The Kingdom of the Talking Cross: A Mayan Success Story

Prologue​


At first glance, the existence of the independent Maya Republic is an anomaly in Latin American history: in a region dominated by the descendants of Spanish-speaking colonists, the Maya Republic predominantly consists of indigenous Mayas who choose to speak their own rather than Spanish (though this has been declining in recent years). While many Hispanic peoples in neighbouring countries are Roman Catholic, the Mayas still follow the Church of the Talking Cross, a syncretic religion that combines aspects of Catholic Christianity with pre-Columbian Mayan beliefs.

However, when studying the history of the people, it should come as no surprise that the Mayans managed to get as far as they are today. The Mayas, instead of existing in a single, unified state like the neighbouring Aztecs, were instead divided into many city-states that warred with each other. As a result, the Spanish conquistadors were forced to invade each city individually, a process that took centuries to complete, and stimulated resistance to the Spanish. The Caste War that led to the independence of the State of La Cruz, while being heavily supported by the British, was the natural consequence of the long-running Mayan resistance to Spanish colonial rule. Although the history of the Mayas in the 20th century was initally dominated by dictatorship and repression, especially in the Balamist Era and Mayan-Guatemalan War, the slow transition of the Maya state from a dictatorship to a democracy at the symbolic start of the 13th Baktun is seen by many as the completion of the slow road to freedom and prosperity for many Mayans.
 
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Very interesting, a post-colonization POD to create a Native American state is fascinating, rarely talked about, and as far as I know never been attempted in pre-1900.

That said, why is the Mayan state calling itself Mayan? Wouldn't it be named after the dominant Mayan ethnic group of the nation, or have they taken the name 'Mayan' as an appeal to pan-Mayan nationalism?
 
Very interesting, a post-colonization POD to create a Native American state is fascinating, rarely talked about, and as far as I know never been attempted in pre-1900.

The POD of this TL is that the Cruzobs, who were actual Mayan rebels during the 19th century, never lost support of the British during the Caste War fought between them and the Mexicans, and thus the Mayan state continues into the 20th century.

That said, why is the Mayan state calling itself Mayan? Wouldn't it be named after the dominant Mayan ethnic group of the nation, or have they taken the name 'Mayan' as an appeal to pan-Mayan nationalism?

Basically, yes. Initially, the Mayan state was a theocracy called the State of the Cross, like IOTL. However, in the 1930s, a right-wing nationalist group takes it over and names it the Mayan Republic, which had havy pan-Mayan nationalist themes in its propaganda (though in practices, "Mayan" basically meant "Yucatec"). When the nationalists were deposed, they simply keep the title, although "Mayan" is more of a catch all for all the different Mayan groups in the Republic, with each individual ethnic group (the Yucatecs, Lacandons etc) calling themselves that rather than Mayan (which was largely deprecated as an ethnic term during the nationalist period).
 
Nice idea, but there are a few problems. For starters, the term "Mayan" is incorrect in this usage. The demonym and adjective for the people and culture is "Maya", whereas Mayan is only the proper term for the language. And on that note Cruzob is already plural, -ob is the Mayan plural suffix. And Balamist era? Balam is the word for Jaguar, not any existing religion or movement or anything, and by the 19th Century would be unlikely for a name at all, most Maya had Spanish first names by this time and Balam wasn't a likely family name in the Yucatan. The biggest error would be the reference to the Long Count. The Long Count calender went out of use in the Classic Era, which ended roughly in the 8-900's. No matter how nationalist and traditional they want to be (given that this is the Cruzob as opposed to the original Maya rebels, they aren't that traditional), nobody's going to be adopting a calender that went out of use a thousand years prior and nobody until the late 20th Century could even translate glyphs well at all.

EDIT: Also, the idea of a "twelfth long count" doesn't make much sense anyways since there's only one Long Count, hence the name (it's not even what the ancient Maya called it, we just don't know the proper term so Long Count suffices). You might be thinking 12th baktun assuming you're referring to 2012 and all that.
 
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Nice idea, but there are a few problems. For starters, the term "Mayan" is incorrect in this usage. The demonym and adjective for the people and culture is "Maya", whereas Mayan is only the proper term for the language.

