For millennia farmers
of the Maya
area have weathered an ebb and flow of available land and resources.
Today, just as during the Terminal Classic period when populations
reached unmanageable heights and the forests were all but leveled,
Maya farmers find themselves grappling with issues of land shortage
and environmental destruction. However, now the environmental
situation is dire compared with what it was during the Terminal
Classic period. In A.D. 800 the Maya were limited to the use
of stone axes and were part of a relatively contained economy;
1,200 years later we have bulldozers, flatbed semi-trailers,
processing plants, a global economy, and over six billion people
on the planet. The instinct toward human progress has not changed
since ancient times, but the number of people, technology, and
demand for resources have.
According to one assessment, "In 1960, woodlands blanketed
nearly 60 percent of Central America. Today less than one-third
of the original forests remain standing; the rest have vanished"
(Faber 1993). In particular, the tropical and montane forests
of Central America continue to be destroyed at a frightening
speed. Between 1961 and 1991 over half of the forests in Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador were cut down -- a rate of deforestation
that applies to Central America as a whole. At this pace the
world, within decades, will be left with little more than a
few parks and reserves as vestiges of the great ecosystems of
Central America.
Deforestation during the twentieth century in Central America
is fueled by several sources. On an individual level, poor farmers
continually cut down forests in order to work the land. On a
larger corporate and agency level, lucrative agribusiness, supported
by the international market, continues to control the best farmland
in the region and to raise cattle on depleted tracts of land,
taxing the soil until it becomes an unfertile.
Since World War II the United States and international financial
groups have fueled the development of Central America's beef
production, not only by funding technology but also by purchasing
the inexpensively priced meat. Raising cattle in the United
States is more expensive than in Central America, where wages
remain low and, with the tropical climates, a year-round supply
of grass makes feeding the herds inexpensive. From the industry's
perspective, Central American beef stands at a quarter of the
price of U.S. beef.
The cattle industry puts money in the pockets of a few people
while doing little for the long-term economic and environmental
sustainability of the region. As the beef boom began in the
1950s and 1960s, the acquisition of cattle-grazing pastures
often involved displacing subsistence farmers from their land.
Wealthy ranchers have long had the political backing of the
military government and used whatever means necessary -- imprisonment,
legal manipulations, torture, massacres -- to force small-scale
farmers off the desirable land (Faber 1993). Just as in the
Maya's ancient past, farmers today are greatly affected by the
greed and political maneuvers of ruling powers.
Subsistence farmers, once evicted from their land, may move
to the city to find jobs, work on plantations (picking coffee
or cotton and cutting sugar cane), take up arms of resistance,
or find new areas to farm and continue their subsistence lifestyle.
Unclaimed land in Central America typically sits high up on
hillsides or farther inland where pine-oak, cloud, and tropical
forest must be cut down and burned to convert it into workable
land. The region's most fertile farming lands, along the Pacific
coasts and valley bottoms, have long been owned by a few wealthy
families or by foreign investors.
Tropical forests grow on nutrient-poor soil, which cannot
support long-term farming. People may farm a plot of land for
two or three years at most, and then must allow it to rest for
five to ten years, during which time the farmer and his family
leave or sell the land in order to fell more tracts of forest,
beginning the process again. Cattle ranchers often acquire the
plots of depleted soil and seed the area with non-native grasses
for their herds. Over time the land yields less and less fodder,
requiring more acreage of meager feed per head of cattle. Ultimately
the expanses of land cannot produce even grass; it lies fallow,
unable to absorb water or nutrients, hardened through excessive
use. Second-growth forest does not spring to life from this
compacted earth as it does after just a few years of slash-and-burn
farming. Rain falls onto the brick-hard land and quickly flushes
away, taking soil with it. The ground becomes more and more
closed with each fluctuation between heat and rain, finally
sealing into a plane of cementlike clay.
Muddy rainwater drains into rivers and streams, which eventually
empty into the ocean. Along the Caribbean coast, and particularly
in Honduras, runoff sediment clouds the naturally clear seawater,
diminishing the coral reef's ability to photosynthesize. Also
detrimental to the reef ecosystem, as well as to plantation
workers, are pesticides used in farming, which seep into the
water table. Some of the most controversial are those applied
on banana plantations, owned by companies such as Chiquita,
Del Monte, Fyffe. Chiquita has been accused of using pesticides
that U.S. government agencies have determined to be potentially
cancer-causing in humans and toxic to fish and wildlife ("Pesticides
in the Banana Ecosystem" 1998).
