Seeing the Forest, Not Just the Trees
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WLC-20 THE AMERICAS Wendy Call was a donor-supported “Healthy Societies” ICWA Fellow in southern Mexico from May 2000 to May 2002. Seeing the Forest, Not Just the Trees LETTERS By Wendy Call JUNE 12, 2003 Since 1925 the Institute of Benedín García climbed easily up the west pyramid, the highest in the “Com- Current World Affairs (the Crane- plex-A” ruins. Not fully excavated, the front of each ancient Maya building emerges Rogers Foundation) has provided in fuzzy brown, round-edged rock from the vegetation that once hid it completely. long-term fellowships to enable Its back melts into a hillside of humus and fern. Fifteen hundred years ago, outstanding young professionals the people of Uaxactún1 had buried to live outside the United States their king in the temple under and write about international Benedín’s feet. Beside their deceased areas and issues. An exempt leader, they had laid jade necklaces operating foundation endowed by and earlobe plugs, jaguar teeth, copal the late Charles R. Crane, the incense, pearls, pottery, seashells, and Institute is also supported by a single sting ray spine, painted red.2 contributions from like-minded individuals and foundations. Benedín waved to me, far below him on the forest floor. He yelled that A museum in Uaxactún displays an he could see all the way to his village, impressive collection of Maya pottery TRUSTEES even past it, to the community for- excavated from the local ruins. Bryn Barnard estry site. Benedín stood on the west Joseph Battat temple of Complex-A, one of seven ruins in the village of 138 families in Petén, Steven Butler Guatemala. The northern half of Petén has been protected since 1990 by the Maya Sharon Griffin Doorasamy Biosphere Reserve, the largest swath of lowland rainforest north of the Amazon William F. Foote basin. The reserve was intended to con- Peter Geithner trol deforestation by logging companies, Kitty Hempstone farmers and ranchers. From where Katherine Roth Kono Benedín stood, balancing casually on the Cheng Li stone temple’s apex, he could see Com- Peter Bird Martin plex-B to the north. To the east, the air- Ann Mische strip built half a century ago, when Dasa Obereigner Wrigley’s planes flew in regularly to buy Chandler Rosenberger chicle-tree resin. Planes no longer land Edmund Sutton there; villagers graze horses on the long, Dirk J. Vandewalle bare rectangle. It has become the village center, surrounded by small stone, bam- HONORARY TRUSTEES boo and cement buildings. David Elliot David Hapgood I sat on a stray stone next to the west Pat M. Holt temple, chin on my cane. A few weeks Edwin S. Munger before my April 2002 trip to the famous Richard H. Nolte Maya forest, I had twisted my ankle and Albert Ravenholt ended up in a cast. I convinced a doctor to Phillips Talbot replace it with a brace four days before I ar- rived in Guatemala. In Uaxactún, I could walk One building of Uaxactún’s “Complex- to the pyramids from where the rocky road Institute of Current World Affairs A” ruins ended, but only to gaze up at them from The Crane-Rogers Foundation Four West Wheelock Street Hanover, New Hampshire 03755 U.S.A. 1 Uaxacatún is pronounced “wah-shock-TUNE.” 2 The list of the tomb’s contents is taken from The Ancient World of the Maya, John S. Henderson, 2nd ed, Cornell University Press, 1997, p. 123. dor and Benedín came by plane from Guate- mala City to Flores, Petén’s regional capital. From Flores, they flew to Uaxactún, 28 miles north, for 5 quetzales. Had they looked out the window half-way through that flight, they would have seen the region’s most famous ru- ins, Tikal, just beginning to be excavated. In a sense, I went to Guatemala to find what I had spent nearly two years searching for in Mexico. When I began my “healthy societies fel- lowship,” two questions drove me: What are the alternatives to our society’s excessive consumption? In our mobile society, how does one become native to a place? These questions are two sides of the same coin, at least in the currency of Part of the Tikal ruins in Petén, Guatemala “bioregional” thought. Based on the limits flat ground. I spent a lot of time sitting, watching and marked by local climate, biota and watersheds, listening during the eight days I spent in Petén. “bioregions” are the physical boundaries of ecosys- tems. Bioregionalists, taking these local regions to In the forest around the ruins, hundreds of insect be the contours of home, believe that cultures and wings rasped together into a single tone. The leaves of economies should be scaled to the home region, with the mahogany trees rustled like parchment pages. I suddenly understood why forests are often compared to cathedrals: thousands of beings live there, bearing witness. In the Maya forest, the rare ocellated turkey cocks its head from side to side, as if preening. It isn’t