UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Bittersweet: Porfirian Sugar and Rum Production in Northeastern Yucatán A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by John R Gust June 2016 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Scott L. Fedick, Chairperson Dr. Wendy Ashmore Dr. Karl Taube Dr. Robert W. Patch Copyright by John R Gust June 2016 The Dissertation of John R Gust is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements Permission to conduct this research was granted by the Consejo de Arqueología of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). I would like to express my thanks to Dra María de los Angeles Olay Barrientos, and the other Consejo members for their support. In Quintana Roo, Arqlga. Adriana Velázquez Morlet, director of INAH Quintana Roo, as well as the staff for all the help they provided. Thank you to Drs. John Morris and Jaime Awe of the Belize Institute of Archaeology for allowing me access to the artifact collection from San Pedro Siris and for permission to visit and photograph Belizean sugar mill sites. This research was possible with the aid of small grants from UC-MEXUS and a UCR Humanities grant. A project like this is impossible without the aid of a multitude of people including some who are so behind the scenes whose name I will never know. I want to next thank those people, and the people whose names I have forgotten for their important contributions. My dissertation committee, especially my advisor Scott Fedick, has supported me constantly throughout this long process. Thank you Wendy Ashmore, Karl Taube, Robert Patch, and most of all Scott Fedick. Jennifer Mathews has been vital to this endeavor as a collaborator and sounding board for half-baked ideas prodding me along to be the best scholar I can be. Next I need thank my project directors. Thanks again go to Scott and Jen, as well as to Jeffrey Glover and Dominique Rissolo. My gratitude to Paul iv Sullivan giving our project access to his research on San Antonio Xuxub cannot be measured. I must next thank a group of friends that helped sometimes in material ways with my life and studies, and at other times, simply helped me lean forward towards the end goal when my personal drive to do so waned. These are Lucia Gudiel, Jon Spenard, Jonathan “Jay” Dubois, Lisa Garibaldi, Shyh-wei Yang, and the Struna-Kindblade family. Jason, Betsy, and Ben, are more important than they know eclipsed only by Lauren Schwartz. Lauren contributions have been both innumerable and immeasurable. Thank you Lauren, you are my best friend. The people of Mexico are what have made Quintana Roo my home away from home. I wish to thank the people of Kantunilkin, San Angel, Solferino, Chiquila, both in the towns and their respective ejidos especially San Angel-Chiquila ejido president, Don Aurielo Marciallo. My woefully incomplete list of those who helped me so much in the field includes Don Vio, Don Alfonso, Don Juvencio Dzib Tún, Don Abelardi Dzib Tún, Din Javier Mora Gómez, Don Sergío Dominguez Mayoral, Don Valerio Dominguez Alvarez, the owners of the private lands surrounding San Eusebio, and again all those who I have forgotten. Special thanks to Miguel “Mitch” Cocom for helping me so much and apologies to him for being subjected to my eccentricities that involve such things as pacing and mumbling. Thanks go out to our landlord Don Ramon May for his help navigating local institutions, keeping watch over materials and equipment, and helping me make connections in Solferino for field work at Rancho Aznar. And for just being an v all-around good guy. I sincerely thank all who pointed at a low tire, sold me a cold drink or tacos after a long day, and always treated me fairly when my vehicle broke down. My visits to archives and university libraries were sometimes frustrating but the helpful and knowledgeable staffs made these experiences as enjoyable as possible. Special thanks to the staff of the General Archives of the state of Yucatán (AGEY). Sometimes helping to identify dead ends is important too. Thanks go out to Gaspar Magla Canul, the Kantunilkin cronista (town historian) for his help focusing my efforts. A number of other scholars in Mexico helped me greatly. The staff of the El Eden Ecological Reserve cannot be thanked enough. The help of Marco Antonio Lazcano Barrero and Esther Martinez Galvan made the field work process go infinitely more smoothly. Lilia Lizama-Rogers helped me fulfill the requirements laid out by UCR so I could conduct interviews. UCR alum Héctor Estrada Medina helped with acquiring needed soil processing supplies and equipment, after many dead ends. Fieldwork would not have been as enjoyable, nor would I have eaten as well, were it not for Charles “Bush” Bush opening his home to me and so many others when we needed a respite at the beach. Thank you to all the anthropology graduate students during my time at UCR. My first-year cohort helped me learn to love Riverside and