Starting in 2009, Dr. Jennifer Mathews (Professor of Anthropology Trinity University) and John Gust (PhD, 2016 – University of California, Riverside) began investigations of historic sites near the north coast Quintana Roo. This project continues Dr. Mathews’ work in the Historic Period of the region building on her investigations of the chicle, natural chewing gum base, industry and builds on Gust’s previous experience at the late nineteenth and early twentieth century lumber focused village of San Pedro Siris in the Cayo District of Belize.
Research has focused on the sugar and aguardiente (crude rum) production sites in the region. In 1847, Maya initiated a rebellion that is now known as the Caste War of the Yucatán seeking to rid the Mexican Yucatán of the European-descendant elites that were oppressing them. Maya rebels destroyed the existing sugar industry and, even once the rebels has been pushed to the southeast corner of the Peninsula, threats of raiding precluded the restart of the industry. In the early 1850s, the people of Kantunilkin, then and still the largest town near the north coast, settled with the Mexican government pledging to support Mexican military action to quell continuing raiding in exchange for limited self-government and an end to hostilities. Thus the north coast and areas to the south went from an area that was largely ignored because of its poor soils and lack of infrastructure, to an area that was seen as relatively safe and calm. This clam, along with large land grants from the Mexican government, led a number of companies and individuals, large and small, to found sugar mills in the region.
The project has focused on three sites. The most well-known of these sugar and rum production sites is San Antonio Xuxub, the site of the murder of the American operator Robert L. Stephens and subject of Paul Sullivan’s 2004 book “Xuxub Must Die”. The largest and best capitalized operation in the area was San Eusebio, owned by La Compania Agricola el Cuyo y Anexas, a company that also produced slat and exported other products like logwood and chicle. Far less is currently known about the third site, now known as Rancho Aznar, which had been operated by the Mexican business partner of Robert L. Stephens, Ramon Aznar, but the near lack of documentary evidence underlines the importance of archaeology as a source of information about the site. The focus of research has been on the reconstructing daily experience of workers employed and/or attached to the sugar mills by debt, and situating the sugar and rum produced on the North Coast within the larger economy of the Yucatán especially through the connection of aguardiente to henequen, the export of which made the Yucatán the richest region of Mexico around the turn of the twentieth century.