The barrier reef that follows the coasts of Yucatan, Belize,
Guatemala, and Honduras is the second largest in the world and
is threatened by a host of other environmental problems: municipal
waste contamination; overfishing of conch, finfish, and lobster;
oil tankers carrying more than one million tons of crude oil
annually from the port of Santo Tomas del Castillo in Guatemala;
and the destruction of coastal habitats with the development
of tourism and other ventures.
Oil drilling in tropical forests is also of major concern.
Mexico's Lacandon forest, a true rain forest found in the very
northern region of the Maya area, has been surveyed for oil
and natural gas reserves by the Mexican government, the United
States, and PEMEX, one of Mexico's largest national oil companies.
Oil extraction pollutes and destroys surrounding ecosystems,
and in the Lacandon it is also deeply intertwined with the rights
of native communities. In the Mexican state of Tabasco pollution
from PEMEX operations has destroyed local farming economies
and caused serious health problems. In 1996 thousands of Chontal
Indians in the Mexican state of Tabasco peacefully protested
the operations and presence of PEMEX, demanding that drilling
cease and communities receive indemnity for damage to their
land and health (Chethik 1996).
Many, the Zapatistas of Chiapas among them, feel that the
advent of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade agreement signed
between Canada, the United States, and Mexico in 1994, has contributed
to the amount of environmental destruction caused by large companies.
In Mexico a group called Action for Community and Ecology in
the Rainforests of Central America (ACERCA) and other organizations
monitor initiatives by large corporations that affect communities
and their environments, including subsidized eucalyptus plantations,
government-funded shrimp farms, development of the biotech industry
and genetic engineering, highway construction, gold mining,
and large-scale irrigation projects. NAFTA will soon extend
into Central America under the Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA); negotiations have been conducted since 1994 with plans
to come to a final agreement in 2005.
However one explains the massive decline of Maya civilization
during the Classic period, it is worth contemplating that many
of the forests in the area were cut down by the time of the
Classic period collapse. It is also clear that as a result of
the collapse, many lowland Maya migrated to new areas and capitalized
on new resources, reestablishing their lives and carrying on
much as they always had. In the twenty-first century our answers
to social and environmental problems cannot be so simple, and
yet despite the cries of scientists, Nobel peace prize recipients,
and activists around the world and despite evidence that great
civilizations of the past may have fallen at least in part from
depletion of their natural resources, we continue to tax our
environment at an unsustainable rate. During my travels in the
Maya area, I found the parallel between past and present frightening
and fascinating -- the ability of humanity to advance wildly
and yet be fundamentally driven by the same nature.
Travel
There are many, many ways one can help to change the current environmental
situation facing the Maya area, but given that you're reading
this guide, it's likely you're a traveler. You can have a very
meaningful -- positive or negative -- impact on the places you
visit. Assuming you want to have a positive effect, start by making
conscientious choices. Research the hotels and other services
you plan to patron when traveling, and voice your opinion with
your dollars. Support businesses that are locally owned, embrace
environmental conservation, and serve not only themselves but
the communities. Ask travel planners, tour operators, hotel owners,
and guides what their business does to protect the environment
and support local people. Let ventures and organizations know
that you will patron those who participate in sustainable tourism.
The most important action you can take as a traveler in another
country is the willingness to meet the place you are visiting
on its own terms. Be open to experiencing a community as it
exists rather than demanding and patronizing only places that
offer western amenities. For example, many remote areas in the
Maya area have electricity for only a limited number of hours
each day. While this may differ from western standards, and
in some instances might be viewed as a disadvantage, it also
has many positive aspects. Early lights-out means less electricity
used and a brilliant sky full of stars. Expecting around-the-clock
electricity, hot water, and western food in places where the
residents do not have these things can add to the environmental
stress on an area and distance you from the people and culture
you have come to experience. Travel is about participating in
new worlds and ecosystems. It is a chance to broaden your view
of the world -- and your host country's as well -- and to support
businesses that support the environment. |
