Contribution short abstract

This paper applies an analytic of assemblage to an Indigenous biocultural territory in Belize. Dissolving binaries that represent Indigenous Maya as a threat to, or the saviour of, biodiversity, I emphasize complexity and foreground the roles of factors including tenure, markets and education.

Contribution long abstract

The Toledo District of Belize is a contested biocultural assemblage of Indigenous Q’eqchi’ and Mopan Maya communities, 80% forest cover, and more than 50% coverage of exclusionary protected areas. In 2015, following a protracted litigation, 41 of these communities secured affirmation of customary communal land tenure at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). A major effort to demarcate customary community boundaries, subject to the foot-dragging tactics of the state, drew attention to an open secret - there was considerable overlap with protected areas. Maya leaders and activists have, somewhat aspirationally, represented Q’eqchi’ and Mopan relationships with forests as one of interdependence, which commits them to a responsibility of care and stewardship, rendering Maya communities as effective practitioners of conservation. In contrast, the Belizean state and transnational conservation NGO alliances have argued that a rapidly expanding population practicing unsustainable ‘slash and burn’ agriculture compromises this notion of Maya conservationists and emphasizes the need for exclusionary protected areas to protect biodiversity.

Using an assemblage thinking of territory that emphasizes contingency, emergence and process, this paper attempts to dissolve this binary, drawing from an ethnographic study of two Maya communities (Li, 2007). In describing the attempts of various entities to deploy territorialities to assemble different visions of future human-nature relationships, I demonstrate that these visions rarely map neatly onto individuals or communities. I argue that decolonial conservation unfolds in tension with conflicts over tenure, struggles over traditional vs. state governance, increasing penetration of global commodity markets, urbanization of Maya youth, and much more.