Yucatan Peninsula One of the largest groups of Maya, the
Yucatec Maya people, live in the Yucatan Peninsula, which includes the Mexican states of
Yucatán State,
Campeche, and
Quintana Roo as well as the nation of
Belize. These people identify themselves as "Maya" with no further ethnic subdivision (unlike in the Highlands of Western Guatemala). They speak the language which anthropologists term "
Yucatec Maya", but is identified by speakers and Yucatecos simply as "Maya". Among Maya speakers, Spanish is commonly spoken as a second or first language. There is a significant amount of confusion as to the correct terminology to use –
Maya or
Mayan – and the meaning of these words with reference to contemporary or pre-Columbian peoples, to Maya peoples in different parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and to languages or peoples. Linguists refer to the Maya language as Yucatec or Yucatec Maya to distinguish it from other
Mayan languages. This norm has often been misinterpreted to mean that the people are also called Yucatec Maya; that term refers to only the language, and the correct name for the people is simply Maya (not Mayans). (Yucatec) Maya is one language in the Mayan language family. Confusion of the term Maya/Mayan as an ethnic label occurs because Maya women who use traditional dress identify by the ethnic term
mestiza and not Maya. Persons use a strategy of ethnic identification that Juan Castillo Cocom refers to as "ethnoexodus"—meaning that ethnic self-identification as Maya is quite variable, situational, and articulated not to processes of producing group identity, but of escaping from discriminatory processes of sociocultural marginalization. The Yucatán's Indigenous population was first exposed to Europeans after a party of Spanish shipwreck survivors came ashore in 1511. One of the sailors,
Gonzalo Guerrero, is reported to have taken up with a local woman and started a family; he became a war captain in the Postclassic Mayan state of
Chetumal. Later Spanish expeditions to the region were led by
Córdoba in 1517,
Grijalva in 1518, and
Cortés in 1519. From 1528 to 1540, several attempts by
Francisco Montejo to conquer the Yucatán failed. His son, Francisco de Montejo the Younger, fared almost as badly when he first took over: while invading Chichen Itza, he lost 150 men in a single day. European diseases, massive recruitment of native warriors from Campeche and Champoton, and internal hatred between the Xiu Maya and the lords of Cocom eventually turned the tide for Montejo the Younger.
Chichen Itza was conquered by 1570. mentions a series of letters sent to the King of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. The
noble Maya families at that time signed documents to the Spanish royal family; surnames mentioned in those letters are Pech, Camal, Xiu, Ucan, Canul, Cocom, and Tun, among others. A large 19th-century revolt by the Maya people of Yucatán in Mexico, known as the
Caste War of Yucatán, was one of the most successful modern Indigenous revolts in Mexico. For a period the Maya state of
Chan Santa Cruz was recognized as an independent nation by the
British Empire, particularly in terms of trading with British Honduras. , was a Maya with the very common surname "Kan"
Francisco Luna-Kan was elected
governor of the state of Yucatán from 1976 to 1982. Luna-Kan was born in
Mérida, Yucatán, and he was a doctor of medicine, then a professor of medicine before his political offices. He was first appointed as overseer of the state's rural medical system. He was the first governor of the modern
Yucatán Peninsula to be of full Maya ancestry. In the early 21st century, dozens of politicians, including deputies, mayors and senators, are of full or mixed Maya heritage from the Yucatán Peninsula. According to the National Institute of Geography and Informatics (Mexico's
INEGI), in Yucatán State there were 1.2 million Mayan speakers in 2009, representing just under 60% of the inhabitants. Due to this, the cultural section of the government of
Yucatán began on-line classes for grammar and proper pronunciation of Maya. Maya people from
Yucatán Peninsula living in the United States of America have been organizing Maya language lessons and Maya cooking classes since 2003 in California and other states: clubs of
Yucatec Maya are registered in
Dallas and
Irving, Texas;
Salt Lake City in Utah;
Las Vegas, Nevada; and
California, with groups in San Francisco; San Rafael; Chino; Pasadena; Santa Ana; Garden Grove; Inglewood; Los Angeles; Thousand Oaks; Oxnard; San Fernando Valley and Whittier. The Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology offers immersion Maya courses in a six-week intensive summer program.
Chiapas is the
Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, which partly overlaps with the
Tzeltal,
Tojolabal and
Chʼol areas. Note. The
Zoque are not Maya.
Chiapas was for many years one of the regions of Mexico that was least touched by the reforms of the
Mexican Revolution. The
Zapatista Army of National Liberation, launched a rebellion against the Mexican state, Chiapas in January 1994, declared itself to be an
Indigenous movement and drew its strongest and earliest support from Chiapan Maya. Today its number of supporters is relevant. (see also the
EZLN and the
Chiapas conflict) Maya groups in Chiapas include the
Tzotzil and
Tzeltal, in the highlands of the state, the
Tojolabalis concentrated in the lowlands around
Las Margaritas, the
Chʼol in the jungle, and in the south eastern
uplands, the endangered
Mochó and the
Kaqchikel, also widely spoken in the
Guatemalan highlands. (See map. Note. The
Zoque are not Maya.) The most traditional of Maya groups are the
Lacandon, a small population avoiding contact with outsiders until the late 20th century by living in small groups in the
Lacandon Jungle. These Lacandon Maya came from the Campeche/Petén area (north-east of
Chiapas) and moved into the Lacandon rain-forest at the end of the 18th century. In the course of the 20th century, and increasingly in the 1950s and 1960s, other people (mainly the Maya and subsistence peasants from the highlands), also entered into the Lacandon region; initially encouraged by the government. This immigration led to land-related conflicts and an increasing pressure on the
rainforest. To halt the migration, the government decided in 1971 to declare a large part of the forest (614,000 hectares, or 6140 km2) a protected area: the
Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. They appointed only one small population group (the 66 Lacandon families) as tenants (thus creating the Lacandon Community), thereby displacing 2000 Tzeltal and Chʼol families from 26 communities, and leaving non-Lacandon communities dependent on the government for granting their rights to land. In the decades that followed the government carried out numerous programs to keep the problems in the region under control, using land distribution as a political tool; as a way of ensuring loyalty from different campesino groups. This strategy of
divide and rule led to great disaffection and tensions among population groups in the region. (see also the
Chiapas conflict and the
Lacandon Jungle).
Tabasco The Mexican state of
Tabasco is home to the
Chontal Maya. Tabasco is a Mexican state with a northern coastline fringing the Gulf of Mexico. In its capital,
Villahermosa, Parque Museo la Venta is known for its zoo and colossal stone sculptures dating to the
Olmec civilization. The grand Museo de Historia de Tabasco chronicles the area from prehistoric times, while the Museo Regional de Antropología has exhibits on native Maya and Olmec civilizations. ==Guatemala==