The spatial and temporal dimensions of a rural landscape: the Yucatec Maya k'ax

Abstract

This article presents a case study of rural landscape concepts found in the indigenous Yucatec Maya area of Mexico. Of particular interest in this article is the contrast between the Maya conceptualization of the forest as essential to sustainable agriculture and a Western notion of the forest as the antithesis of agriculture. The former has created a tropical forest that is a product of Maya management and the basis of a sustained Maya society, whereas the latter leads to practices that destroy this forest producing a non‐sustainable system. Cyclical landscape processes in the former contrast with linear landscape processes in the latter. In order to compare and contrast the landscapes, a model that identifies embedded concepts is used. It is proposed that the Maya system has an element of verticality and temporality leading to sustainability, a feature lacking in the Western conceptualization.

Tourists as colonizers in Quintana Roo, Mexico

“…Today, with the advantage of hindsight, we can see that the process of the establishment of Cancún is an extension of a colonial strategy using colonization as a tactic. The city of Cancún was built on an area deemed terra nullius by the national government, even though there is evidence that the present-day Maya people of the region considered the existing settlement to be part of their economic and cultural landscape (Brown 1999). Local infrastructure in the form of path networks included Cancún, local knowledge existed about this place, and fishing activities took place there.…”

“…In a peninsula occupied for millennia by the Maya people, this was a highly unlikely proposition; and, in effect, was unfounded. Ethnographic research shows that Cancún was a settlement, albeit small, that was part of the cultural landscape of the Maya people of this region (Brown 1999). But as a tourism megaproject, Cancún became the thin edge of a wedge of penetration of outside people and capital at a scale previously unseen in the region and unprecedented in Mexico.…”

“…According to the Mexican National Institute of Migration Integrated System for Migratory Operation, 710 695 Canadian tourists chose Cancún, Quintana Roo as their preferred destination last year" (Embassy of Mexico in Canada 2011). 2 Impacts of the Rivera Maya developments on the lives and communities of the Yucatec Maya people of this region have been explored by various authors, including Brown (1999), Castellanos (2010), and Re Cruz (2003). analysis of secondary sources. The article first establishes the importance of tourism, stressing the demographic impact of tourists when seen as an aggregate phenomenon.…”

“…My interest in understanding the penetration of mass tourism onto the landscapes and into the lives of the Maya of this region emerges from three decades of ethnographic work in the Yucatec Maya zone. That research (still ongoing) focused on Maya spatiality and sociospatial organization, including concepts of place and landscape, and their link to identity building among the Maya (Brown 1999, 2007a, 2007b). While observing local individuals making decisions based on a changing array of choices at one scale, it became clear that a wider context was at play, especially because of the international tourism destination that was increasingly part of their landscape.…”

Diversidad y estructura de franjas de árboles en una matriz agrícola (tolchés) en relación con la intensidad de uso forestal en Yaxcabá, Yucatán

“…Estas reservas han sido establecidas por los habitantes de la región tanto para delimitar como para proteger las milpas, potreros, cenotes y caminos. Su establecimiento implica diferentes actividades de manejo bajo gestión comunitaria (Remmers & De Koeijer 1992, Richards 1997, Cob-Uicab et al 2003, Ellis & Porter-Bolland 2007, Brown 2007). La variedad de servicios y materiales que estas reservas generan son la razón por la que los pobladores las han conservado.…”