Ch'ols

The Chʼol are an indigenous people of Mexico, mainly in the northern Chiapas highlands in the state of Chiapas. As one of the Maya peoples, their indigenous language is from the Mayan language family, known also as Chʼol. According to the 2000 Census, there were 140,806 speakers of Chʼol in Chiapas, including 40,000 who were monolingual. The Maya regions can be divided into three eco-logical areas: Southern Lowland, Northern Lowlands, and highlands/pacific slope region. The northern area was important because of its salt production, limestone, and cacao production. The limestone was essential to the construction of the Mayan cities and sculptures. The highlands consist of volcanic areas that are surrounded by mountain ranges from the Chiapas to Southern Guatemala. The mountain peaks vary from . Additionally, the landscape is characterized by valleys with fertile land and large lakes. These characteristics made the region appealing to explorers who later exploited the locations abundant natural resources. In 1554, the Spanish military first invaded Lacandon jungle, where the Lakandon Chʼol and other indigenous groups lived. At the end of the 1550s, the Spanish invasion forced the Chʼol and other Mayan groups into settlements called Reducciones. Eventually, when the reducciones were split, the Chʼol were sent to the North, to Palenque, Tilá, and Tumbalá. The people sent to these regions were the ancestors of today's Chʼol. The Chʼol were forced to work on encomiendas until the Spanish crown gave them a document called the "cédulas reales" which granted them the land they had worked on for generations. In the 19th century, President Benito Juarez established a system of agrarian ejidos with the intent of changing the traditional system of production in Mexico. To establish the system, Juarez took away land from indigenous tribes such as the Chʼol. However, the ejidos did not provide enough natural resources to support the Chʼol people. As a result, the Chʼol began to move into the Lacandon Jungle.