Conflict and carnage in Yucatán : liberals the Second Empire and Maya revolutionaries 1855 1876 Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán centers on the failure of liberal ideology during the little known 1855 1876 period in Mexico. During this period Mexican liberals insisted on regional autonomy free trade civic rights and suppressing the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church. Yet argues Douglas W. Richmond liberal politicians and regional leaders committed the fatal error of seizing Maya communal lands which resulted in the largest peasant revolution nineteenth century Latin America. The Maya insurrection continued as a French supported Second Empire attempted to improve socioeconomic conditions throughout Mexico. Although the imperial government eventually failed its Yucatecan representatives reformed the embattled peninsula more than heretofore recognized. Finally the liberals returned to power in 1867 but once again their policies during the Restored Republic resulted in self serving repression The Yucatán Peninsula has one of the longest most multifaceted histories in the Americas. With the arrival of Europeans native Maya with long and successful cultural and diplomatic traditions of their own had to grapple with outside forces attempting to impose new templates of life and politics on them. Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán provides a rigorously researched study of the vexed and bloody period of 1855 to 1876 during which successive national governments implemented replaced and restored liberal policies. Synthesizing an extensive and heterogeneous range of sources Douglas W. Richmond covers three tumultuous political upheavals of this period. First Mexicos fledgling republic attempted to impose a liberal ideology at odds with traditional Maya culture on Yucatán; then the French backed regime of Emperor Maximilian began to reform Yucatán; and finally the republican forces of Benito Juárez restored the liberal hegemony. Many issues spurred resistance to these liberal governments. Instillation of free trade policies the suppression of civil rights and persecution of the Roman Catholic Church mobilized white opposition to liberal governors. The Mayas fought the seizure of their communal properties. A long standing desire for regional autonomy united virtually all Yucatecans. Richmond advances the thought provoking argument that Yucatán both fared better under Maximilians Second Empire than under the liberal republic and would have thrived more had the Second Empire not collapsed. The most violent and bloody manifestation of these broad conflicts was the Caste War (Guerra de Castas) the longest sustained peasant revolt in Latin American history. Where other scholars have advocated the simplistic position that the war was a Maya uprising designed to reestablish a mythical past civilization Richmonds sophisticated recounting of political developments from 1855 to 1876 restores nuance and complexity to this pivotal time in Yucatecan history. Richmonds Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán is a welcome addition to scholarship about Mexico and Yucatán as well as about state consolidation empire and regionalism