In 1839, the Yucatecan elites revolted against the existing centralist government, severing political ties to Mexico. The revolutionary movement enlisted Maya peasants with the promise of freedom from taxes and guaranteed land rights. Finding the Maya eager and willing to fight, the revolutionaries armed the Maya and mobilized them in great numbers against the existing government forces. With the help of the Maya, the revolution was successful, establishing a new order in Merida free from the central government of Mexico. The new liberal government instituted a wave of sweeping social and economic changes including a severing of the formal tie between the church and the state and new land privatization laws. Though reincorporated into Mexico in 1843, this brief period of Yucatecan independence resulted in the erosion of the already unstable balance of Yucatecan/Maya relations. For example, the Maya elite ties to the colonial institutions that helped them to maintain local authority began to break down as the colonial powers became disjointed. While the local elite began to lose authority, the new land laws allowed, over the next seven years, several hundred thousand acres of land to be taken from Maya peasants and transferred into the ownership of the colonial and church elite. Though the new government severed the ties between church and state, the promised abolition of church taxes never happened leaving the Maya peasantry embittered. .
In 1845, renewed political unrest plagued the colonial powers of the Yucatan. Based on the success of the 1839 revolt, the Maya peasantry were once again armed and mobilized against the central government of Merida by the pro-Barbachanista forces across rural Yucatan. In January of 1847, predominantly Maya troops successfully sacked Valladolid with the help of local disenfranchised vecinos and, later that same month, entered Tabi, killing an unknown number of non-Maya inhabitants.