Terry Rugeley

Spanning the full breadth of Mexico's long and storied past in one compact volume, Epic Mexico provides an unparalleled view of Mexican history, at once comprehensive, succinct, and consistently engaging. The book's story reaches from the days of the saber-tooth tiger to those of its perhaps more dangerous modern counterpart, the narco-trafficker; and from the time of the Olmec and the Aztec through the Spanish Conquest to the complex pluralistic society of contemporary Mexico. Although the book does not shrink from today's urgent issues - including public violence, environmental challenges, public health problems, and struggles with diversity - historian Terry Rugeley underscores the many important accomplishments of the Mexican people over time, balancing political crises with genuine triumphs. Along with matters political and military, Epic Mexico addresses the development of the arts, including literature, music, and cinema. The volume also keeps an eye on the nation's long and often problematic relationship with its neighbor to the north. Though concise, Epic Mexico presents an inclusive portrait of Mexican history and society, exploring the varied roles and contributions of native ethnicities, Africans, women, immigrants, and peoples of different regional and religious orientations. It is the most thorough and thoroughly readable one-volume history of Mexico from antiquity to our day.

The River People in Flood Time tells the astonishing story of how the people of nineteenth-century Tabasco, Mexico, overcame impossible odds to expel foreign interventions. Tabascans resisted control by Mexico City, overcame the grip of a Cuban adventurer who seized the region for two years, turned back the United States Navy, and defeated the French Intervention of the early 1860s, thus remaining free territory while the rest of the nation struggled for four painful years under the imposed monarchy of Maximilian. With colorful anecdotes and biographical sketches, this deeply researched and masterfully written history reconstructs the lives and culture of the Tabascans, as well as their pre-Columbian and colonial past. Rugeley reveals how over the centuries, one colorful character after another sets foot on the Tabascan stage, only to be undone by climate, disease, and more than anything else, tenacious Tabascan resistance. Virtually the only English-language study of this little-known province, River People in Flood Time explores the ways in which geography, climate, and social relationships contributed to an extraordinarily successful defense against unwelcome meddling from the outside world. River People in Flood Time demonstrates the complex relationship between imperial forces in relation to remote parts of Latin America, and the way that resistance to external pressure helped mold the thoughts, attitudes, and actions of those remote peoples. Nineteenth-century Mexico was more a land of localities than a unified nation, and Rugeley's narrative paints an indelible portrait of one of its least known and most unique provinces.

This book explores the origins, process, and consequences of forty years of nearly continual political violence in southeastern Mexico. Rather than recounting the well-worn narrative of the Caste War, it focuses instead on how four decades of violence helped shape social and political institutions of the Mexican southeast. Rebellion Now and Forever looks at Yucatán's famous Caste War from the perspective of the vast majority of Hispanics and Maya peasants who did not join in the great ethnic rebellion of 1847. It shows how the history of nonrebel territory was as dramatic and as violent as the front lines of the Caste War, and of greater significance for the larger evolution of Mexican society. The work explores political violence not merely as a method and process, but also as a molder of subsequent institutions and practices.

Maya Wars is the first collection of documents devoted entirely to the nineteenth-century Yucatec Mayas. This compilation includes writings by priests, missionaries, Hispanic officials and military officers, foreign travelers and explorers, and the Mayas themselves. It follows the Mayas through the early national republic, the upheavals of the mid-century Caste War (1847-1901), the short-lived period of French Imperialism (1864-1867), and the repressive monoculture of the century's last two decades.Providing an unparalleled window into the daily lives of the rural Mayas, the book covers social organization, religion, family life, agriculture, recreation, military readiness, and medicinal beliefs and practices. In addition, rare captivity narratives offer insight into the experiences of prisoners of war held by Caste War rebels.Terry Rugeley's concise introductions to the documents and helpful notes place this material in historical and cultural context, and his clear translations of the Spanish and Maya documents into English make them easily readable.

2004 – Harvey L. Johnson Award – Southwest Council of Latin American StudiesIn the tumultuous decades following Mexico's independence from Spain, religion provided a unifying force among the Mexican people, who otherwise varied greatly in ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Accordingly, religion and the popular cultures surrounding it form the lens through which Terry Rugeley focuses this cultural history of southeast Mexico from independence (1821) to the rise of the dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1876.Drawing on a wealth of previously unused archival material, Rugeley vividly reconstructs the folklore, beliefs, attitudes, and cultural practices of the Maya and Hispanic peoples of the Yucatán. In engagingly written chapters, he explores folklore and folk wisdom, urban piety, iconography, and anticlericalism. Interspersed among the chapters are detailed portraits of individual people, places, and institutions, that, with the archival evidence, offer a full and fascinating history of the outlooks, entertainments, and daily lives of the inhabitants of southeast Mexico in the nineteenth century. Rugeley also links this rich local history with larger events to show how macro changes in Mexico affected ordinary people.

Conflicts between native Maya peoples and European-derived governments have punctuated Mexican history from the Conquest in the sixteenth century to the current Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. In this deeply researched study, Terry Rugeley delves into the 1800-1847 origins of the Caste War, the largest and most successful of these peasant rebellions.Rugeley refutes earlier studies that seek to explain the Caste War in terms of a single issue. Instead, he explores the interactions of several major social forces, including the church, the hacienda, and peasant villagers. He uncovers a complex web of issues that led to the outbreak of war, including the loss of communal lands, substandard living conditions, the counterpoise of Catholicism versus traditional Maya beliefs, and an increasingly heavy tax burden.Drawn from a wealth of primary documents, this book represents the first real attempt to reconstruct the history of the pre-Caste War period. In addition to its obvious importance for Mexican history, it will be illuminating background reading for everyone seeking to understand the ongoing conflict in Chiapas.