The adoption of sugarcane cultivation and processing on the Yucatán Peninsula, as with many other products and technologies introduced by Europeans, followed a process that inevitably transformed the ecosystem and lifestyles of the peninsula. As is well known, domesticated plants and animals introduced by Europeans altered the relationships among humans and the environments of indigenous communities in the Americas. In addition, the production of commercial goods such as sugar and cane-derived liquors brought about drastic changes in the economy, environment, and social relations of indigenous communities during the colonial era. In later historic periods, the deep-rooted consumption of aguardiente had a dramatic impact on the daily lives and labor relations of the Mayas of the Yucatán toward the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries—Yucatán's Gilded Age.

It should be noted that rum is an alcoholic beverage distilled from sugarcane molasses, of Antillean origin, and generally aged in oak barrels. The aguardiente was also obtained through the distillation of sugarcane juices, although it was done in a rudimentary way and was not aged: it was cheap, quickly produced liquor that was mainly consumed by the indigenous population. In Yucatán, during the Gilded Age, the production of sugarcane aguardiente for local consumption was the norm.

In this book, the authors  contextualize the adoption of sugarcane from its introduction in the Americas and the development of large sugar plantations in several regions of the Yucatán and the Antilles. They comment that, although the size of the sugar industry in Yucatán was not at all comparable with that in the Antilles, the particularities of labor organization, the adoption of sugarcane-processing technology, and above all the social and economic consequences generated by the massive consumption of aguardiente among Maya workers on Yucatán's henequen farms motivated their research. One of the main goals of this book is to address these historical problems from an archaeological perspective.

In Chapter 1, the authors establish a context related to the production of cane and its transformation into refined sugar and its derivatives, such as molasses, panela, rum, and aguardiente in the Caribbean. Starting in the sixteenth century, Spanish, English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese colonizers implemented the cultivation and processing of sugarcane in the various islands and territories. The Spanish established the first sugar mill in Saint-Domingue on Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). However, it was not until their implementation of slavery as a mode of production in the Hispaniola colony that the Spanish became the most important marketer of sugarcane derivatives in that region.

As discussed in Chapter 2, the forced labor to which the indigenous populations were subjected and the slavery suffered by a large number of Black Africans brought to the Caribbean were defining features of the sugar industry. In the Yucatán Peninsula, unlike the Antilles, the labor force came from indigenous communities near the mills, so social conditions were different. However, producers imported technology for the production of sugar and its derivatives to the Yucatán from the Antilles. For example, as suggested by the authors from their archaeological explorations in the east of the peninsula, the so-called Jamaican train or sugar-refining building was adapted for use in Yucatec sugar mills. The authors surveyed and registered remnants of these types of buildings in the Yalahau region.

Chapter 3 summarizes the historical data pertaining to the working conditions of indigenous Maya peoples of the Yucatán from the colonial era through the Caste War and the rise of the henequen haciendas in the region during the Porfiriato. The authors explain the conditions of the peonage system for hacienda worker debts, ending with the “liberation” of the peons and the Agrarian Reform toward the first half of the twentieth century—an episode widely discussed in local historiography. In this regard, the book has a linguistic and cultural bias: it neglects a large body of information, bibliographic references, and historical data that was published in Spanish, such as Tratado sobre el cultivo de la caña y elaboración de azúcar y bases de economía rural y gobierno para los establecimientos de azúcar y para toda finca de campo de Yucatán, con instrucciones relativas al cultivo del henequén (De Portas, 1872) and “Tecnología productiva para el azúcar y aguardiente en el siglo XIX en Yucatán” (Cámara Gutiérrez in Estética y poder en la ciencia y la technolgía: acercamientos multidisciplinarios, edited by Ayora Díaz and Vargas Cetina, 2014, pp. 241–258). As a result, it falls short in its attempt to provide a comprehensive characterization of the sugar and rum industry at the local and regional levels.

Chapter 4 shows how sugarcane production and processing in the Yucatán responded to a very different dynamic than in the Antilles. With a set of archaeological explorations carried out in historic sugarcane-producing settlements in the Yalahau region of Quintana Roo, the authors show that the process of making sugar and aguardiente was rudimentary in sites such as Xuxub and San Eusebio. The scarce facilities, the precarious evidence of the presence of workers, and the limited recovery of material culture related to sugar production reinforce the interpretation, previously handled by historical research, that the main activity was to produce aguardiente and panela and, on a smaller scale, sugar.

Finally, Chapter 5 relates the culture of local aguardiente production during the nineteenth century to the emergence of cantinas (drinking establishments), state control of the production of alcoholic beverages, access to aguardiente as a means of coercion, and the indebtedness of indigenous workers. The authors link the emergence of the Cancun touristic pole as a metaphor for the temporary escape provided by the consumption of alcoholic beverages by indebted workers. In my opinion, this a debatable point, because the tourist industry developed in the Yucatán after the period of the greatest production and consumption of aguardiente and rum. There is little relation between locally produced liquor and massive tourism: foreign tourists crowd these places and consume mostly imported alcoholic beverages.

Gust and Mathews's book is a plausible first attempt to approach the archaeological study of aguardiente, rum, and sugar production sites in the Yucatán. The bittersweet history of the production, distribution, and consumption of these related products in the Yucatán still has many chapters to be written, especially if one finds additional support in the archaeological record for the material conditions of the adoption of imported technologies and the accompanying effects of debt peonage.