From the dramatization of local legends to the staging of plays by Shakespeare and other canonical playwrights to the exploration of contemporary sociopolitical problems and their effects on women ...and children, Mayan theatre is a flourishing cultural institution in southern Mexico. Part of a larger movement to define Mayan self-identity and reclaim a Mayan cultural heritage, theatre in Mayan languages has both reflected on and contributed to a growing awareness of Mayans as contemporary cultural and political players in Mexico and on the world’s stage. In this book, Tamara Underiner draws on fieldwork with theatre groups in Chiapas, Tabasco, and Yucatán to observe the Maya peoples in the process of defining themselves through theatrical performance. She looks at the activities of four theatre groups or networks, focusing on their operating strategies and on close analyses of selected dramatic texts. She shows that while each group works under the rubric of Mayan or indigenous theatre, their works are also in constant dialogue, confrontation, and collaboration with the wider, non-Mayan world. Her observations thus reveal not only how theatre is an agent of cultural self-definition and community-building but also how theatre negotiates complex relations among indigenous communities in Mayan Mexico, state governments, and non-Mayan artists and researchers.
The present study investigates the seasonal and interannual morphodynamics on a micro-tidal sea-breeze dominated tropical beach located in the northern Yucatan peninsula (México). The coastal ...dynamics in the study area are controlled by both local (sea-breeze) and synoptic (Central American Cold Surge; CACS) scale atmospheric events. However, the net (westward) littoral drift is dominated by more persistent sea breeze events. The field study was conducted along a 2-km stretch of sandy beach located in the vicinity of two coastal structures. One hundred beach surveys (2000 beach profiles) were undertaken between May 2015 and June 2019 on a weekly and bi-weekly basis to investigate beach morphodynamics. Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of the morphological features are used to identify the dominant modes of beach variability. The first and second spatial EOF modes explain the beach long-term trend and rotation, respectively. The first spatial mode is highly influenced by the presence of the structures for all morphological features. The second spatial mode associated to beach rotation shows accretion (erosion) eastward (westward) of the structures during spring-summer (fall-winter) months. Field observations were employed to correlate the beach response with physical parameters (i.e., water level and wave parameters). The long-term trend of the shoreline and subaerial volume show no significant correlations with the physical parameters, whereas the temporal mode of the high-water contour presents a step-like behavior which is correlated to the still water level. On the other hand, beach rotation is highly correlated to the seasonal variability of wave parameters. Field observations suggest that increase of CACS events activity and water level during El Niño 2015–2016 winter season enhanced (decreased) the beach rotation (translation), implying a high beach sensitivity to climate variability in this region.
•A 4-year high spatial and temporal resolution beach monitoring program was conducted on a sea breeze dominated beach.•Tides, waves, and beach profiles are employed to investigate seasonal and interannual morphological changes.•EOF analysis of shoreline position and subaerial features are employed to determine the dominant modes of beach variability.•Beach rotation is found to be sensitive to climate variability.
This article investigates Yucatec Maya heritage and identity through the perspective of Indigenous ways of knowing. The focus is the work of Luis May Ku, a contemporary self-identified Yucatec Maya ...artist from the community of Dzan in the state of Yucatán (Mexico). It considers the interplay of heritage discourses and power hierarchies as they apply to his life in Dzan, in Coba, where he has been teaching, and his outreach to international bodies, like the British Museum, and global marketing. My analysis is a case study of the layered, fluid, shifting, and ambivalent notions of Maya heritage and identity. I situate his artwork and practice in a wider context of Indigenous identity struggles, as seen through Tim Ingold's relational model and other bottom-up heritage movements. These seek alternatives to capitalism, take strides to de-colonize land, and provide local lessons which - when applied more widely - can help make the more planet sustainable.
In this work, the spatial and temporal implications of the Non-Eastern Boundary Upwelling (Non-EBUS) on the bio-productivity from coastal shallow waters have been studied. At the coast of Cabo ...Catoche, on the Yucatán shelf, two 12-day field campaigns (April and July) were conducted. Cross-shore CTD-fluorescence profiles, water samples, and plankton were collected each day. Nutrients, ocean temperature and currents times series from two moorings (8 and 12 m depth) were analyzed, as were temperature and chlorophyll (Chl-a) from satellite data. The water masses from the Yucatan channel reached the coast of Cabo Catoche in both study periods. The Yucatan Upwelling Water (YUW, ~ 19.6–22.5 °C) supplied the surface and subsurface water, up to 6 km offshore, with nutrients during the upwelling pulses from 2 to 5 days. Nutrients were higher in April (nitrate, ammonium < 5, 18 μmol L−1), but the phytoplankton bloom was more consistent in July (Chl-a mean, 1.45 mg m−3) showing greater distribution across the coast. The steady upwelling plume (cold water, high nutrients) recorded in Cabo Catoche and observed on the north shelf, could have been the result of dynamic uplift in the Yucatan Channel prior to the field campaign. Through the way to the shelf, the plankton increased, explaining the high temporal association between low temperatures and the phytoplankton bloom at the coast. The Non-EBUS has strong implications for the pelagic ecosystem from Cabo Catoche, enhancing productivity and triggering energy flow by the physical process.
