San José Yalbac was a Maya village in the Yalbac Hills of north-western British Honduras, then part of the Cayo District and now in the Orange Walk District. With Settlement 484 it was one of the two largest villages of the San Pedro Maya.[1]
The village was founded by the San Pedro Maya, followers of Asunción Ek who had moved into western British Honduras to escape the Caste War in Yucatán. Their lands fell within the titles of the British Honduras Company, which became the Belize Estate and Produce Company in 1875.[1]
After Icaiche Maya under Marcos Canul attacked the Qualm Hill logging camp in 1866, the colonial government came to suspect the San Pedro Maya of siding with them. British troops marching on Settlement 484 were driven back in December 1866, and on January 29, 1867 a larger force returned and burned San Pedro Sirís and the hamlets around it, among them San José Yalbac; a few weeks later, in February 1867, Captain Carmichael led a second expedition against the San José group of settlements. The villagers fled but later returned and reoccupied the area.[1]
In the 1930s the Belize Estate and Produce Company, claiming the land, removed the villagers. According to the account of former residents, the company's men burned the houses and the church; the people saved their image of San José Labrador and were taken to Settlement 490, then by train to Settlement 479 and on to Settlement 186, where they founded Settlement 237.[2] On the weekend before March 23, 2021 a ceremony in San José Nuevo Palmar honoured Maximo Perez, the last alcalde of San José Yalbac, who had led the move, with the launch of a book about him.[3]
The village took its name from its patron saint, San José Labrador.[2] The site was spelled San Jose, without the accent, on the Directorate of Overseas Surveys maps from 1958 to 1980,[4][5] and San Jose Yalbac remained the usual spelling in the Belizean press into the 2020s; the accented San José Yalbac was used mainly in academic writing from around 2019.[1]
The village church was dedicated to San José Labrador, the village's patron saint; it was burned when the villagers were removed in the 1930s.[2]
In 1894, St. Peter Roman Catholic Church had 40 attendees.[6] In 1911[7] San José was a mission of the Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Settlement 15; from 1912[8] to 1913[9] it was attended from the Church of the Sacred Heart in Settlement 231; from 1914[10] to 1916[11] it was attended from the Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Settlement 15 and had 60 attendees; from at least 1928[12] to at least 1937[13] it was attended from the Church of the Sacred Heart in Settlement 231.