The Peto parish, Yucatan: conformation, jurisdiction, economy and identity. XVI-XVIII centuries

Abstract

This article aims to gather evidence that would help us understand how the southern región of Yucatan was build, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Our field of study is the town of Peto and its parish jurisdiction, which evolved through time, decreasing the territory first stablished under Spaniard authority, to give way to new parishes that emerged after breaking away from the previous great ecclesiastical space. During this process, Peto became a cohesive curate with sufficient income and aviable land, delimited, at least partially, by a parish priest and one or two assistants.

Our work puts emphasis in the year 1783, when the parish was conformed by its municipal capital, four auxiliary villages and over a dozen haciendas and ranches that shared economic, manufacturing, religious, geographical and historical characteristics since the towns were part of a prehispanic cuchcabal, until the mid-nineteenth century, when they became the forefront of the Caste War. Under this premise, we date our work back to the sixteenth century, at the time when the Spaniards decided that Peto would become the vicarage of the secular clergy, which put the population of Peto early on between the main indian towns, which eventually became flooded with the prescence of creoles, mestizos and other castes who, in turn, found in Peto and its jurisdiction an interesting market based mainly on grains and cotton.