A Regional History in Three Moments: Campeche from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This paper will demonstrate how, on one hand, the history of Campeche goes beyond the traditional historiography of the State, and on the other, how it provides the local perspective a varying density in terms of its periods and actors. From this point of view one can historically explain some of the references to the identity of today’s Campechanos, such as the boom in wealth created by the chicleros or palo de tinte, the legacy of Pablo Garcia or the peculiarities of local socialism in the 1920s, the beginning and development of PRI’s populism and caciquism in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the political groups that emerged at the end of the twentieth century. An overview of regional history from the Braudelian perspective, taking into account the short, medium and long-term view, offers the possibility of obtaining a much more complex and rich vision of the many histories of Campeche.