Yucatan caste

[Benjamin Preciado]

Dear Dr. Satkurunathan
thre are plenty of good books on the ancient peoples of Meso-america. The
classic account of their society is:
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex. General History of the things
of New Spain. Found in several editions.
For the Maya one of the latest and best is:
The Maya. Edited by Peter Schmidt and M. de la Garza, RCS Libri, 1998.
also:
Linda Schele, Forest of Kings. (sorry but I do not have the details of the
edition)

greetings
Benjamin Preciado.

-----Mensaje original-----
De: Raveen Satkurunathan [mailto:tawady at YAHOO.COM]
Enviado el: Martes, 13 de Febrero de 2001 04:37 p.m.
Para: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK
Asunto: Re: Yucatan caste


On Tue, 13 Feb 2001 13:46:28 -0600, Benjamin Preciado <bprecia at COLMEX.MX>
wrote:

>The Maya did not have any caste system. The New Spain society was divided
in
>castes by the europeans and this system was not taken from indigenous
>peoples. It was applied all over the territory and not only in Yucatan. It
>was based on race lines and the europeans had the highest ranking,
>indigenous peoples, african slaves and all the posible intermarriage
descent
>coming in the lower rankings.
>The indian revolt of Yucatan in the mid XIX century was called the Caste
War
>because this division of society was still remembered then.
>Benjamin Preciado

Dear Dr. Preciado,

While agreeing that the Spanish colonialists did introduce a Caste like
system in Latin America, we should still keep in mind that the indigenous
societies of what is today Latin America did have a societies divided along
class, mostly hereditary. I think what Dr. Ganesan is trying to find out is
the about the concept of pollution with respect to the kinds of jobs they
did (by birth) in determining their position in pre-Spanish indigenous
societies specifically with respect to the many Maya groups. I am pretty
sure that there should be relevant literature in this field. Anthropology
journals dedicated to Latin American pre-colonial societies should be of
some help. Thanks

Raveen