An Unexplored Realm in the Heartland of the Southern Gulf ... - Famsi

señorío, which included El Marquesillo, was adjacent and subordinate to the autonomous
Coatzacoalco (Delgado-Calderón 2000:28). Solcuahutla was inhabited by Mixe and
Popoluca speakers. Popoluca is a Nahuatl term meaning “foreigners” or those that do not
speak the Aztec language. The Popoluca tongue of southern Veracruz is associated with
Mixe-Zoquean languages, which is possibly a descendent idiom of the Olmec and
continues to be spoken in the vicinity of El Marquesillo (Campbell and Kaufman 1976;
Foster 1940, 1942; Justeson and Kaufman 2003; Scholes and Warren 1965).
Distinctive ceramic sculptural traditions similar to those from El Zapotal,
Remojadas, and others from Central Veracruz did not make their way into the regions
east of the Tesechoacán River. Stone yokes, hachas, and other stone sculpture that were
associated with the rubber ballgame during the Epi-Classic florescence of El Tajín in
northern Veracruz are not apparent in the region (see Bradley 2001; Filloy-Nadal 2001;
Ortíz and Rodríguez 2000).
Conversely, Drucker (1947:7) argues that during the Formative period the lower
reaches of the San Juan River were a “hopelessly uninhabitable morass of swamps [that]
prohibited a westward extension of Olmec culture.” He adds that, “while some commerce
may have been carried on through the tortuous network of channels that crisscross this
no-man’s land, intimate contact…seems to have been made impossible by this
geographic barrier.” The conclusion is that only limited sociopolitical interaction would
have penetrated through this border region in either direction.
Together, these various lines of evidence suggest that the region encircling El
Marquesillo was politically and economically insulated from western imperialist
incursions. The Papaloapan drainage is consistently referred to as the eastern terminus of
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