•The slope water intrusion pulses create phytoplankton bloom events on few days.•The slope water intrusion pulses have implications closer to the Cabo Catoche shore.•The physical-biological interactions are by short periods at the pelagic ecosystem.
Here we describe the left mandibular ramus of a fossil peccary from the submerged karst cave system in the southeastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The specimen, which was discovered in the Muknal ...cave northwest of Tulúm, is a new genus and species of peccary termed Muknalia minima. The taxon likely dates from the latest Pleistocene and differs significantly from all extant peccaries and their Pleistocene relatives by a concave notch at the caudal edge of the mandibular ramus and prominent ventrally directed angular process. These diagnostic osteological differences suggest that the masticatory apparatus differed from all other peccaries, which may hint to an ecological isolation on the late Pleistocene Yucatán Peninsula.
Because of differences in craniofacial morphology and dentition between the earliest American skeletons and modern Native Americans, separate origins have been postulated for them, despite genetic ...evidence to the contrary. We describe a near-complete human skeleton with an intact cranium and preserved DNA found with extinct fauna in a submerged cave on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. This skeleton dates to between 13,000 and 12,000 calendar years ago and has Paleoamerican craniofacial characteristics and a Beringian-derived mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup (D1). Thus, the differences between Paleoamericans and Native Americans probably resulted from in situ evolution rather than separate ancestry.
Indigenous Citizens challenges the commonly held assumption that early nineteenth-century Mexican state-building was a failure of liberalism. By comparing the experiences of two Mexican states, ...Oaxaca and Yucatán, Caplan shows how the institutions and ideas associated with liberalism became deeply entrenched in Mexico's regions, but only on locally acceptable terms.
Faced with the common challenge of incorporating new institutions into political life, Mexicans-be they indigenous villagers, government officials, or local elites-negotiated ways to make those institutions compatible with a range of local interests. Although Oaxaca and Yucatán both had large indigenous majorities, the local liberalisms they constructed incorporated indigenous people differently as citizens. As a result, Oaxaca experienced relative social peace throughout this era, while Yucatán exploded with indigenous rebellion beginning in 1847.
This book puts the interaction between local and national liberalisms at the center of the narrative of Mexico's nineteenth century. It suggests that "liberalism" must be understood not as an overarching system imposed on the Mexican nation but rather as a set of guiding assumptions and institutions that Mexicans put to use in locally specific ways.
The decline of the Classic Maya civilization was complex and geographically variable, and occurred over a ~
150-year interval, known as the Terminal Classic Period (TCP, C.E. 800–950). Paleoclimate ...studies based on lake sediments from the Yucatán Peninsula lowlands suggested that drought prevailed during the TCP and was likely an important factor in the disintegration of the Classic Maya civilization. The lacustrine evidence for decades of severe drought in the Yucatán Peninsula, however, does not readily explain the long 150-year socio-political decline of the Classic Maya civilization. Here we present a new, absolute-dated, high-resolution stalagmite
δ
18O record from the northwest Yucatán Peninsula that provides a much more detailed picture of climate variability during the last 1500
years. Direct calibration between stalagmite
δ
18O and rainfall amount offers the first quantitative estimation of rainfall variability during the Terminal Classic Period. Our results show that eight severe droughts, lasting from 3 to 18
years, occurred during major depopulation events of Classic Maya city-states. During these droughts, rainfall was reduced by 52% to 36%. The number and short duration of the dry intervals help explain why the TCP collapse of the Mayan civilization occurred over 150
years.
The concentration of biological particles in the atmosphere is widely variable because it depends on several meteorological and geographical factors. Meteorological conditions in tropical coastal ...cities are unique due to both marine and terrestrial influences that can strongly modify the concentration and diversity of airborne microorganisms. Nevertheless, very few studies have been conducted in tropical coastal cities.
This study presents the comparative results from four field campaigns carried out between 2017 and 2018 in two tropical cities located in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico): Sisal (a village right on the coast) and Merida (the State capital, 48 km from the coastline). The concentration of bacteria and fungal propagules, in colony-forming units or CFU per m3, sampled in Merida and Sisal are not comparable despite their proximity (i.e., 48 km away); however, both show similar seasonality and inter-annual trends. The results indicate that terrestrial microbiota dominates over that of marine origin, and show that fungal propagules are the dominant microorganism present at both sites. Also, these results indicate that meteorological conditions in the rainy season are more favorable for the growth of microorganisms than dry cold conditions.
The predominant culturable bacterial phylum sampled during the four field campaigns carried out in 2017 and 2018 in the Yucatan Peninsula were Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria. The fraction of bacteria that reacted to a Gram positive stain was 62% and to Gram negative 38%. The fungal propagules genera relative concentration varied between both sampling sites, with Cladosporium and Penicillium being the most common at the coast in Sisal and Aspergillus in Merida.
•Airborne microorganism concentrations were higher during the rainy season and likely related to higher temperatures and RH.•The long-range transport of microorganisms from other latitudes into the Yucatan Peninsula was confirmed.•Fungal propagules were the most abundant microorganisms, with higher concentrations than bacteria and actinobacteria.
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