Little agroecological research examines indigenous agroforestry practices that appear to be unsustainable, and how such practices devolved from more environmentally sound land use strategies that have been documented by geographers and others. This paper discusses the political ecological factors that led the Mopan Maya to reject a diverse swidden-fallow management strategy for a system where an abandoned milpa provides few forest products. In doing so, this paper explains the process whereby cultural change, in this case rejection of certain agricultural traditions, leads to a less diverse agricultural landscape and ultimately a less diverse biological landscape.
Landscape interpretation, or "reading" the landscape, is one of cultural geography's standard practices. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to reading landscapes transformed by insurgency movements or civil wars. Those landscapes can tell us a great deal about past and present political and social relationships as well as continuing power struggles. Guatemala presents a coniplicated postwar landscape "text" in which the struggle for power continues by many means and media, including how the war is portrayed o n memorials, and in which the Catholic Church and the military/state are the two main competing powers. This essay explorcs some of the images and the text presented in Guatemala's postcontlict landscape through contrasting landmarks and memorials associated with the country's thirty-six-year-long civil war that formally ended in 1yy6. Kqwords: Cnt\io!ir Church, Citntcrtidn, nicrtiorids, tniIirmy, posrrorijlict Inndsrapc. ~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~ ~--. ~ ~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ._ % D R . S r e i N e E R r , is an adjunct assistant professor of geography at Louisiana State University, Baton Kouge, Louisiana 70803. DR. TAYLOR is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Denvcr, Denver, Colorado 80208. This (~i~~~.~n~p h i~~d Rrvirw 93 (41: jjp468. Orfoher iooj (:ripyrighf 11 m i 5 by Ihr Ainrrican tietigraphicdl Socicfy of New York
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