486 UNIT 4 MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL FEATURES
The year 1761 was the date of a rebellion in which the Mayas—subscribing to a
prophecy (set down in the famous underground book, the Chilam Balam) of the im-
minent return of an Itza king of the royal lineage of Canek to rescue them from
their Spanish oppressors—sought, under just provocation, to make the prophecy
come true and to drive the Whites into the sea. The leader, for this reason, assumed
the name of the prophet, Jacinto Canek. Canek’s uprising was squelched, and the
hero was publicly drawn, quartered, and burned in the plaza of Mérida. From that
time forward “Jacinto Canek” became the rallying cry of Yucatec Mayan rebellion
and separatism, which again flowered in the well-known Caste Wars of Yucatán, which
began in 1848 and lasted in one form or another almost to the end of the nineteenth
century (see the account of the Caste War of Yucatán in Chapter 7).Gregorio López y Fuentes (1897–1966)
Gregorio López y Fuentes, like Ermilo Abreu Gómez, belongs to the great genera-
tion of early-twentieth-century Mexican writers who considered Indian themes to be
centrally important in the valuation of postrevolutionary national identity. He was
both a novelist and a journalist, and his novel El Indio,from which the following ex-
tract is taken, won for him in 1935 Mexico’s first National Prize of Literature. The
original edition and current English translations are illustrated by Diego Rivera. This
book reveals López y Fuentes to be an artist of both historical and ethnographic sen-
sitivity, yet the book itself is odd in that it is about no particular place or time. The
events depicted fictionally suggest that its ethnographic time and place are “some-
where in East Central Mexico sometime before, during and after the Revolution.”
The novel is tragic and ironic in that its protagonist is not a person but the col-
lective identity of marginalized Indian Mexico. The village represented here is a
Nahuatl-speaking community that could symbolize hundreds of other Indian com-
munities. For centuries the protagonists and their ancestors had fled from the land-
grabbing and labor exploitation of White and mestizo Mexicans into the mountain
fastnesses. Now, however (at the time of the novel), they are sought out, at the edge
of nowhere, by Whites and mestizos who demand that the Indians provide knowledge
of alleged hidden treasure. Subsequently they also demand from the Indians labor
service for public works related to the revolution in progress, which is intended to
“liberate” them.
In the passage that follows, the Indians have slain one of these abusive Mexicans
with a well-engineered rockslide, and they gird themselves for the consequences:All that night the rancheria buzzed with excitement. It was evident that the old men were
in council, and the villagers crowded around them, droning like a disturbed beehive.
The men who had just returned from work were told what had happened. Those
who had been in their own fields, those who had come up from the valley after their daily
labor in the haciendas, and those who had just finished their week as servants in the
houses of rich townspeople—all heard and gave their opinions, but they carried no weight.
The council of elders would decide.
The most important information was brought by one of the Indians just back from
service in the town. He had met two whites on horseback, one of them leading a pack
mule, and the other a riderless mount. It was clear from this that the fugitive treasure