Abstract

CAMPOS GOENAGA, María Isabel. On Tempests, Whirlwinds and plagues of locusts: The 16th-18th Centuries in the Yucatán Peninsula. Relac. Estud. hist. soc. [online]. 2012, vol.33, n.129, pp.125-160. ISSN 2448-7554.

As both Prehispanic Mayan society and the colonial society that followed were agrarian-based polities, the crises caused by delays in the onset of the rainy season, by excessive rains, or by the presence of plagues, such as locusts, were not only agricultural in nature but threatened people's very subsistence. This article examines and profiles the nature of those adverse natural phenomena during the centuries of colonial domination, relating them to the agricultural cycle and to their effects on the Indigenous population, in light of certain characteristics of a colonial system based on tribute and forms of forced labor.

Keywords : hurricanes; plagues of locusts; starvation; Yucatán; colonial period.