survive my first few years. Thank you Sarah Grant, Nicoletta Maestri, Leonido “Jun” Gines, Michelle Butler, Koffi Afawbo, Kohanya Ranch, Julianna Barrera, and Ted Gordon. Patrick Linder and Meghan Andrew helped me decide what kind of scholar and person I wanted to be, as did Chelsea Blackmore and Shankari Patel in different ways. Laurette McGuire suggested the best vi decision I have ever made. Ryan Mongelluzzo Nick Welcome, Daniel Leonard, Nick Hearth, Jennifer Chmilar, Jelena Radovic Fanta, great scholars all, added needed levity to the process. Lisa De Lance must be acknowledged for the work to maintain the department community, in addition to her great scholarship. I will forever be indebted to my first mentor as an archaeologist, Minette Church, for giving me my first foreign fieldwork opportunity, with the San Pedro Maya Project, in the Cayo District of Belize. The project personnel were generous with their time then and remain so to this day. Thank you Minette, Jason Yaeger, Richard Leventhal, Jennifer Dornan, and Bernadette Cap. John Harner from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs thank you for teaching me to always think about not only the uses but also the limits of GIS technology. A number of other anthropology faculty members at UCR must be thanked. First of these is Tom Patterson. Tom’s brilliance only competes with his humanity. Tom as well as Christine Gailey, Yolanda Moses, and once again Wendy Ashmore provided students with their own important and unique way to see the world and the processes at work. For archaeologists these perspectives are important as we hire and supervise labor, even if we do not apply always them to the research itself. TS Harvey, Juliet McMullin, Sang-Hee Lee, Paul Ryer, Phil Wilke, and Travis Stanton have all been invaluable fonts of knowledge throughout this long process. Finally, Mike Allen of the UCR Center for Conservation Biology graciously allowed me to process soil samples in his laboratory, for which I thank him greatly. vii Karin and Erik Vonk of the Richland Rum Distillery, along with their distillery manager Roger Zimmerman generously invited Jennifer Mathews and I to see their operation where they still make rum with nineteenth century methods. My penultimate list is a group of folks that, with Jason Struna, helped as I tried to make graduate school a fairer and more inviting place to work and study. Thank you especially to Rob Ackermann, Jorge Cabrera, Edwin Elias, Jermaine Cathcart, Aliana Lopez de Victoria, Coral Wheeler, Daraka Larimore Hall, Filiberto Nolasco Gomez, Steve Atwell, Jack Pitts, Michael Miller, and Ken Lang. I am listing the staff of the UCR Department of Anthropology last because people often read only the first few and last few paragraphs of these sections. Thank you to Lilia Liderbach Vega, Becky Campbell, Anna Wire, and all the other office staff throughout the years. Once again thank you all for making this possible. viii Dedicated to my family. ix ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Bittersweet: Porfirian Sugar and Rum Production in Northeastern Yucatán by John R Gust Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Anthropology University of California, Riverside, June 2016 Dr. Scott L. Fedick, Chairperson In this dissertation I explore the working lives of laborers at three, late nineteenth and early twentieth century, sugar and rum production sites in the Yalahau region of northeastern Yucatan. The low native population density and harsh environment resulted in a string of short-lived, failed industries but very little investment from the governments of the state of Yucatán and the nation of Mexico through the middle of the nineteenth century. The people of the Yalahau region were some of the first to make peace with the state government during the Caste War, a revolution by the Maya and other poor workers in the area in response to increasingly terrible working and living conditions imposed upon them by Yucatan’s owner class. This new political stability, coupled with the destruction of sugar production facilities elsewhere on the peninsula, made the Yalahau x region and its acceptable, though not ideal, soils attractive for those seeking wealth through sugar cultivation. The Yalahau region provides a great opportunity to see differences both between sites and throughout the presidency of Porfirio Diaz (1876– 1910) which ended with the Mexican Revolution. Sugar production operations in the Yalahau region differed in ownership structure, scale, and distance from outside world. What was similar at all operations was the harsh nature of sugar production-an occupation that few would enter into if they had other options. Using a variety of methods, I have tried to reconstruct the working lives of a group of people who were both enmeshed in the world economy, and had their freedom limited by an economic system designed and deployed to trap workers in an intergenerational cycle of debt.