Gardens of the Maya

Houselot gardens are cultivated spaces located adjacent to households and are commonly used to grow flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruits. They function as a primary source of a diverse array of food items, including staples, condiments, medicines, and spices; they provide non-food items as well, such as dyes, construction materials, or ornamental plants; and they provide a supply of food that is sold in local and extra-local markets. The diversity of plants and uses make gardens a fundamental element of household subsistence production. This chapter investigates the articulation of Maya gardening practices with economic systems, focusing specifically on how changes in the political economy affects household production. We utilize diachronic data from the Pre-Columbian Maya site of Chan, exploring how household gardening practices were affected in a dynamic political landscape from the Middle Preclassic to the Terminal Classic. These data are contrasted with synchronic data from the contemporary village of Lake Mensabak, a Lacandon Maya community going through rapid social and political disruptions. This chapter demonstrates that although houselot gardens are small-scale and household oriented, they reflect changes and upheavals in local, national, and international political economies.

Governance, Community Resilience, and Indigenous Tourism in Nahá, Mexico

Employing resilience as the theoretical and methodological framework and focusing on governance, this long-term anthropological study analyzes the socio-ecological system of a small indigenous community, with community-based tourism development. After 10 years of ethnographic and participatory work with the Lacandon Maya of Nahá, Mexico, our anthropological research explores the complexities of community governance and its role in protecting the socio-ecological system. The processes of land restitution initiated by the Mexican government and the arrival of migrants from different ethnic groups in the surrounding areas have resulted in significant socio-ecological adjustments being made at the community level. A self-regulated governance system is evaluated to understand the drivers and variables that generated vulnerabilities in the system, as well as the factors that fostered resilience in the establishment of the Nahá’s Natural Protected Area of Flora and Fauna. Our results show that although the current Lacandon political organization is fairly recent, pressures from neighboring communities have fostered resilience responses. To protect their space from such pressures, the Lacandon, convinced of their ethnic legitimacy as guardians of the Lacandon Jungle, have internalized the official political-environmentalist discourse. This role has had critical implications for the birth and development of the Indigenous tourism system.

Conocimiento de las abejas nativas sin aguijón y cambio generacional entre los mayas lacandones de Nahá, Chiapas

The Lacandon Maya were settled in the Lacandon forest since the 17th century; their experience and knowledge allow them to know and manage different natural elements, like the Native Stingless Bees (nsb). The present research registered the species of nsb and the differentiated knowledge about them in Nahá, Chiapas. From 2015 to 2018, through work with key collaborators and entomological collections, the species of NSB identified by the local population of the Flora and Fauna Protection Area of Nahá (ffpan) were determined. Later a questionnaire was applied to 68 heads of family, all males, to estimate the level of knowledge they have and the uses they give to the native stingless bees, according to age ranges. A total of 15 species of native bees were registered, of which honey is obtained mainly from four: Tetragonisca angustula (Ajyus), Scaura argyrea (K’amas kap’), Plebeia frontalis (Ak chip kap) y Melipona solani (Jach K’ojo’). We registered a differentiated knowledge of the heads of family in Nahá about the 15 species of nsb based on their behavior, morphology and the places where they live. The general tendency is the loss of knowledge, and it is accentuated among the young people. The causes are related to the weakening of the transmission’s mechanisms of knowledge, the decrease of the recollection activities and the absence of management of colonies in their homegardens, as well as the arrival of products that substitute honey and wax, offered at lower prices.

Ecological effects of sudden drainage of large karst lakes in the Lacandon Maya region, southern Mexico

<p>Water levels in Lakes Metzabok and Tzibaná, two large karst lakes in the Lacandon Forest of southern Mexico, declined dramatically within a two-week period in July 2019. Lake Metzabok (0.83 km<sup>2</sup>; z<sub>max</sub> = 25 m) dried completely, whereas in Lake Tzibaná (1.24 km<sup>2</sup>; z<sub>max</sub> = 70 m) it fell by ~30 m. Analysis of satellite images in Lake Metzabok suggested a combined reduction in surface area of ~0.86 km<sup>2</sup> and water volume loss of ~11.7 million m<sup>3</sup>. The sudden loss of such a large volume of water had negative impacts on local Lacandon Maya inhabitants, and profound ecological and environmental effects, in that it caused biodiversity loss.</p><p>We combined limnological and paleolimnological analyses to evaluate the ecological effects of the sudden loss of water from Lakes Metzabok and Tzibaná. We collected and analyzed remnant waters, surface sediments and short sediment cores from what remained of the water bodies to evaluate whether evidence for such drainage events is preserved in lake sediments. <em>In situ</em> water-column measurements yielded values similar to those from the previous six years when the lakes were filled, suggesting that evaporation was not the process responsible for lake level lowering, but rather that the lakes drained through fractures in the underlying karst bedrock. We collected phytoplankton and zooplankton samples from the remnant waters and found abundant diatoms, green algae, testate amoebae, crustaceans (copepods, cladocerans, ostracodes), insects (chironomids, trichopterans), collembolans, rotifers, tardigrades and nematodes. Environmental conditions in such small remnant ponds are probably stressful and unstable, but because many fish, the main predators in these ecosystems, did not survive the desiccation event, the aquatic environment is ideal for survival or recolonization by many invertebrate groups. Understanding the dynamics of this modern scenario with low lake levels is key for making paleolimnological inferences that use these aquatic bioindicators. We also investigated the commencing transition from an aquatic to a terrestrial habitat in Lake Metzabok. Abundant spiders colonized cracks in the dry sediment. Small, deep holes in surface mud were probably created by aquatic organisms when water levels decreased rapidly. Some cracks held rain water and were inhabited by tadpoles of the Gulf Coast toad (<em>Incilius valliceps</em>). The first plants to colonize the exposed lake beds belonged to the families Poaceae (grasses), Amaranthaceae (amaranths/chenopods) and Fabaceae (legumes), among others.</p><p>The sediment record from Lakes Metzabok and Tzibaná as well as testimonies of local Lacandon Maya inhabitants suggest that similar lake level lowering events occurred in the past. The hydrology of karst lakes is complex and unpredictable because multiple geological and hydrological factors control the water balance. The cause of this recent lake level lowering event remains unknown, but may be revealed by interdisciplinary studies of the limnology, paleolimnology, structural geology, geophysics, hydrology, geochemistry, genomics and geodesy of lakes and rivers in the region, as well as traditional environmental knowledge of the Lacandon Maya.</p>