Abstract
In Uaxactún, a community forest concession inside Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve, three species of xate palm, a non-timber forest product, are at the heart of quickly evolving webs of knowledge, identity, institutional alliances, and livelihoods. Xate palms are simultaneously the "daily beans" for the majority of Uaxactún residents, the object of intense study and regulation, a commodity marketable to international floral markets, a marker of local identity, and a ubiquitous part of the forest landscape. Now, as the result of a series of projects instituted by the conservation NGO, the Wildlife Conservation Society and other institutions, xate in Uaxactún is being transformed from a "natural", exploited part of the landscape to something to actively cuidar, or care for. NGO-driven dynamics of monitoring, study, and other external knowledge-making about the village are central to these ongoing shifts in xate-human relations, and to broader changes in local senses of place and identity. "Care" describes both material and affective relations, including practices and values that strive for a more liveable world without assuming an ultimate goal or a best solution. NGO projects that foster relations of care between villagers and xate palms are also a form of caring for villagers themselves, working as they do towards sustainable shared human/non-human futures. At the same time, however, these projects are "necessary but not sufficient" – caught in the problematic local scale, and failing to address deeper structural problems that keep Uaxactún residents dependent on precarious sources of income.Keywords: Guatemala, Maya Biosphere Reserve, NTFPs, NGOs, environmental knowledge, care
Highlights
Josue2 paused as we hiked along the forest path and crouched down to carefully untwine a tightly wrapped tendril of climbing vine from a xate palm leaf, twisted and pulled by the vine's pernicious grip
The intensity of external monitoring and knowledge production in Uaxactún has become a mundane – if not always uncontested – part of daily village life. These knowledges about but not of the village and its concession have become integral to local senses of place and identity, shifting and shaping ecological and subsistence practices. With this dynamic in mind, I focus on one international conservation organization in particular, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), as it has been central in many recent xate projects, including formal studies, monitoring of extraction and marketability, understory enrichment, and others
The collaborations between WCS and OMYC centered around xate are part of an important and transformative project, but to truly transform the future of both Uaxactún's forest and people, new forms of care, labor, and politics need to engage as deeply with human needs as they do with the needs of key forest species
Summary
Josue paused as we hiked along the forest path and crouched down to carefully untwine a tightly wrapped tendril of climbing vine from a xate (pronounced SHA-tay) palm leaf, twisted and pulled by the vine's pernicious grip. These knowledges about but not of the village and its concession have become integral to local senses of place and identity, shifting and shaping ecological and subsistence practices With this dynamic in mind, I focus on one international conservation organization in particular, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), as it has been central in many recent xate projects, including formal studies, monitoring of extraction and marketability, understory enrichment, and others. This case study of xate in Uaxactún examines projects that attempt to enact multiple scales and types of care – of villagers for understory palms, of an NGO for local people, and of a community-NGO alliance for a forested landscape – revealing how these multiple forms of care can simultaneously support and undermine each other, when considered within their broader political ecological contexts. Bringing the concept of care into this political ecological analysis allows a recognition of efforts to ameliorate the situation of marginalized people and environments on multiple scales – striving towards an open-ended better, not a final good – while simultaneously recognizing the embedded contradictions and structural limitations to these efforts
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