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Lands of henequen by Gabriela VargasCetina

Via Flickr:

The henequen is a spiky agave plant that put Yucatan on the international map at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth century. The invention of the McCormick hay baler created a demand for biodegradable twine that could be strong and not harm animals who might eat it. The henequen, originally known as Sisal because it was exported from the port of Sisal, in northern Yucatan, was an important element in the agrarian transformation of the North American Plains in the United States and Canada into monoculture cereal producing areas. The plant brought immense wealth to Yucatan, and great misery to the workers in charge of growing it and processing it to produce fibers. When the market switched to synthetic fibers for baling the economic dependence on henequen exports represented the economic bust of a whole region. Today the henequen plant remains a symbol of Yucatecan culture and political regionalism, but it is commerce and tourism that have superseded the plant as the main motors of the Yucatecan economy. Here we see, at the center of the picture, a henequen plant across from the main doors of Siglo XXI Convention Centre in the city of Merida.