Los restos: renacimiento y resiliencia del pueblo q’eqchi’ en PeténThe Leftovers: Q’eqchi’ Revival and Resilience in Petén

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 Petén, sino también de lucha por derechos humanos, transformación agroecológica, soberaníaalimentaria, rescate de conocimientos ancestrales, justicia ambiental, y quizás de la reforestación y restauración ecológica a una escala masiva si las autoridades de la conservación lograran respetar los valores tradicionales de la cosmovisión q’eqchi’ sobre el bosque y sus propias formas de organización

Imagining the highway:Anticipating infrastructural and environmental change in Belize

This article examines the social and political, as well physical, construction of infrastructure, by attending to the implications of a highway yet to be built. In southern Belize, where the development of rural road networks figures strongly in historical narratives of political and environmental change, the recent paving of a major domestic highway has had distinctive implications for livelihoods and land rights among the predominantly Maya population of rural Toledo district. At the time of research, a plan for a new paved highway to the Guatemalan border animated longstanding debates over territoriality, environment and development, even as the details remained elusive. Bringing political ecology into conversation with attention to the perception of sensory environments, and the affective power of anticipation, I argue for extending anthropological conversations about infrastructure to encompass the meanings and consequences of imagined infrastructures for the ways people encounter, experience and enact social and environmental change

Carpet Bombings: A Drama of Chemical Injury in Three Acts

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 district dismissed the mothers' citizen science.  The Superintendent continued to vouch for the carpet’s safety based on the industry’s voluntary “Green Label.”  A historical section of this article therefore recounts how and why the carpet industry invented this label in the aftermath of a scandal in which new carpets sickened a fifth of the EPA workforce at their headquarters in Washington, DC between 1987 and 1988.  Thirty years later, once again, three California environmental regulatory agencies are scrutinizing the carpet industry for hazardous ingredients. &nbsp

Toxic Gaslighting: On the Ins and Outs of Pollution

Outdoor images predominate in cultural conceptions of “air pollution,” whilst indoor air quality (IAQ) is typically tenfold more contaminated. Recent nonprofit research revealed that “green label” carpet contains up to 44 hazardous substances. How and why do school administrators not know this? When people speak colloquially about “toxic” schools, they typically refer to social environments whose power dynamics are manipulated by difficult people (bullies, narcissists, gaslighters, etc.). In this article, I borrow the cultural concept of gaslighting to query how and why the literal off-gassing of banal objects like carpet have escaped scientific inquiry. In dialogue with recent innovative air studies in California that blur the boundaries of in/outdoor pollution, this auto-ethnographic paper chronicles a carpet controversy at “Beacon” Elementary, a bilingual school in the Central Valley. 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 in 2017. By “outing” internal school board communication through repeated public records requests, Beacon mothers discovered how a chemical risk manager on the board manipulated confusion about patterns of pollution to dismiss the mothers’ citizen science of the chemical abuse of their children. When pollution occurs out-of-sight (in locked classrooms) or affects groups rarely studied in exposure (minors), institutions can easily deploy gaslighting techniques of doubt, denial, and disavowal of the chemical abuse of children. Given the slow (Nixon 2011), delayed, incremental, and “gaslighted” nature of modern chemical violence, even those harmed by chronic pollution may misrecognize the symptoms; those that do recognize the symptoms may be perceived or portrayed as delusional in stories worthy of Hollywood noir