Ah. Thank you.

And Balamist era? Balam is the word for Jaguar, not any existing religion or movement or anything, and by the 19th Century would be unlikely for a name at all, most Maya had Spanish first names by this time and Balam wasn't a likely family name in the Yucatan.

The Balamists are something I made up for this TL, and the fact that it means Jaguar in Yucatec is intentional. They're a group of Mayan ultranationalists that take over La Cruz sometime in the middle of the 20th century, and eventually turn it into the Maya Republic that manages to be both a right-wing dictatorship that eschews diplomatic contacts with its neighbours and a 'Banana Republic' sort of country. Now that I think of it, though, this may be a little 'generic', especially with the United Fruit influence.

I initially planned for the founder of the Balamist movement to be called Balam (since I figured that by the time he's born, people are giving their children Mayan names as part of a sort of 'nationalist' gesture), who goes on to found a party called the Jaguar Party. Maybe I can reverse it- our 'Balam' is initially a person with a regular Spanish name, who later takes the native name after the Jaguar Party once he takes over.

The biggest error would be the reference to the Long Count. The Long Count calender went out of use in the Classic Era, which ended roughly in the 8-900's. No matter how nationalist and traditional they want to be (given that this is the Cruzob as opposed to the original Maya rebels, they aren't that traditional), nobody's going to be adopting a calender that went out of use a thousand years prior and nobody until the late 20th Century could even translate glyphs well at all.

Thanks. I remember reading somewhere that the Long Count calendar was still used for ceremonial purposes, so I assumed that our theocratic Cruzob would impliment it.

But even if TTL's Mayas still use the Georgian calendar, I think I'll still use the Baktun reference- I'd imagine that the modern Mayas of TTL would use the Long Count as a symbol of Maya nationalism, even if nobody really uses it, and using the end of the 12th Baktun instead of the millenium not only is more symbolic of the Mayas than the 2nd millenium, but it's also (obviously) a lot closer to the present than 2000.

EDIT: Also, the idea of a "twelfth long count" doesn't make much sense anyways since there's only one Long Count, hence the name (it's not even what the ancient Maya called it, we just don't know the proper term so Long Count suffices). You might be thinking 12th baktun assuming you're referring to 2012 and all that.

Yeah. I wasn't sure what term to use, and the Wiki article on baktuns was a bit confusing. :eek:
 
Thanks. I remember reading somewhere that the Long Count calendar was still used for ceremonial purposes, so I assumed that our theocratic Cruzob would impliment it.

But even if TTL's Mayas still use the Georgian calendar, I think I'll still use the Baktun reference- I'd imagine that the modern Mayas of TTL would use the Long Count as a symbol of Maya nationalism, even if nobody really uses it, and using the end of the 12th Baktun instead of the millenium not only is more symbolic of the Mayas than the 2nd millenium, but it's also (obviously) a lot closer to the present than 2000.
The problem is that it simply wasn't used for ceremonial purposes since the 800's as far as we know. You (or the source you read it from) probably got confused by the fact that there are 3 Maya calendars. There's the Haab, which is the civic calendar that has 365-day years and all that, then there's the Tzolk'in, the ritual calendar of 260 days that's still in use, albeit only in the Guatemalan highlands though nationalist Yucatec Maya could certainly adopt it. Then there's the Calendar Round which is a combination of the two and was the main method of recording history prior to the conquest though its use continued for a while. The Long Count differs in that unlike the calendar round it is not at all cyclical, it measures history all the way back to the supposed beginning and continues onward until the end of all things, which btw the Maya did not claim to predict at all.

Still, the problem would remain that the use of the Long Count would be problematic since not only has it been out of use for over a thousand years, but detailed knowledge of it was pretty much lost until the 20th Century, thanks to archaeology.
 
I think adopting the calendar round as the official calendar would probably be more than sufficient for our nationalist Yucatecs. Depending on the dates involved, if this is after the decipherment of the Long Count there could be a very silly and short-lived attempt to revive the Long Count as well, I suppose(something along the lines of the Pahlavis trying to revive Achaemenid ceremonial).
 
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