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Maya Trekkers, a Mopan Maya company in the village of San José, Toledo District, Belize, is attempting to gain a share of the rapidly growing local tourist industry. The company expects to find a niche catering to foreign "ecotourists" who want to visit tropical old growth rainforests. The tourism industry in Belize has exploded in recent years. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of tourists arriving in Belize increased from 64,000 to 190,000. By the late 1980s, the average annual growth rate was 15-20%. Tourism presently is Belize's second-greatest source of foreign exchange, after agriculture. Most tourists to Belize are upper-class people looking for sport fishing and world-class diving in the off-shore coral reefs. Another type of tourist that is increasingly interested in Belize is the low-budget ecotourist. Mostly students, academics and non-conformists from North America and Europe, ecotourists gravitate to the Toledo District of Belize because the area is inexpensive and has proximity to unspoiled rainforests.
For the Mayas of the Toledo District, tourism opens an avenue that allows them to think about making a living without being forced into their usual bad options as second-class citizens: cash-cropping cacao or vegetables, working as wage labor on local plantations, or swidden agriculture for self-sufficiency. Tourism also is the kind of business that permits them to use their natural and cultural resources without damaging or destroying them.
Maya Trekkers was formed in 1992 by twelve Mopan men of San José. Two of them had previously been hired by the Belizean Forestry Department to lead an expedition into the Columbia Forest Reserve to measure the impact of Guatemalan settlers who had moved into the forest along the Guatemala border. That expedition demonstrated to the Mayas that without direct control over their unique bioregional resources, those resources might be destroyed by settlers who were moving in. Maya Trekkers was thus founded with a dual purpose: to lead ecotourists on treks into the Reserve forests, and to act as wardens for the Forestry Department to monitor settlement in the Reserve.
Maya Trekkers has not yet begun to do business, however. In the summer of 1995, the company was still waiting to receive permission to cut trails and build rustic lodging facilities in the Columbia Reserve. The Mopans want to build structures to house small groups of tourists, and to attract and accomodate visitors who desire longer, more rugged hikes into the Maya Mountains. The structures would also be available for the needs of Forestry Department personnel and scientists who are conducting studies in the rainforest.
The Belizean government has stymied the Mayas' efforts by denying them permission to use the Columbia Forest Reserve that is their traditional territory for their enterprise. The Forestry Department accuses the Maya of destroying forest resources through swidden farming practices and is suspicious of a Maya project to sustainably exploit the area's natural resources. On the other hand, professed government support for tourism development makes denial of that permission apparently inconsistent, if not discriminatory, as policy.
A third actor in the impasse is the Toledo Maya Cultural Council, an organization of 10,000 Mopan and Kekchí Maya that wants to establish a legally demarcated Maya homeland in the Toledo District as a conservation area. The government is reluctant to turn over access to "crown lands" to Indians; to do so would be politically unpopular, while at the same time, it would represent a conflict with other interests, especially the logging industry (see the following article).
Maya Trekkers is an indigenous development effort, based on traditional Mopan knowledge and resources, and as such, is not dependent on foreign technical expertise or funding. The Mopans are not waiting idly for permission to proceed, in any case. They have already cut a trail that leads to a spectacular waterfall and swimming area about an hour's walk from the village. The trail was cut through a second growth area, where villagers had previously planted milpas; now that land will be allowed to regenerate as forest. The Mopans did receive permission from the Lands Department to control eight acres around the waterfall, to protect the large trees from both milpas and logging. Meanwhile, Maya Trekkers has sent one of its members to a Forestry Department warden-training class in Belmopan, the capital, in order to gain credibility as forest wardens with both the government and the local community.
Fourth World Bulletin • Spring/Summer 1996
Copyright © 1996 by the Fourth World Center
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