Venture-Out
El Mayab (The Mayan Homeland)
F ounded on the razed Mayan site of Zaci in 1542, Valladolid ( Place of the Battle in Spanish) became the major, easternmost settlement of the peninsula's Spanish Colonialism emanating from its western capitol at Meridá.
Guarding a frontier characterized by the ever-more europeanized plains of Spanish colonization to its west, and the ever wilder refuge of Mayan civilization to its east, Valladolid's history and character was cast -a character whose stance towards east or west was marked by the periodic visitations of fireballs prompting the town's clergy to exorcise the whimsical diablos until the exorcism of the town's clergy and dzules (whites) themselves with the greatest fireball of them all: 'The War of the Castes' -a conflagration which quickly became region-wide, the longest and, casualty-wise, most destructive war in the history of the Americas.
