Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the Yucatec Mayan struggle to defend indigenous grains and language as a prominent example of active indigenous engagements for an alternative future of pluricultural and multi-species co-existence in a globalized world.

Paper long abstract:

Both biodiversity and linguistic diversity are under threat owing to a similar set of factors in today’s interconnected world. As the transdisciplinary research field of biocultural diversity (Maffi 2005) demonstrates, these forms of diversity are strongly interrelated in terms of both their conservation and erosion.

The interrelation of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity is also clearly manifest in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Yucatec Maya speakers have conserved landraces, for example, those of the staple crop, maize in situ through their continued practice of milpa agriculture oriented towards subsistence. However, the two forms of diversity – agrobiological and linguistic are – threatened, owing to the increased tendency to turn away from the traditional agricultural production as well as the shift from Yucatec Maya to Spanish in daily language use.

In view of the pressure on local biocultural diversity, meanwhile there are a number of Yucatec Mayan initiatives to maintain both indigenous grains and language. Indigenous people in Yucatan increasingly engage in biocultural diversity conservation in a variety of ways ranging from everyday practice to digital activism. In these actions, Yucatec Maya speakers challenge the dominant neoliberal model of development – which has largely drawn on the objectification and commodification of “nature” (Escobar 1999) –, drawing on their own conception of human-environment-relationships.

This paper discusses the Yucatec Mayan struggle to defend indigenous grains and language as a prominent example of active indigenous engagements for an alternative future of pluricultural and multi-species co-existence in a globalized world.