The Mexican territory of Quintana Roo was created in 1902 at the end of the long Guerra de las Castas (1847–1901). The Mexican government's victory in the war, fought largely against Maya rebels, had finally ended the old dream of an independent Yucatan. However, the eastern part of the Yucatan peninsula bordering the Caribbean to the east and Belize (at that time the colony of British Honduras) to the south lacked both a loyal population and an administration. The territory of Quintana Roo, its border with British Honduras settled only in 1893, was supposed to provide the solution to both problems.
A capital (Payo Obispo, later called Chetumal) was created for the new territory at the mouth of the Río Hondo that forms the boundary with Belize and a governor was appointed. However, the population of the whole territory was tiny (one person per five square kilometres) and it would take many decades before Quintana Roo (a state from 1934 onwards) would experience the rapid population growth that is such a marked feature of the Yucatan peninsula today.
One group, however, did show an interest in migrating to Quintana Roo, and that was black Belizeans. Indeed, as this outstanding book by Elisabeth Cunin shows, they were present in the territory even before it was created in 1902. By 1910 Belizeans (called ‘Ingleses’ in the census) were roughly one-quarter of the territory's population. Although the proportion would decline in later years as the population grew, it was still in double figures as late as 1940.
What brought so many Afrobeliceños to Quintana Roo? Cunin provides a wealth of detail on the individuals involved, from doctors to merchants to labourers. Most came as part of the expansion of Belizean forestry operations across the Río Hondo that involved the extraction of mahogany, logwood and chicle. Not all stayed, many returning at the end of their contracts, but some did and have contributed to the circular migration between Belize and Quintana Roo that still exists today.
The labourers who came were usually employed by companies whose owners and managers played a crucial role in organising the flow of migrants. One of the most important was a Belizean called Robert Sydney Turton, whose father was a white British army officer and mother a black Belizean. Turton was so successful that his Mexican competitors eventually conspired to deny him a licence to operate in Quintana Roo. By then he had become the first Belizean millionaire and would launch George Price, the nationalist hero who took Belize to independence, on his political career. He is therefore seen today as a key figure in the struggle against British colonialism on behalf of the black and mestizo population. Interestingly, however, Cunin reproduces Turton's immigration card issued by the Mexican authorities in which he gives his race as ‘white’.
Cunin's book is an excellent account of Belizean migration into Quintana Roo from 1902 to 1940, but it is much more than that since it explores black migration into Mexico as a whole. This included migration from Texas into northern Mexico as well as migration into Yucatan from parts of the Caribbean and Central America other than Belize. Evidence of discrimination in most of Mexico against blacks recorded by Cunin is widespread, but she is careful to distinguish this with the greater tolerance towards black migration shown in Quintana Roo. She attributes this to the desperate need for population that the territory experienced in its first few decades.
Cunin has dug deep into the archives to write this book, which she supplements with fascinating photographs, graphs and tables. Originally written in French, it has been excellently translated into Spanish by Silvia Kiczkovsky. It has been jointly published by the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) Mexique, both located in Mexico City.
