The legacy of the Caste War remains among the Mayan people. They still leave offerings of flowers at the little church in the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, where the Talking Crosses first appeared.
Anastasio Garcia, 72, a deacon at the chapel, said his grandfather Francisco Chan described the hardship among the rebels and Indians who, like Chan, fled the violence.
"People had to go live in the jungle," Garcia said. "There was no food, except for maybe some rotten fruit fallen from the trees, like zapote. They ate that, even though it was rotten."
Yet Garcia says the war made life better for the Mayan people.
"Before [the uprising] we lived without liberty, we were like slaves," he says. "Now, we live in peace. Free."
The voices coming from the Talking Crosses were later found to be the work of a ventriloquist hired by a mestizo rabble-rouser. The rebellion -- with its violence and suffering -- appears to have brought the Maya few gains.
Their survivors live mostly on bone-dry farms in the southern part of the state, far from the tourist-generated riches of Cancun. Their modest fishing villages have long ago been taken over by beach resorts.
In rural Mexico, violent massacres persist even today, again resulting from long-simmering land disputes. Only this time, the violence is mainly Indian-on-Indian, and often fueled by poorly drawn boundaries and land reform programs that assigned the same plots twice to different groups.
A year ago, a land dispute in southern Oaxaca state prompted an ambush that left more than two dozen men dead. Similar motives were partly to blame for the massacre of 45 Indians in Chiapas in 1997.
"We have some communities in Oaxaca killing each other over land title disputes that go back to colonial days," said Rodolfo Stavenhagen, a UN official who deals with Indian rights.
Fears of more violence led about 50 protesters to demonstrate outside government security offices in Mexico City in May to demand police protection after their Oaxaca village -- Santa Maria Tataltepec -- was surrounded by armed men from a neighboring community.
The two towns are locked in a decades-long battle over a disputed stretch of farm land. Men on both sides have been killed, showing that the potential for violence in rural Mexico is as real today as it was in the 1850s.
"We just don't want to repeat the old pattern of authorities waiting to act until after the massacre has happened," said protester Ever Juan de Dios.
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