looking at its own green, purple and bronze plum- age, but at its surroundings. Its iridescent feathers re- flect any movement. The howler monkeys, so un- fairly named, sing their safety as a baritone hymn. They howl during the day only when they aren’t hunted, falling silent when threatened. Vines thick as church-bell ropes hang down from far overhead, undulating in the breeze. Like most Uaxactún residents, Benedín is nei- ther Maya nor Petén-born. He comes from a town called “Holy Spirit,” in the southern Guatemalan department called “Progress.” He ar- rived in Uaxactún 42 years ago with his brother Salva- dor, when both were teen- agers. There were no roads to Petén at that time. Salva- 2 WLC-20 people relying primarily on local resources.3 Above all, people should deeply know and re- late to the place where they live. When I began This portion of a my ICWA fellowship, a few expressed surprise 1995 satellite that I went looking for a healthy society in south- map shows the ern Mexico. For them, the fact that I pushed on difference in to Guatemala during my fellowship’s final weeks forest cover might seem almost bizarre. between Petén, Guatemala and Others have come to Uaxactún looking for Mexico. The something similar. Salvador and Benedín left northwestern their parents behind to live with an aunt in part of Uaxctún. “If we had ended up somewhere else, Guatemala is the maybe we would be farming. South of here, because “backwards-L” of the ranching and farming, the forests are really shape in the threatened,” Salvador says. “You’ll see pasturelands, lower right hand areas made into wasteland by cornfields. But here in corner of the Uaxactún, it’s different. We’ve taken care of the forest image. because we depend on it…. I’ve learned how to sur- vive from the forest. I’m really thankful to the Photo credit: first people who learned how to survive this way. Detail from They have taught us how to live.” “Vegetation of the Maya The Maya forest that surrounds Salvador’s Forest,” home spans three nations: Belize, Guatemala and Conservation Mexico. The political boundary, an abstraction, International should be invisible. On satellite images, though, much of the line between Petén and Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche is a stark slash between Guate- black-stemmed pepper plants, thin as reeds; and ma- malan forest and Mexican bare earth. hogany trees, trunks splaying out into buttresses.5 When I looked at the forest around the Complex-A Nearly all the villagers draw their livelihoods from ruins, I saw Uaxactún’s entire economy: deep green xate4 the forest, but only a few from the trees. They collect deep palms with pendulous, green-and-white fruit; red-barked green xate palm leaves for floral arrangements in wealthy chicozapote trees criss-crossed with machete wounds; tall, countries. They harvest the pepper plant’s seed pods: all- spice. They drain chicle sap from the chicozapote tree. They cut down just a few of the mahogany trees, using both trunk and branches, leaving the twigs and leaves to fertilize the forest floor. They cut the vines that hang down from the trees and weave them into wicker furniture sold in Guatemala’s tourist meccas. Each harvest demands careful balance. Cut the xate frond in the wrong place, the plant dies. Bend the pepper plant too far, the stem breaks. Slide a machete blade too deeply into the chicozapote bark, insects invade and destroy. Fell too many large trees, too much heat and light flood in. Much of the forest floor’s life withers without the essential, dim dampness provided by the canopy. Salvador García looks up at the forest canopy. In 1964, the population of Petén was just 3 For a good summary of bioregionalism, see Kirkpatrick Sale’s Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision, New Society Publish- ers, 1991. 4 Xate is pronounced (SHAH-teh). 5 For a brief overview of the Uaxactún economy, see “Going, going, gum — Guatemala,” at http://www.tve.org/ho/ doc.cfm?aid=890. INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS 3 (Left) A Uaxactún artisan weaves wicker, harvested in Uaxactún, around a chair frame made from local wood. (Above) In an attempt to reduce pressure on wild xate populations, Uaxactún residents are experimenting with growing xate seedlings in nurseries. over 25,000 people. By 1996, it had ballooned to more impossible to completely eliminate illegal activity. Still, than half a million. In the mid-1990s, while the popula- the village seems to do a better job than the government tion of Guatemala grew at 2.9 percent annually, Petén’s — which devotes only 80 cents per acre annually to na- population grew 10 percent each year.6 This is due mostly ture-reserve protection.10 Just a few days before my visit, to migration, but also to Petén’s birthrate: around 7.0, one villagers had come across a poachers’ encampment and the Latin America’s highest.7 insisted they leave.