Descent groups and population mobility. The chi'bales and migration of the Maya in the eighteenth century

Abstract

Eighteenth Centur y Yucatan was marked by intense migration flows of the indigenous population that abandoned its villages of origin and moved to the numerous Spanish fincas, which were developing in the Peninsula. This ar ticle analyzes the essential features which outlined chi’bal or patrilineal lineage as one of the basic units of social organization of the colonial Mayas, and their role in population movements during the 18th Century. This paper is based on the notion that the displacements did not occur in a disconnected way, but rather were the result of impor tant political, social and even territorial transformations both in the place of origin and in that of reception. The central idea is that although migration affected cer tain spheres of native socio-political organization, it contributed to the perpetration of basic mechanisms of native communal life, such as lineage .