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

number of surrounding smaller subsidiary site complexes implies power and control, as
they are thought to at San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes, then El Marquesillo may
also have played a significant role in southern Veracruz as well.
The rise of Tenochtitlán and the expansion of the Aztec Empire in the Late Post
Classic period created tribute states along El Marquesillo’s distant western edges. It may
have been possible for the inhabitants of the Middle San Juan to provide economic
assistance to the tribute payers on their perimeter by producing and supplying exotic
goods. Nevertheless, El Marquesillo and its environs were not part of the Empire and
remained beyond the scope of the Mexíca tax collectors at the time of the Spanish arrival.
Doubtlessly, the populations at El Marquesillo suffered the decimation by disease
documented for the Coatzacoalcos Basin in the 16 th and 17 th centuries.
The surviving indigenous people that remained in the area were effectively
supplanted by European colonialists and people from Africa and the Caribbean, who
along with mestizos and others occupied the land practicing agriculture, cattle and horse
breeding. Then, 200 years later, the 20 th century descendants of many of those Colonial
period inhabitants achieved recognition by the Mexican government as the land’s legal
occupants. Today, the people of the ejido of El Marquesillo, relative to the world around
them, continue to live in a conservative tradition that appears to have served their
predecessors well.
The Olmec throne, known to contemporary residents by the respectful title of “El
Señor de Marquesillo,” was moved to the center of the ejido following its rescue. Today,
it resides within a protected but open pavilion that was specially constructed for it by the
inhabitants. This monumental block of basalt tangibly binds together the people of El
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