Last Cupuls
By:

Dr. Raúl Mendoza Rejón

English Version:
Mrs. Carol Nash

Revisión Técnica de la Versión en Ingles:
Lic. Frank A. Pool Cab E.D.
Coordinador de inglés de la Facultad de Educación de la Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán.

 PREFACE

The Maya as a people and as a culture did not vanish into space. They did not leave and go to Asia or anywhere, for that matter. They did leave the cultural religious centers and returned to small villages where they went on with life growing corn, squash, beans and other vegetables. They hunted deer, pheasants and wild turkey for meat and raised pigs and chickens.

            After the Spanish Conquest of the Mayab, life for the individual Maya became increasingly difficult. The "White Spanish" were called "Ts'uul" and held a much higher station in life than the Maya who considered themselves to be Indians or "Máasewaal".

This race distinction exists even today in the Mayab and has been the source of countless battles between the Maya and the "Whites". Even today the distinction is very evident.

            The Maya felt persecuted by the Ts'uul, and history shows this to be true. The Ts'uul took land wherever they pleased and the Máasewaal in these areas were collected and put to work for little or no pay.

The Ts'uul built plantations and factories exploiting the labor of the Maya masses.  Spanish slavers hauled thousands of Maya to the mines in northern Mexico where most died.

But, the struggle between the races was not merely manifested in forms of near slavery as this was only part of the problem. Besides bringing diseases from Spain that killed entire villages of the Maya, the whites built cities on top of sacred Maya Temples.

They had no understanding of the spiritual life of  the Maya. This became a problem that brought the Ts'uul and the Máasewaal to the point of bloodshed, on numerous occasions.

            The Maya wanted to hold on to their culture. The culture and lifestyle that had sustained them for thousands of years. So many of the Maya moved away from the Ts'uul. Entire villages pick up and left the lands of their ancestors. As far away from the whites as they could get.

They went into uninhabited parts of the jungle from Guatemala and Belize to the wilds of Chiapas and even into the southern remote lands of Quintana Roo. And there, in these places, they tried to live free from the ever changing world of the Ts'uul.

David L. Smedley Calvert,

Valladolid, Yucatan, 2000

Last Cupuls
Index

Chapter 1         The Encounter

Chapter 2         Childbirth

Chapter 3         The Town

Chapter 4         The Capture

Chapter 5         Jacinto

Chapter 6         Escape and Sacrifice

Chapter 7         Black Small Pox

Chapter 8         Trip to Belize

Chapter 9         Hunting

Chapter 10       Jancinto and Lola

Chapter 11       Return from Belize

Chapter 12       Day of the holy cross

Chapter 13       The rural teacher

Chapter 14       Trip to Tok'tuunich

Chapter 15       Arriving in the village

Chapter 16       Return to Tok'tuunich

Chapter 17       Chucbac

Chapter 18       Winds of rebellion

Chapter 19       Leonor and Marcelo

Chapter 20       The wedding

Chapter 21       The Jaguar

Chapter 22       Tuluum

Chapter 23       Life and Death

Chapter 24       Presidential Trip

Chapter 25       Cupul Flies

Chapter 26       Medical Brigade

Chapter 27       Tzaab-Kaan

Chapter 28       Credit Bank

Chapter 29       The Highway

Chapter 30       MariJuana

Chapter 31       Elections

Chapter 32       Epilogue

Vocabulary Maya