After three centuries devoured by the jungle, Sak-Bahlán re-emerges

From the Editorial Staff

La Jornada Newspaper, Friday, July 25, 2025, p. 5

After three centuries of being abandoned and devoured by the jungle, the lost land of the white jaguar , Sak-Bahlán, is once again on the map. Using a predictive model based on the use of geographic information systems (GIS), Josuhé Lozada Toledo, a researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), developed a map for its location. This allowed the Sak-Bahlán Archaeological Project, co-directed by Drs. Brent Woodfill and Yuko Shiratori, from the University of Winthrop in the United States, and Rissho University in Japan, to make progress in locating what is considered the last city of the rebel Lacandons of Chiapas.

This book is about an ethnocide , thus begins The Peace of God and of the King (1988), a text by the historian and researcher Jan de Vos (1936-2011) about the colonial system that annihilated the Lacandones-Ch'olti'es, the last rebel Mayans of Chiapas, whose definitive stronghold, Sak-Bahlán, was spotted in 1695 by Friar Pedro de la Concepción, and which would soon be subdued and renamed Our Lady of Sorrows.

The search for the site in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve would have been fruitless without researcher Lozada Toledo's predictive model.

The researcher explains that in this place, the Lacandon-Ch'olti' maintained their independence for 110 years, after their capital, Lacam-Tún (Great Rock), was taken by the Spanish in 1586. Then, in 1721, it was abandoned and devoured by the jungle.

Using GIS, the specialist reconstructed the pre-Hispanic and historical communication routes of the Mayan groups. "I took data from the chronicle of Friar De Rivas, from 1698; for example, it tells of how that year, he and a troop of soldiers left Sak-Bahlán and walked four days to the Lacantún River. They sailed for two days and arrived at El Encuentro de Cristo, where the tributary joins the Pasión River, and left their canoes to then walk to Lake Petén Itzá, in Guatemala.

From those sites, which I had georeferenced, I made a conversion of the four days mentioned, from some point on the Lacantún River to Sak-Bahlán , he explains.

He explains that he considered variables such as the territory; that is, the altimetry and vegetation layers; the layer of water bodies and the weight of the cargo per person, which when combined helped develop the proposal on the map and obtain an approximate range of where Sak-Bahlán could be located .

This experience, in which Mexican archaeologists Rubén Núñez Ocampo and Socorro del Pilar Jiménez Álvarez also participated, is the most arduous fieldwork I have ever had in my life, but, finally, we found the archaeological evidence, right at the point I had marked , he noted in a statement issued by the INAH.

The site's location, near the Jataté and Ixcán rivers, is the beginning of a story that will intertwine viceregal chronicles and material evidence. To date, the archaeological project has conducted two field seasons to map the site and construct test pits to define its temporal occupation. The site was registered as a Sun and Paradise site by the research initiative, which has the endorsement of the INAH Archaeology Council. Probably Sak-Bahlán , in the Public Registry of Archaeological and Historical Monuments and Zones.