-Aztec-Toltec descent. After battling the Spanish for years, the Maya fought Mexican domination and exploitation during the nineteenth century in what was called the War of the Castes.

Yucatan tried twice to secede from Mexico. More recently, a Mayan group called the Zapatistas engaged in armed skirmishes with government troops in the state of Chiapas, followed by police, paramilitary, and military persecution and repression. In , with a new Mexican President elected to office, the Zapatistas were hopeful of reconciliation after a promise of laws to protect their indigenous rights.

On the final full day of our visit, we headed out to the brackish-water lagoon of Celestun, a small fishing village at the sparsely populated, bone-dry northwest corner of the Peninsula, where Mayans gather salt at shoreline ponds.

Today, the lagoon is a bird sanctuary, noted for its flamingo population. The stone churches and factories with stone smokestacks looked abandoned. The indigenous sisal plant used to make rope and twine , along with cattle ranching and sugar, were the mainstays of the Yucatan economy during the nineteenth century, when the Mexican ruling class got rich off of cheap Mayan peasant labor and expropriated Mayan land.

The demand for sisal collapsed after the invention of synthetic fibers; today it is a specialty crop whose fiber is woven into rugs, handbags, and hammocks. After we passed the third town, the noon landscape turned into a white inferno, bristling with spindly, almost leafless trees that cast no shade on the barren limestone. The asphalt had broken off the road in places, and the limestone beneath was pitted with potholes. There were no street signs and no other vehicles.

Were we on the road to Celestun or driving into oblivion? We turned around. Under a shade-giving tree, we spotted an old campesino and his son, whom we had passed earlier.

They had apparently ridden into the inferno on bicycles. Genny asked them in Spanish where Celestun was. The old man said we were on the right road, but had to drive farther to get to the main highway. We turned around again. Finally, the highway appeared and we sped for Celestun. I had trouble starting the rental car that morning and called for a replacement, which set us back four hours.

After a late lunch of delicious fried fish from the Gulf, I took a plunge in the silty, greyish waters to cool off. We wanted to be back in Merida before evening, so we skipped the boat ride to see the flamingos among the mangroves. Chichen Itza.