No abstract

Over the last two centuries, the coast has played a major role in the economy of Yucatán, and has served as a key venue in its growing engagement in the global economy. A prominent chapter in this history took place during the Gilded Age , which saw the emergence of a powerful plantation class whose wealth was based on meeting international demand for the fiber of the agave, or henequen plant, which was used to manufacture rope, cordage, and twine. The cultivation of this plant gave rise to hundreds of plantations, and an accompanying infrastructure of haciendas, fiber processing plants, and an extensive regional network of railways for transporting henequen to the port of Progreso, from whence it was exported to North America and Europe. As part of this infrastructure, several plantation owners laid rail lines from their haciendas to the coast and built small ports for shipping their henequen to Progreso. These ports, which are documented in these pages, represented a substantial capital outlay, and were built under the shadow of the gathering clouds of the Mexican Revolution. Viewed in retrospect, they offer an insightful perspective on the economic outlook of the Yucatecan elites in the dawn of the modern age.

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The emergence of capitalism in the peninsula of Yucatán is generally presented as a process resulting from the capitalization of the agricultural sector and the export of products from its sugar, cotton, and henequén plantations in the nineteenth century. In addition to these products, the peninsula also had a dynamic coastal economy in which the harvesting of salt and the extraction of logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum), played a major role and contributed to the flow of goods to international markets. We present a preliminary archaeological survey and historical documentation of El Real de Salinas, a salt-producing port on the north coast of Campeche, which was also involved in the extraction of other coastal products and closely linked to the inland plantation system. KEY WORDS: Yucatán; Campeche; salt; logwood.The archaeological study of the emergence of capitalism is still in its infancy in Yucatán. While some scholars have begun to examine the economic transformations that took place in the nineteenth century, almost all the research to date has focused on the agrarian sector and the rise of haciendas and plantations, and little attention has been paid to the role of the coastal regions in this process. In this article we plan to address this issue through a particular case of a small port on the northwest corner of the peninsula.The emergence of capitalism was a gradual affair in Yucatan, and dawned with the flourishing of large haciendas that housed large numbers of workers (trabajadores acasillados) who began producing substantial surpluses of beef, corn, beans, henequen, and other agricultural products for the urban markets

Al depender la provincia de Chiapas de la Real Audiencia de Los Confines que tuvo su sede en la ciudad de Guatemala durante la mayor parte de la época Colonial, y como siendo el presidente de esa Audiencia la persona con facultades para poder dar encomiendas en su jurisdicción de acuerdo con la autorización real, el desarrollo de la encomienda fue quedando enmarcado en las condiciones prevalecientes, tanto en el reino de Guatemala como en las que existían en otras regiones del imperio español. Sin embargo, esta institución presentó algunas características propias en cada una de las partes donde funcionó; características de interés e importancia para comprender el desarrollo y configuración de las condiciones sociales del momento presente.