Mexican-American War and Caste War: Coinciding Conflicts in the Gulf of Mexico, 1847

The Caste War of Yucatan (1847–1901), which erupted at the height of the Mexican-American War (1846–8) due to a myriad of internal and external events impacting the region marks a particularly tragic chapter in the history of ethnic conflict in the Americas. In 1816, Americans began fighting the Seminoles in Florida, and that conflict – fought in unfamiliar territory that favored guerrilla tactics – endured until 1858. The Yucatan peninsula, with its similar humid lowlands, rain, mud, and terrain that mitigated the effectiveness of the cavalry-centric warfare fought in much of northern and central Mexico, was larger and included a borderless frontier abutting the neighboring states of Guatemala and British Honduras (Belize). Until now, historians have overlooked the undeniable connections between the eruption of Yucatan’s Caste War in 1847 and US-Mexican conflict.[1]

Right: Fighters during the Caste War of Yucatan. In the Public Domain. Click to enlarge. 

1842 Mexican invasion of Republic of Yucatan

How were the Mayans militarized? There are a number of different answers to that question but the 1842 spring invasion of Yucatan by centralist forces at the direction of General Antonio López de Santa Anna played a major role. It was their hope that a centralist victory would force Yucatan back into the Mexican union following the Republic of Yucatan’s declaration of independence in 1840. When the siege of Campeche ended in a stalemate, centralist forces attempted to launch a coup in the capital of Merida, which resulted in acting governor Miguel Barbachano enlisting Mayan guerrilla units in the vicinity to confront the 2,500-man centralist force that disembarked near the capital. The outskirts of nearly every major city were controlled by local batabs (Mayan chieftains), whose authority over thousands of tribal members made insurgent warfare effective – particularly since the defenders knew the terrain. When the Yucatecans achieved their victory, a handful of these influential chiefs were emboldened to believe that it was they who controlled the destiny of the nascent republic. Moreover, the failed 1842 invasion, along with other regional struggles in places like Guatemala, sowed the seeds of the idea of creating an ethnically-Mayan-led state on the peninsula. That idea gained traction among the batabs during the Mexican-American War when Yucatecan authorities in Merida, who had previously declared independence and proclaimed their neutrality, rejoined the Mexican union. In essence, tribal leaders felt betrayed after fighting for independence, and concluded that all criollos (Yucatecans with Spanish ancestry) could not be trusted and should therefore be ousted or eradicated from the peninsula.[2]

Arming Indigenous Insurgents

The 1847 American invasion of central Mexico by way of Veracruz, and infighting between criollo factions in the competing cities of Campeche and Merida, offered an opportunity for the principal batabs to effect their strategic and political goals. To assist that effort the Mayans acquired weapons in exchange for lucrative mahogany with merchants in the British Honduran region of Belize – centering around the port town of Bacalar, in present-day Quintana Roo. When ethnic violence broke out in eastern Yucatan three months after the Americans seized Veracruz, refugees began pouring over the border into Belize. This strife eventually forced the British to rethink their policy.[3] For some time, Americans and Yucatecans blamed the British for inciting the violence, but there is little evidence supporting the theory that it was official British policy – but simply the actions of overzealous agents authorized to engage in such commerce. Americans with longer memories cited the British influence in instigating and arming native peoples during the Creek War (1813–14), which overlapped the Anglo-American War of 1812 (1812–15) in the southern theater centering around the northern Gulf of Mexico in Florida and Mississippi Territory. Thirty years later, during the US-Mexican conflict, contraband trade between the Mayans and Belize initially went unnoticed by Americans waging war and maintaining a naval blockade on the opposite side of the Gulf. American officials learned of British involvement when they began investigating riverine smuggling between Yucatan and Tabasco, where Americans held an interest in acquiring transit rights over the isthmus.[4]   

Right: The Capture of the City of Tabasco; Steamer Spitfire and Schooner Bonita, Second Battle of Tabasco, June 15, 1847. Lithograph drawing by Lt. Henry Walke, USN, appearing in Naval Portfolio: Naval Scenes in the Mexican War (New York: Sarony & Major, 1847), No. 7. National Museum of the US Navy, Library of Congress. In the Public Domain. Click to enlarge.

Total Ethnic Warfare

According to Nelson A. Reed, one of the earliest Caste War historians, the combined population on the peninsula in 1845, including Yucatecan (Spanish), Mayan, and mestizo, amounted to around 580,000 people. Roughly 440,000 of those, or 75 percent, were Mayan. Reed notes that the “total war” that erupted forced the Yucatecans (or “Ladinos”) to arm roughly 17 percent of their population to forestall destruction and forced exodus from the peninsula. Furthermore, census data between 1846 and 1850 indicates the population reduced by an astonishing 40 percent, meaning the peninsula lost nearly 200,000 people. Of those, some 120,000 were displaced – having fled to the safety of neighboring states of Tabasco, Belize, or Cuba – leaving historians with an estimated death toll of around 80,000 people, or 16 percent – a numerical testament to the unmitigated violence that occurred between racial factions. This violence emanated from the eastern side of the peninsula and swept west in a wave of death that nearly pushed the non-Mayan people of the Yucatan into the Gulf of Mexico. Indeed, the Caste War – a coinciding conflict during the Mexican-American War – marks a particularly tragic chapter in the history of ethnic conflict in the Americas.[5] 

Notes 

[1] Benjamin J. Swenson, Wars of the Mexican Gulf: The Breakaway Republics of Texas and Yucatan, US Mexican War, and Limits of Empire (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2024), 75–6.  

[2] Eligio Ancono, Historia de Yucatán, desde la época más remota hasta nuestros días, vol.3 (Mérida: M. Heredia Argüelles, 1879), 411-413, 437-441, 467-471. See: Terry Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever: Mayas, Hispanics, and Caste War Violence in Yucatán, 1800-1880 (Stanford University Press, 2009), 56. According to the historian Terry Rugeley, the Campeche faction’s decision to temper their revolt may have been influenced by their concern over the U.S. presence on the coast and the growing power of the batabs. Ancono blamed the Campechans for the Mayan uprising: “The ill-fated revolution of December 8, which proclaimed neutrality in the North American war, finally provided them [the Maya] with the first opportunity to wage open war against the white race.” (Ancono, Historia de Yucatán, vol. 4, 13).     

[3] See: Rajeshwari Dutt, “Business As Usual: Maya and Merchants on Yucatán-Belize border at the Onset of the Caste War,” The Americas 74, no. 2 (2017): 201-226; Wayne Clegern, “British Honduras and the Pacification of Yucatan,” The Americas 18, no. 3 (Jan. 1962): 243–254; Richard W. Van Alstyne, “The Central American Policy of Lord Palmerston, 1846-1848,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 16, no. 3 (1936): 339–59.

[4] Swenson, Wars of the Mexican Gulf, 107–9, 113, 116.

[5] Excerpt from: Swenson, Wars of the Mexican Gulf, 76–7. Quoting: Nelson Reed, The Caste War of Yucatan (1964: Reprint: Stanford University Press, 2001), 68, 5, 107, 141-2. See: Serapio Baqueiro, Ensayo histórico sobre las revoluciones de Yucatán desde el año 1840 hasta 1864. 5 vols (Mérida: Manuel Heredia Argüelles, 1878). Baqueiro’s seminal work is cited often by Caste War historians.