Epochs of colonialism: Race, class, and gender among Caste War Mayas of Quintana Roo, Mexico

After more than four hundred years, Spanish and Maya descendants in eastern Yucatan continue to mediate cultural practices by race, class, and gender. This dissertation documents ways in which transculturation in Yucatec history has influenced Caste War Maya strategies for dealing with the twentieth century and contemporary tourist era.;Organized into three major epochs, the study begins with the Colonial and Caste War era. Placing the history of Yucatan in the context of gender, Part I delineates historical and theoretical issues that address the concepts of race, class, gender, and sexuality among and between Spaniards and Mayas. Part I also challenges theoretical debates and assumptions about race and the "status of women," and identifies intersecting and mutually constituted forms of social stratification.;Analysis of the second epoch, which includes the political and economic disruptions of the early and middle twentieth century, shows how chicle and proletarianization transformed society. Power struggles, political polarization, and economic diversity among Caste War Mayas resulted in the marginalization of Tulum, where I did my fieldwork. During this period, the interdependence of women and men within a mixed commercial and subsistence-based economy tempered gender asymmetry. Nonetheless, as shown by the present research, proletarianization provided men with economic independence and new forms of power that were not equally available to women.;Finally, the study reveals how, in the highly dynamic, eroticized, power-laden tourist epoch in Tulum, Mayas, immigrant workers, and tourists negotiate their everyday encounters. Maya interpretation of social inequalities through the domains of religion, ecological degradation, and milpa work resulted in contradictory trajectories of change. Although the Iglesia Maya was revitalized, many men moved away from milpa and female/male economic interdependence. By documenting the various strategies that Maya women of different generations use to make sense of marital, sexual, and gender relations, this study shows that they continue to resist, appropriate, and transform cultural practices. Some women have become economically dependent on their husbands; many other young women, however, influenced by the culture of tourism, enjoy their sexual and economic power while distancing themselves from the world of romantic love and marriage.