Lacandon People - History

History

When scholars first encountered them in the early 20th century, they thought that the Lacandon were the direct descendants of ancient Classic Maya people who fled into the rainforest at the time of the Spanish Conquest and remained linguistically and culturally pristine ever since. They made that assumption because the Lacandons' physical appearance and dress is so similar to the way the ancient Maya portrayed themselves in their murals and relief carvings. Scholars were also impressed by the fact that “the Lacandon resided near the remote ruins of ancient Mayan cities, had the knowledge to survive in the tropical jungle, and were neither Christian nor modernized”. They thought that these native people were pure Maya untouched by the outside world. But in recent years researchers have revealed a more complex and interesting story for the Lacandon.

Scholars have now shown that the Lacandon are the result of a coming together of various lowland Mayan refugee groups during the period of Spanish colonial rule. Their “language, clothing, and customs derive from several different Colonial Era Mayan ethnic groups”. It appears that the Lacandon possess multiple origins and that their culture arose as different lowland Mayan groups escaped Spanish rule and fled into the forest. There was a blending of cultural elements as some traits of varied origin were retained while others were lost. The Lacandon seem to have arisen as a distinct ethnic group as late as the 18th century, meaning that they “cannot be the direct descendants of the ancient Maya since their culture did not exist before it was generated through inter-indigenous interaction”.

The Lacandon seem to have originated in the Campeche and Petén regions of what is now Mexico and Guatemala and moved into the Lacandon rainforest at the end of the 18th century, a thousand years after the Classic Maya civilization collapsed. Unlike other indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica, though, they were not strongly affected by outside forces until the 19th century. While other Indians were living under the control of the Spanish, the Lacandon lived independently deep in the tropical forest. Their freedom allowed them to manage their contact with the outside world in a controlled way. Preserving their ethnic identity was not as effortless, though. The Lacandon deliberately remained in small, isolated groups in order to resist change. They used their inaccessibility and dispersed settlement pattern to protect their traditions.

Outsiders avoided the Lacandon region for centuries due to frightening legends about the dense tropical forest. The Spanish—and later the Mexicans, after they gained their independence—sometimes made efforts to settle the region, but failed due to the lack of financial and political support. For generations the only connections the Lacandon had to the outside world came through trade. The Lacandon “often initiated sought metal tools, salt, cloth, and other European goods”. Outsiders, for their part, also desired goods from the forest, such as timber, animal skins, and fruits. Although trade was slow and infrequent, it did take place and it allowed for an intermingling of culture and material goods.

In the 19th century, outsiders looked toward the forest for valuable timber and new lands for farming. As the 19th century progressed, farmers and ranchers invaded the area, and the Lacandon withdrew farther into the forest, losing more and more land on the periphery of their territory. The Lacandon survived outright conquest, though, by adopting a flexible strategy that led them to accept, resist, or retreat from the imposing foreign culture depending on the circumstances.

By the late 20th century, though, the Lacandon were in frequent contact with outsiders within the area that had been their heartland. This resulted in territorial shifts, disease, and new powerful cultural influences. As logging began on a massive scale, the Lacandon came into contact often with forest workers, which resulted in wage work for some and an overall transformation of their culture, a process that continues to the present time. As development in the area took place, the Catholic Church established mission churches which converted many Lacandon. The Lacandon were drawn into the revolt of indigenous peoples that took place in the area in the 1980s and 1990s. They endured the pressure of cultural change as never before in their history. Their strategy of many generations to withdraw into the forest to preserve their traditional way of life now failed them. The outside world came crashing in.

In 1971 a Mexican presidential order turned 614,000 hectares over to the Lacandon Community, thereby recognizing the land rights of this relatively small group of indigenous forest dwellers over the more numerous settlers, who had been enouraged to colonize the Lacandon Forest under previous government policies. But this did not put an end to the Lacandons' troubles. Ironically, this effort to save Lacandon culture resulted in enduring tensions between the Lacandon and their neighbors.