Back to the Future: The Autonomous Indigenous Communities of Petén, Guatemala

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 paucity of the “leftovers” (li xeel, in Q’eqchi’ Mayan) has inspired a peasant federation in northern Guatemala to embrace its indigenous identity through scores of village declarations of autonomy. Albeit born from a class-based organizing repertoire, the new political trajectory of this Q’eqchi’ organization still reflects Via Campesina’s broader conceptual umbrella of peasant rights, good living, indigenous spirituality, gender equity, agroecology, and the ancient right to save seed. Drawing from a participatory mapping project, fieldnotes, letters, proposals, social media, texts, and other elusive “grey literature” from seventeen years of allied camaraderie, I describe how they are resuscitating and adapting an oppressive political structure from 16th-century colonial rule into a creative political mechanism to defend their territory from 21st-century neoliberal land grabs.A obra clássica de James C. Scott (1976), sobre a lógica chayanoviana da economia camponesa, argumenta que menos importante do que a quantidade tomada é quando pouco pode sobrar. Uma consciência similar sobre a escassez das “sobras” (li xeel, em maia q’eqchi’) tem inspirado a uma federação camponesa do norte da Guatemala a celebrar sua identidade indígena, mediante dezenas de declarações de autonomia. Embora tenha nascido de um repertório de organização baseado na classe, a nova trajetória política dessa organização q’eqchi’ ainda reflete o amplo referencial conceitual de Via Camponesa, que inclui direitos camponeses, boas condições de vida, espiritualidade indígena, igualdade de gênero, agroecologia e o antigo direito de armazenar sementes. A partir de um projeto de mapeamento participativo, notas de campo, cartas, propostas, redes sociais, textos e a evasiva “literatura cinza” de 17 anos de parceria e camaradagem, descrevo como estão ressuscitando e adaptando a estrutura política opressiva do domínio colonial do século XVI, para convertê-la em um mecanismo político criativo que busca defender seu território da apropriação neoliberal de terras do século XXI.La obra clásica de James C. Scott (1976), sobre la lógica chayanoviana de la economía campesina, argumenta que menos importante que la cantidad tomada es cuán poco puede sobrar. Una consciencia similar sobre la escasez de las “sobras” (li xeel, en maya q’eqchi’) ha inspirado a una federación campesina del norte de Guatemala a celebrar su identidad indígena, mediante decenas de declaraciones de autonomía. Si bien nació de un repertorio de organización basado en la clase, la nueva trayectoria política de esta organización q’eqchi’ aún refleja el amplio marco conceptual de Vía Campesina, que incluye derechos campesinos, buenas condiciones de vida, espiritualidad indígena, igualdad de género, agroecología y el antiguo derecho a almacenar semillas. Partiendo de un proyecto de mapeo participativo, notas de campo, cartas, propuestas, redes sociales, textos y la evasiva “literatura gris” de 17 años de alianza y camaradería, describo cómo están resucitando y adaptando una estructura política opresiva del dominio colonial del siglo XVI, para convertirla en un mecanismo político creativo que busca defender su territorio de la apropiación neoliberal de tierras del siglo XXI

Toxic Tropics: Purity and Danger in Everywhere in Everyday Life

In contrast to popular images of the tropics as verdant Edens, forest dwellers face various pollutants with little-understood environmental health impacts. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic research in northern Guatemala through the lens of Mary Douglas\u27 work on purity, danger, and culture, this paper describes how the inventive re-use of modern waste exposes rural people to new and unknown toxic substances from “matter out of place.” While environmental justice literature has emphasized industrial, extractive, and military disasters, this note draws attention to the less dramatic yet lethal pollutants encountered in the everyday lives of the rural poor through “chemical trespass.

A Tribute to Norman B. Schwartz (1932-2018)

Elizabeth –Liza– Grandia and John Hawkins paired to give a worthy tribute to the late Norman Schwartz

Conservation's Friends in High Places: Neoliberalism, Networks, and the Transnational Conservation Elite

Global conservation has changed over the last two decades. As conservation NGOs have grown in size and stature, they have increasingly turned to businesses and market mechanisms and they are increasingly replacing the state in delivering conservation programs. This article argues that at the heart of global conservation lies a small, well-connected elite, made up of directors and senior staff of key conservation NGOs, state politicians and bureaucrats, corporate directors, scientists, celebrities, and media actors. This elite network works as influence, ideas, and money are spread in formal spaces, such as conferences and meeting rooms, and in informal occasions such as social events. Drawing on emerging studies of conservation bureaucracies and NGOs, this article outlines the workings and structure of this elite, illustrated through four detailed vignettes. It situates the elite in the emerging literature on neoliberalism, arguing that this elite is at the forefront of driving the neoliberalization of conservation. © 2011 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Dakota Access Pipeline in Context

A map developed by a working group of UC-Davis affiliates in coordination with the Native American Studies (NAS) Department and the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas (IRCA) to provide deeper historical context to the conflict over the Dakota Access Pipeline in the Area surrounding the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in North Dakota and South Dakota.