The Henequen Ports of Yucatan’s Gilded Age

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.

marco conceptual para el emprendimiento y la innovación social en México

“…Improvements in technology continued throughout the auge, and with the introduction of steam power to the machine house in 1861, henequen production soared (Wells, 1982, p. 229). What then followed is a well-researched (Joseph & Wells, 1982;Brannon & Baklanoff, 1987;Wells, 1992;Yoder, 1993;Ramírez, 1994;Garcia de Fuentes & Morales, 2000;Alston et al, 2008;Andrews et al, 2012) economic boom for the henequen industry that lasted for about 50 years (Figure 6): At large, this period coincided with the Porfiriato, in which even harder conditions were imposed on the indigenous peoples of Yucatán: During the era of Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911) the misery of the nation's large Indian population increased substantially. Pick up any recent scholarly work on modern Mexico, and you will probably find a documented account of the way in which Diaz' policies intensified the sufferings of an already oppressed people (Powell, 1968, p. 19).…”

Agave as a model CAM crop system for a warming and drying world

“…The widespread planting of the Sac Ki cultivar ultimately led to the demise of several other landraces. Growth of the henequen fiber industry continued into the early 1900s with the widespread use of fiber-extracting machinery, which facilitated mass production (Andrews et al, 2012 ). The industry peaked between 1910 and 1914, but declined over the next several decades with many of the plantations becoming abandoned by the 1950s (Andrews et al, 2012 ).…”

“…Growth of the henequen fiber industry continued into the early 1900s with the widespread use of fiber-extracting machinery, which facilitated mass production (Andrews et al, 2012 ). The industry peaked between 1910 and 1914, but declined over the next several decades with many of the plantations becoming abandoned by the 1950s (Andrews et al, 2012 ). The initial blow to the industry occurred in 1915, with the abolition of indentured servitude during the Mexican Revolution.…”

Coloniality in the Maya Lowlands: Archaeological Perspectives

“…Archaeological studies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the Maya lowlands are almost nonexistent. Post-transitional historical archaeologies have not been entirely ignored in the subfield of Maya studies, but they tend to be represented by one-off articles or as a single chapter in a larger volume dedicated to work on the deeper past (Miller and Farriss 1979;Arías López and Burgos Villanueva 2001;Yaeger et al 2004;Mathews and Lizama-Rogers 2005;Palka 2005;Andrews, Burgos Villanueva, and Millet Cámara 2006;Martos López 2010;Andrews 2012a;Ramsey 2016;Kaeding 2017;Mathews and Gust 2017). Work on transitions from the Late Postclassic to Early Postconquest periods may be thriving, but archaeological research on eras following that transition is scarce.…”