Yucatán (state)

Yucatan

Capital

Merida

surface

39,612 km² (rank 20 )

population

1,955,577 (Rank 21 )

Population density

48 inhabitants per km²
(2010 census)

governor

Mauricio Vila Dosal ( PAN )
(2018-2024)

Federal MPs

PRI = 2
PVEM = 1
PAN = 1
Morena = 1
(5 federal constituencies)

Senators

PVEM = 1
PRI = 1

ISO 3166-2

MX-YUC

Postal abbreviation

Yuc.

Website

www.yucatan.gob.mx

Yucatán [ ʄʝukaˈtan ], German also Yukatan , officially Free and Sovereign State of Yucatán ( Spanish Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán ) is a Mexican federal state that occupies the northwestern part of the peninsula of the same name . In the west and southwest it borders on Campeche , in the north on the Gulf of Mexico and in the south and east on Quintana Roo . It is divided into 106 Municipios . The capital is Mérida .

Some of the most important Mayan ruins such as Chichén Itzá and Uxmal are located in it .

history

In the Yucatán there are already centers from the classical period of the Maya culture . The historically and architecturally significant sites of this time include Sayil , Ek Balam , Kabah , Labná and Uxmal, numerous others. In addition to Chichén Itzá , I Paa is one of the many centers of post-classicism . Both successively dominated the entire north of Yucatán.

Political division of the Yucatán around 1500

Extract from the Codex Dresdensis which escaped the book burning in 1562

At the time of the Spanish conquest ( Conquista ) by Francisco de Montejo and his successors, there were around 11 independent Mayan rulers in the northern part of the Yucatán peninsula , some of which were bitterly conflicting . The conquest of the Yucatán could only be completed after 20 years, despite the disputes among the Mayaelites. The capital Mérida was founded in 1542 on the ruins of the religious center Ti'ho ', the city of Valladolid in 1545 on that of a cult site of the Cupul . Diego de Landa had all of the Maya codices that he got hold of burned in Maní in 1562 .

In the forming viceroyalty of New Spain , the northern part of the peninsula belonged to the “ Real Audiencia of Mexico ”, while the southern part was subordinate to the “ Audiencia de los Confines ”, which had its seat in Guatemala . For the northern part, the "Capitanía General de Yucatán" was set up in 1617, which was converted into the "Intendencia de Yucatán" with the Bourbon reforms in 1786. This area included the present-day Mexican states of Yucatán, Campeche , Quintana Roo , Tabasco and the area of Belize . A governor directed the administration.

In the course of Mexico's independence , a " República de Yucatán " was proclaimed in 1841 , which lasted less than ten years. This was followed by several attempts to separate from Mexico. In 1841 the Yucatán was divided into five distritos (districts), symbolized by five stars on the flag: Mérida, Izamal, Valladolid, Tekax and Campeche, with Campeche pursuing a different policy. At the end of the same year, a contract was signed which stipulated the incorporation of the Yucatán into Mexico with the granting of certain privileges. The Mexican central government under Antonio López de Santa Anna rejected this regulation and sent a small expeditionary army, which gave up in front of Mérida. In 1843 a new treaty was signed that confirmed the privileges, which were nevertheless revoked by the central government in 1845, whereupon the Yucatán declared itself again as independent.

In 1847 there was a separate government in Campeche. Shortly before, an American fleet unit had taken the city of Ciudad del Carmen , which belongs to Campeche . In order to avoid the consequences of the conflict between Mexico and the USA, Campeche declared itself neutral.

The Mayan uprising in the so-called caste war (Guerra de Castas, casta here in the meaning of 'ethnic and social groups') of 1847 had not been joined by groups living south of today's border between Campeche and Yucatán. This population, known as “Maya Pacíficos”, needed Campeche to meet the requirements of population size for a separate state, which remained unprovable due to the lack of censuses. The boundary between the two units therefore ran north of the Maya Pacíficos through largely unpopulated and uncontrolled terrain and could therefore be defined as a connecting line between points that were only defined by coordinates, which is currently being followed by a legal dispute. The so-called " Punto Put " became the apex of the border line . After the early collapse of the Caste War, only an ever smaller region in the east of the peninsula around Chan Santa Cruz , today Felipe Carrillo Puerto, remained outside the area actually controlled by the Yucatec government.

Even after the conquest of Chan Santa Cruz in 1901, the Yucatan government did not gain full control over the region. It was therefore spun off from Yucatán as federal territory under the name Quintana Roo and initially administered militarily and has only been a separate state since 1974.

population

year	population
1950	516,899
1960	614.049
1970	758.355
1980	1,063,733
1990	1,362,940
1995	1,556,622
2000	1,658,210
2005	1,818,948
2010	1,955,577
2015	2,097,175

Biggest cities

city	Population 2000 (census)	Population 2010 (census)
Merida	662,530	777.615
Kanasín	37,674	77,240
Valladolid	37,332	48,973
Tizimín	39,525	46,971
Uman	26,657	39,611
Progreso	44,354	37,369
Ticul	28,502	32,796
Tekax de Álvaro Obregón	21,580	25,751
Hunucmá	20,978	24,910
Motul de Carrillo Puerto	19,868	23,240
Oxkutzcab	20,244	23.096

Web links

Commons : Yucatán - collection of images, videos and audio files

State homepage (Spanish)

20.711666666667 -88.919444444444Coordinates: 20 ° 43 ′ N , 88 ° 55 ′ W