ABSTRACT
The invention of chicle-based chewing gum in the United States
carried far-reaching implications for its geographical neighbor,
Mexico. William Wrigley had convinced millions of Americans
that they should buy his flavored gum. But at that very moment,
the resin for chewing gum was being fought over in the jungles of
the Yucatán Peninsula. In 1901 the chewing gum trust-made up
of five of the six largest manufacturers in the United States-was
established north of the border. Meanwhile, in Mexico, the
production and sale of chicle on the part of rebel Mayan Indians
or caciques was allowing them to buy arms to fight the Mexican
government.1 The Caste War of Yucatán, the name given to this
armed conflict, has been described as the last great indigenous
rebellion in the Americas. It was the largest and most protracted
of Mexico’s rural rebellions, and it played a central role in the
history of the country during the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. But the legends and myths surrounding the Caste War
were not confined to history. Today in Yucatán they still resonate
for many of the Mayan people, and they have provided inspiration
for modern popular dissent, much of it by ethnically Mayan
groups, such as the Zapatistas in Chiapas, a neighboring province.
