19 - Kruso’b and Soldiers: Parallels and Contrasts

Summary

The Caste War was without doubt a bitter and violent conflict that claimed numerous victims and led to the abandonment of many settlements, notably in the central part of the peninsula. The reasons for these deaths were manifold. People of both sexes and all age groups perished in battle or during assaults by rebel or government forces, died of starvation or, weakened by hunger and privation, succumbed to epidemics and disease. The chapter provides data on the number of army and rebel casualties and civilian victims of raids. Battles between large masses of combatants only occurred at the beginning of the war. Most of the fighting after that took place in the form of raids and surprise attacks on Yucatecan cantonments, towns, villages, haciendas and hamlets or rebel settlements. On the whole, casualty rates for this type of fighting were low, with the number of dead generally below ten in most single instances. However, since army thrusts and rebel raiding expeditions affected more than one settlement as a rule, casualties often added up to several dozen dead.