Rajeshwari Dutt analyzes the post of cacique, or local indigenous headman, in Yucatań through the republic's formative decades after independence. Her study focuses on the life of Andreś Canché, who served as cacique of Cenotillo, in north-central Yucatań, between the 1830s and the 1860s. This biographical approach grounds what is otherwise a wide-ranging exploration not only of how Yucatecan caciques like Canché navigated the shifting currents of state and local politics, but also the ways in which national issues inflected local life in Mexico's eastern periphery. Dutt weaves evidence from land tenure records, judicial records, and correspondence between state and local officials into a detailed reconstruction of what she terms the “webs of power” that enmeshed the cacique in the hegemonic order of his time and place. She finds that caciques were critical intermediaries who, by forging strategic local alliances and personal relationships, transcended the barriers to political power constructed by state and national elites (5).
The book elaborates on this premise though six chapters that contextualize Canché's tenure as cacique. Chapter 1 follows a land dispute between Maya towns in the late colonial era to illuminate how caciques defended the interests of their communities through allying with Spanish officials and shrewdly deploying a keen understanding of both local affairs and colonial government. Subsequently, Mexico's independence diminished the status of indigenous communities, yet, as Chapter 2 shows, caciques like Canché solidified their power and legitimacy by continuing to walk a fine line between allegiance to their local constituencies and alliance with republican officials.
Chapters 3 and 4 trace how tension between Mayan towns and the government, sparked by rural resistance to taxation, escalated into a rebellion known as the Caste War (1847-52). Sporadic rebellion, continuing through the 1870s, disrupted that balancing act: caciques had to choose sides. Chapter 4 uncovers an important implication of that decision, namely that community interests and the tenor of relations between the cacique and local officials mattered as much if not more than race. Many caciques, including Canché, remained loyal and thereby preserved their hard-won status as vital intermediaries in local politics.
Chapters 5 and 6 describe the attempt to restore peace in Yucatań in the 1860s during the reign of Emperor Maximilian (1863-67), who established the office of defensor de los indios to promote the wellbeing of Mayan commoners. Both chapters rely on the account left by the defensor Demeterio Molina. His tour of central Yucatań in 1865 undermined caciques by offering Maya villagers direct access to an official with whom they could press individual, rather than collective, concerns. It also coincided with the end of Andreś Canché's time as cacique. By then, the expanding henequen hacienda complex and, following the restoration of the federal republic in 1867, the abolition of the post of cacique in 1869, heralded the onset of a new order defined by the exigencies of export- driven development.
This book enhances the understanding of local politics among Mexico's varied indigenous communities in the early national period. In particular, Dutt builds on the recent work of Terry Ruggely and Douglas Richmond in offering a detailed account of Maya life in rural Yucatań. She underscores how colonial institutions like the cacicazgo endured after independence as transitional elements of an evolving secular republican political system associated with liberalism. Her book also echoes other studies of indigenous political life in the nineteenth century published in the last 20 years, by highlighting the political agency and political consciousness of the Maya. In so doing, she has crafted an accessible yet sophisticated study, noteworthy for its sensitivity to the complexities of local history in nineteenth-century Yucatań.
