Black Belizeans and Fugitive Mayas: Interracial Encounters on the Edge of Empire, 1750–1803
In 1796, the commander of die Guatemalan presidio of Peten, Jose de Galvez, together with its leading prelate and the caciques of the nearby pueblos of San Andres and San Jose, registered a formal complaint: an increasing number of runaway black slaves from Belize taking refuge there had been marrying Maya women in their villages. The officials objected to these unions, stating that they did not want “their blood mixed with these newly Christian blacks” and alleged that the asylum seekers took Maya brides in thinly disguised attempts to exploit native female labor. The cacique of San Andres, don Raimundo Chata, backed by the leading civil and ecclesiastical authorities in a rare moment of unity, advocated the removal of the escaped slaves to a site set aside for blacks on the other side of Lake Peten (see map in Figure 1). The result of this proposed policy of segregation was the creation of a “new pueblo for blacks converted to the faith.”