La reproducción total o parcial del contenido e imágenes de esta publicación se rige de acuerdo a... more La reproducción total o parcial del contenido e imágenes de esta publicación se rige de acuerdo a normas internacionales sobre protección a los derechos de autor, con criterio especificados en la licencia Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) El contenido de esta publicación es responsabilidad exclusiva de su(s) autor(es).
En este artículo, producto de investigación aplicada y comprometida, ofrece un panorama actual de... more En este artículo, producto de investigación aplicada y comprometida, ofrece un panorama actual de la situación sociedad civil de los q’eqchi’es en Petén y su influencia en el renacimiento y reforma de una cultura q’eqchi’- petenera. Como protagonista, figura la creciente Asociación de Comunidades Campesinas Indígenas para el Desarrollo Integral de Petén (ACDIP), que cuenta con un profundo y arraigado poder de convocatoria, debida a una base social de 156 comunidades, de las cuales 35 ya son declaradas como comunidades autónomas indígenas, con otras 78 en proceso. Tal como su sombrilla internacional, Vía Campesina, ACDIP, ha evolucionado en los tiempos de paz de una sencilla federación campesina de etnicidad mixta, hacia un movimiento dinámico y resiliente para la autonomía indígena. Ante el desplazamiento que ha sufrido por la expansión de la ganadería y las empresas palmeras, actualmente ACDIP incluye no solamente una misión reivindicativa de derecho agrario del pueblo q’eqchi’ de ...
Elizabeth –Liza– Grandia and John Hawkins paired to give a worthy tribute to the late Norman Schw... more Elizabeth –Liza– Grandia and John Hawkins paired to give a worthy tribute to the late Norman Schwartz.
Imagining a New Wildlife Politics: Conservation Contrarians and the Corporate Elephants in the Room
Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, 2012
One afternoon in the late 1990s, George, the British author of a well-known travel guidebook, app... more One afternoon in the late 1990s, George, the British author of a well-known travel guidebook, appeared at the portal of ProPetén, Conservation International’s (CI) field office in northern Guatemala, demanding to speak with Patricio, the local director. George had just returned from a visit to Carmelita, one of Petén, Guatemala’s oldest villages of forest dwellers dedicated to the sustainable extraction of non-timber forest products, and among the few communities that supported conservation in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. He was appalled to have observed ProPetén staff eating game meat at the village comedor, a Spanish term used to describe a typical village eatery operated by a local woman out of her home. This was unsurprising, because Carmelita is located a hundred kilometers from the nearest market and people there “eat local”—typically backyard poultry or pork and, occasionally, wild meats like venison, pheasant, or tepescuintle (the meat of the Agouti paca, a large jungle roden...
Back to the Future: The Autonomous Indigenous Communities of Petén, Guatemala
Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología, 2020
James C. Scott’s (1976) classic work on the Chayanovian logics of peasant economy argued that les... more James C. Scott’s (1976) classic work on the Chayanovian logics of peasant economy argued that less important than the amount taken was how little might be left. A similar awareness about the paucit...
Outdoor images predominate in our cultural conceptions of “air pollution” even though indoor air ... more Outdoor images predominate in our cultural conceptions of “air pollution” even though indoor air quality (IAQ) is typically tenfold more contaminated. New modeling of LA smog in Science suggests that source emissions from indoor and personal care products contribute more to that city’s infamous poor air quality than vehicular combustion. In similar paradox, even as outdoor smoke from California wildfires in 2017 pushed PM2.5 levels past red into unprecedented magenta alerts, children were sickened inside school classrooms after new carpets were laid. This auto-ethnographic paper chronicles our ongoing struggle to remove those carpets from “Beacon” Elementary, a bilingual Mexican-American school in California's Central Valley that has suffered decades of racialized neglect of its facilities. Forging through the uncertain epidemiology of environmental illness, “Beacon” mothers began documenting their children’s ailments after the new carpet installation, but the school distric...
Sacred Maize against a Legal Maze: The Diversity of Resistance to Guatemala’s ‘Monsanto Law’
Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 2017
0 0 1 154 878 Clark University 7 2 1030 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE I chronic... more 0 0 1 154 878 Clark University 7 2 1030 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE I chronicle here how a small country deled one of the world’s largest corporations and, in the process, reinvigorated civic hopes for a more democratic future. In the summer of 2014, massive mobilizations across Guatemala forced its legislature to repeal a plant varieties protection act, dubbed the ‘Monsanto Law’ that would otherwise have legalized genetically modiled (GM) crops in one of the few countries worldwide that prohibits them. Harnessing Raymond Williams’s distinction between residual/emergent and incorporated/unincorporated counter-hegemonies, I examine how diverse classes and interest groups articulated their opposition to the law through expressions of ‘moral economy’ across social media and news platforms. With respect to Guatemala’s indigenous majority, I explain how and why Maya leaders uncompromisingly regard GM corn as blasphemy through my prior cultural and historical research on the centrality of maize for indigenous economic survival, community cohesion, autonomy, and spiritual identity.
Multi-Ethnic Communal and Collective Forms of Tenure in Post-War Guatemala: Lessons from the Petén
With highlights from a recent multidisciplinary study to assess the socio-economic and cultural i... more With highlights from a recent multidisciplinary study to assess the socio-economic and cultural impacts of a $31 million Land Administration Project in northern Guatemala, this paper explores the history of indigenous migration to the northern Guatemalan lowlands and reviews the socio-ethnographic typology of collective forms of tenure developed during the frontier colonization process including: municipal ejidos, cooperatives, forest concessions, non-timber forest product groves, sacred sites, native petenero milpas, and especially indigenous customary land management systems. While “communal” and “indigenous” lands are often conflated, many of these land tenure forms transcend traditional ethnic divides, especially in Guatemala’s post conflict context. Nevertheless, for reasons described in the paper, the formalization of private land titles through land administration projects in this region left indigenous communities particularly vulnerable to land sales, especially in regions ...
STORIES FROM THE SARSTOON-TEMASH Traditional Q’eqchi’ Tales by the Elders from Crique Sarco, Sunday Wood, Conejo, and Midway Villages (Toledo District, Belize)
As a microcosm of the global livestock-climate problem, this tale of two hegemonies explores how ... more As a microcosm of the global livestock-climate problem, this tale of two hegemonies explores how and why two critical constituencies-development planners and conservation professionals-have failed to see the ''raw hides" of cattle's impact on the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala. Based on ethnographic research carried out between 1993 and 2007, this paper seeks to explain the idealization, persistence, and normalization of cattle as a land use in Petén from the colonial period to the present. Framed with a Gramscian analysis of the critical role of organic intellectuals in catalyzing social change, I explore the mental feedback loops reinforcing other social and environmental causes of land degradation in this region. After presenting data on the historical expansion of cattle into the Guatemalan lowlands through government colonization programs, I describe how multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank continue to corral development plans in the region. The next part of the paper explores the complex and ambiguous relations between conservation professionals and the ranching sector. I then conclude with a discussion of how global trade and infrastructure projects such as the Puebla to Panama Plan and the Central America Free Trade Agreement will further mask the hegemonic hides of cattle.
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Papers by Liza Grandia