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- Convenors:
-
David Hoffman
(Mississippi State University)
Jorge Capetillo-Ponce (University of Massachusetts Boston)
José Martinez-Reyes (University of Massachusetts Boston)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Indigenous, farmer, and fisher responses to and decolonizing strategies for conservation and development challenges in Mexico’s “final frontier.” Interrogating the viability of the conservation-tourism-development nexus for the people and resources of the Yucatan.
Long Abstract:
Over the last 30 years, Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula has been a living laboratory for the utilization of conservation and tourism as a means towards indigenous and mestizo community development. For much of Mexico’s history, the area was considered a backward hinterland disassociated from Mexican national discourses of progress. However, its biologically rich coastal and forest resources became a desired target as Mexico’s final colonizing development frontier. Recently, the people, their Maya heritage and their natural resources have been under threat by the Mexican state, neoliberal market forces and a wide range of NGOs advancing the intertwined narratives of conservation and development. The resulting nexus of mass tourism and development has driven explosive economic and population growth in some communities and contributed to social, economic, and cultural decline in others. In addition, the climate crisis has increasingly impacted many, if not all, of these domains. Amidst all these pressures, indigenous people, local farmers, and fishers continue to respond to the continuous challenges sparked by development forces and climate with an array of strategies with decolonizing potentials. This panel will highlight varied perspectives on recent developments in conservation and “green” development in the Yucatan peninsula. Topics will include: indigenous responses to the Obrador government’s “Tren Maya” mega-project; climate justice, Agroforestry and privatization of ejido commons; and fishers’ resilience in light of the 2020 tourism collapse due to COVID-19. In so doing, we will interrogate the past, current and future viability of the conservation-tourism-development nexus for the people and resources of the Yucatan.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 October, 2021, -David Hoffman (Mississippi State University)
Paper short abstract:
After years of building dependency on tourism, what did Xcalakeños do to survive the pandemic? What role did the park and the resources play in their survival? What do Xcalakeños think about intertwining their future with tourism?
Paper long abstract:
In the late 1990s, the community of Xcalak faced a crossroads. Fish populations were in decline, tourism investment and plans were encroaching from the north of the state, and the control of their future was uncertain. After consultation with national and international NGOs, Xcalak’s leaders chose to take a bet on conservation-based tourism as future economic base. In 2000, Xcalak Reefs National Park was declared after a community petition to the federal government. Importantly, the park plans were multi-modal with areas of the coral reef left open for fisheries exploitation. Despite being out of the way, every year many hundreds of divers and fly-fishers came to the community, and thousands more arrived on cruise ships to the Puerto Costa Maya just to the north. With better pay and less harsh working conditions, many Xcalakeños shifted their livelihoods to tourism. In March 2020, at the crescendo of “high season,” it all came to screeching halt. After years of building dependency on tourism, what did Xcalakeños do to survive the pandemic? What role did the park and the resources that remained legally accessible due to their choices back in the 1990s play in their survival? What do Xcalakeños think about intertwining their future with tourism? This paper will present Xcalakeños’ answers to these questions recorded during virtual interviews conducted in June and July 2021. In so doing, this paper will interrogate international, conservation-based tourism’s viability as the basis for community development.
Pablo Sepulveda Diaz (University of California Santa Barbara)
Paper short abstract:
The lionfish invasion is considered an environmental emergency due to its devastating effect on coral reefs of the Yucatan Peninsula. This paper shows how local communities connect to produce knowledge and strategies to face the species in a context of biodiversity change and mass tourism industry.
Paper long abstract:
Native to Asia, the lionfish began invading the Atlantic coast of the Americas—from Massachusetts to Brazil—in the 1980s. This invasion is considered an environmental emergency due to the devastating effect it is having on coral reefs, where the most important marine species reproduce. Biologists have proven the lionfish’s rapid decimation of local species—a critical concern for governments, non-governmental organizations, and communities that depend on local marine resources. As a result, local communities are affected by changes in biodiversity and by imbalanced environmental policies that condition traditional and large-scale economic activities, eventually impacting on the livelihood and sustainability of the community.
Building on ethnography and digital ethnography, this paper shows how communities affected by the lionfish presence in the Yucatan Peninsula and the Mexican Caribbean—and other locations along the Atlantic coast—connect with each other to produce local knowledge, develop and improve fishing and cooking technologies, and find ways of taking advantage of this “new” fish, which is, fortunately, edible. Sometimes these strategies articulate with official management and control plans, but they often challenge environmental policies, scientific conservation ideas and formal knowledge production. At the same time, these changes in the communities generate conflicts and struggles that are compounded by limited resources and restricted access to the local ecosystem and the coastal and marine environment. All this takes place in the context of rapid biodiversity change, strict regulation policies, and mass tourism industry.
Itzell Torres (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
The study examines the narratives of indigenous people and civil society organizations regarding the impacts on lives and livelihoods that imply the construction of a solar megaproject near Ebtun, Yucatan.
Paper long abstract:
Yucatan has experienced a rapid arrival of renewable energy megaprojects since 2013 when the central government set ambitious targets for clean energy through long-term electricity auctions. A narrative of energy self-sufficiency and green development supported by recurring electricity blackouts legitimates the construction of wind and solar parks in the region.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ebtun, Yucatan I examine residents' concerns of potential impacts on their health, the ecosystem and a sacred cenote to build a solar megaproject near the community and the resistance of indigenous people and civil society organizations through legal actions, which ultimately lead to the indefinite suspension of the project. The study uses interdisciplinary theoretical approaches in the fields of anthropology, human geography and political ecology to explore the intersection of large-scale renewable projects in the context of the climate crisis with indigenous epistemologies and energy colonialism.