Paper short abstract:

After 10 years of implementing community-based forest conservation, how has this scheme affected Indigenous Chatino custom land rights in San Juan Lachao (Mexico)? In this paper, we trace the role of conservation in recent changes over the communality of land, its meaning, and increased enclosure

Paper long abstract:

San Juan Lachao (SJL) is a Chatino Indigenous and mestizo municipality in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico. For over a decade, communities have implemented community-based conservation and forestry schemes that include sustainable wood extraction, cloud mountain forest conservation, PES, and carbon offsetting. The land is communal, collectively titled, and the local government follows the usos y costumbres system shared with many Oaxaca communities. This paper engages the communality of land and forest conservation nexus considering that SJL’s recent history is defined by an ongoing fronterization process as the territory and population have been integrated into the global market as a resource frontier. Coffee plantations, wood extraction, and carbon offsetting are examples of resources produced through this process, transforming SJL landscapes and peoples' life projects.

Our paper reflects on community-based conservation's role in resource production, particularly regarding the current trend towards enclosure of communal land and local struggles to protect the forest from cattle raising. The paper questions the work of conservation through local understandings and meanings of communality of land, highlighting the tensions that emerged between Chatino’s life projects and conservation goals. Our participation looks for reflective spaces to trace local experiences on conservation, building on years of collaboration and shared experiences by presenters. The paper weaves together Gaspar Salinas (Chatino, native of SJL) experience as part of the local communal authority and as a traditional healer, with Geronimo Barrera (graduate student, Mexico City) experience working with SJL communities, to analyze the multiplicity underpinning conservation implementation in communal lands.