La Ruta del Maya: 3. The fate of the Lacandón

Rather than crumbling to dust, Mayan culture continues to exist as a part of its inherited Mexican status. Since the arrival of the Conquistadores, Colonialists, and Missionaries, the Mayan way of life has been altered to a more “civilised” state, although it still plays a role in languages used, the clothes worn and the food eaten all over Central America. And yet, a small sub-branch of this cohort evaded the influence of outsiders as far as 1940.

The Lacandón continue to practice a culture inseparable from the rainforest, through a form of crop rotation which allows the reuse of a small cleared patch of forest for years on end. This contrasts with agriculture employed by frontier farmers, slashing and burning in order to open up the forest floor and maximise its nutrient output. This newly cleared land supports a crop of maize for 2-3 years before the soil becomes infertile and new ground must be claimed. The trend for clearing land today is further exacerbated by cattle ranching and the industrialisation of agriculture. As a result, the size of the Lacandón Rainforest is thought to have halved since the 1950s.

In 1971, President Echeveria appeared to address the problem by granting the deeds of 6143km² of the jungle to the remaining 500 Lacandón. However, as new owners of this land, they faced pressure from lumber companies, and government representatives for further timber extraction. Families were paid 250 pesos per cubic metre of Mahogony and Tropical Cedar, ignorant of the international trading rates as high as 8000 pesos. Furthermore, as a result of this deal, other ethnic groups and campesinos who occupied this land were evicted, with little alternative but to continue to slash and burn illegally. The suffering of these working class migrants attracted the support of the Zapatistas (Leftist guerrillas see: wikipedia Zapatista page) . 
Here we see a new dimension added to the relationship between Man and Nature: Politics.



Graffiti in San Cristobal in reference to the conflict of the armed revolutionaries and natural habitats

Montes Azules Reserve, one of the remaining tracts of untouched Lacandón jungle is funded by Conservation International (CI), the environmental NGO with the highest turn-over globally thanks to the backing of corporate donors. The Lacandón continue to exist here, although it would seem that the fight for their cultural preservation is lost. Instead, many target tourists and their dollars by facilitating ‘eco-tourism’ and selling their traditional crafts. This pandering to a Western market infuriated the Zapatistas, who accused CI of ‘Bio-piracy’. They suggested that CI were exploiting the rainforest for one of their largest donors, the Bio-Tec conglomerate, Grupo Pulsar. However, the refusal of the Zapatistas to negotiate and increasingly desperate attempts to provoke (such as the detainment of eco-tour kayakers) means that their admirable stance of supporting indigenous Mexicans is lost amongst their propaganda.

The risk of romanticising both natural spaces and indigenous cultures, and attempting to keep them separate is an issue I will address in later posts. What is clear is that an isolationist stance towards land management which fails to consider the impacts of the wider community are bound to be fraught with difficulties. Mayan lifestyles today are a blend of globalised culture, and the preservation of natural spaces too has become a global issue.