The city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto hosted festivities from October 15 to 17 for the first time since March 2020! This celebration was for the 171st anniversary of Carrillo Puerto’s founding. With the majority of the community vaccinated (18+) and the state government reporting a decline in the number of COVID-19 cases, the municipal government sponsored a three-day celebration that included music, dance, art, food and even a 5k race with participants from across the state!

The celebration began with a tour of historically significant landmarks in Carrillo, including the Iglesia Santa Cruz (its Maya name is XBaalam Naj, or House of the Jaguar). The Parque Principal Ignacio Zaragoza, where you can also find the Iglesia Santa Cruz or XBaalam Naj, was at the heart of the festivities. The parque is a familiar spot for Na’atik students, as this is where our Coordinator gives students the bienvenida to the city. One needs to look no further than the parque to learn about the founding of the city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

Just like any 171-year story, the history of Felipe Carrillo Puerto is complicated and not easily condensed into a few lines. Though today the closest thing you’ll hear to a gunshot in Carrillo is an old car backfiring, the city’s early days were punctuated with the gunshots of the Guerra de Castas (the Caste War). Not revolving around actual castes (there is a recent movement to rename and reframe the conflict as the Guerra/Lucha Social Maya),  the conflict, which started in 1847, pitted agrarian workers and Maya separatists against rich hacienda owners backed by the young Mexican federal government. 

The charismatic leaders of the Guerra wove ancient Maya and contemporary (for the time) Christian beliefs into a religious movement called the Cruzo’ob movement. While they had churches scattered around present-day Quintana Roo, one of the most important was right here in Carrillo. Based around a small cenote which was the city’s main water source at the time, the Santuario de la Cruz Parlante (The Sanctuary of the Talking Cross) was the lifeblood of Carrillo, literally and spiritually. 

No war is good, and the Cruzo’ob movement committed its share of wartime brutality, as did the Mexicans who fought against them. But the Cruzo’ob tried to organize an independent Yucatán where the local Maya owned the land they worked and weren’t exploited. When British Belize pulled their support for the Cruzo’ob movement and stopped supplying the soldiers with weapons, they were never able to recover steam.

In 1901, Carrillo, then named Chan Santa Cruz, was the site of a treaty to end one of the largest indigenous uprisings in the post-colonial era. 

After that, there were a few important uprisings, especially against owners of large chicle (gumtree) businesses, but compared to the first decades of the city’s history, it began to get quiet in Carrillo.

First, Mexican President/dictator Porfirio Diaz created Quintana Roo as a Mexican territory in 1902. Today, the Yucatán Peninsula is divided into three states: Yucatán, Campeche, and Quintana Roo (with Quintana Roo becoming a state in 1974). But at the turn of the 20th century, the Yucatán Peninsula used to be just one state--Yucatán. After the ‘white’ Spanish-Mexicans gained great wealth and power from the henequén boom in the western part of the then Yucatán, they didn’t want their wealth drained by supporting the eastern, non-colonialized Maya jungle, so they created Quintana Roo as a separate territory. After the creation of the territory of Quintana Roo, Chan Santa Cruz (now Carrillo), was named the capital for a short period before it was moved south to the current capital of Chetumal, then called Othon P. Blanco. 

Shortly after, in the 1920s, a young firebrand politician appeared and won the governorship of the state of Yucatán. In a few years, he fought for women’s rights to vote, built more than 400 schools, became the first governor to give a speech in the Maya language, and . . . made a lot of people very angry, some of whom eventually killed him. His name was Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and the city formerly known as Chan Santa Cruz took his name in honor of the sacrifice he made for the Maya people. 

Over the last century, many Carrilloportenses have played important roles in the formation of the Quintana Roo business community. For example, the development of the chicle industry has long served as a source of stable, if difficult, employment for people in the communities around Carrillo, and it has inspired regional art, culture, and even movies. In fact, the famous Mexican singer Pedro Infante who had a stake in chicle harvesting and enjoyed getting his contraband alcohol in the Quintana Roo free zone from Belize, used to fly his private jet into Carrillo and thrill the local children by sharing candy with them in the parque central.

Even as Cancún became developed in the 1970s, and then Playa del Carmen grew, and then Tulum grew, Carrillo stayed fairly small. This meant natural resources like the beautiful lagoons scattered across the landscape like paint splotches were left alone. But to call it a sleepy little town would do it a disservice. At the intersection of roads to major cities like Cancún, Chetumal, and Merida, there are days when it feels positively bustling. 

The city’s history in the latter part of the 1900s has resulted in the fruition of many of the goals the Cruzo’ob fought for over 100 years ago. Each anniversary is a celebration of these victories, and a call to gird ourselves (ponernos las pilas) to protect this dream from future challenges.

Watch some of the festivities from the anniversary!

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The best way to experience the Mexican lifestyle is in person, with a Na’atik Immersion experience. Not only do you live with a local Mexican-Maya family, sharing home-cooked meals and free time, but also receive expert instruction in your chosen language at our school. Best of all, every immersion experience helps fund our subsidized and free local education program, helping local students to access opportunities and make their own futures.