Lacandon Jungle
The heart of this rainforest is located in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas near the border with Guatemala in the Montañas del Oriente region of the state.
[5] Despite the fact that much of the area has been reduced to a patchwork of clearings for cattle ranches and peasant communities,[3] the Lacandon contains some of the most extensive and best preserved remnants of lower montane rainforest in Mexico and Central America.
[1][6] The predominant native vegetation is perennial high rainforest with trees that can grow to an average height of thirty meters and often to fifty or sixty including Guatteria anomala, Ceiba pentandra, Swietenia macrophylla, Terminalia amazonia and Ulmus mexicana.
[4][5] Mammoth guanacaste trees shrouded in vines and bromeliads among clear running streams, enormous ferns, palms and wild elephant's ear plants can still be seen.
It is part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which aims to link similar sites from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec down through Central America for conservation purposes.
[6] The city of Bonampak features exceptionally well-preserved Maya murals, depicting Mayan clothing, rituals, games, food and other aspects of life from that time.
The Tzeltal are the most numerous (15,000) and live in the town of Nueva Palestina [es], they immigrated into the jungle from the Chiapas highlands in the 1970s to begin farms, often maize, beans or chili peppers, primarily organised in the ejido system.
The Lacandon number some 550; they survive from slash-and-burn agriculture, growing much the same crops as the Tzeltal, as well as tourism and collecting the leaves of wild Chamaedorea palms for the cut flower industry.
[11] Until the early 18th century, the Lacandon Jungle and bordering areas of Guatemala were occupied by the now-extinct Lakandon Ch'ol.,[21] who lived along the tributaries of the upper Usumacinta River and the foothills of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes.
[24] The Xocmo were never conquered and escaped repeated Spanish attempts to locate them; their eventual fate is unknown but they may be ancestors of the modern Lacandon people.
Sometimes tourists or military men stationed in the area will buy objects such as claws, hides, talons, macaw feathers, etc., but this is uncommon; hunters are cognisant of the laws and afraid of fines and having their guns confiscated.
Tapirs and white-lipped peccaries were becoming rarer according to the hunters, while other animals appeared to be suffering hunting pressure and habitat change without apparent effects on population.
Before the Conquest, the Lacandon dominated about a million hectares of these lands, but since the early 20th century other people, mostly Maya from other areas of Chiapas, have begun to colonise the forest.
[27] The Lacandon Maya have supported themselves for centuries practicing slash-and-burn agriculture called milpa,[11] which can be seen as a method of "swidden agroforestry".
A part of the primary forest is destroyed by burning it down, crops are temporarily planted, and the field is then abandoned after the soil fertility declines.
After a cycle of largely natural afforestation taking 7 to 30 years, the soil fertility will be restored, and the jungle can be burnt again to grow crops.
While there are concerns that ecotourism will make the jungle a commodity and cause changes in Lacandon culture, it also helps to keep younger generations from migrating out of the area.
[2] In 1990, a World Bank study declared that the following decade would make or break the Lacandon Selva's chances for survival as the rainforest had been "reduced to the minimum size essential for the integrity of its ecosystem".
[28] The clearance of the jungle had been such that a journalist claimed in 2003 that satellite photos show the Mexico-Guatemalan border where the deforestation on the Mexican side stops.
[30] This deforestation began in the mid 19th century with the arrival of loggers and chicleros, who tapped certain trees for sap to make chewing gum.
EZLN believes the evictions are a pretence to dislodge them from their base of support and the turn over the Lacandon to corporate exploitation as the area is rich in timber, oil, hydroelectric and genetic resources.
They also state that the agricultural methods do not help alleviate the migrants’ economic system as they can only farm a plot for a couple of harvests before the soil is depleted.
[8] The Zapatistas have accused environmentalists of siding with the government and corporate interests, and the Lacandons are too small in number to challenge the other groups, despite being the legal owners of much of the reserve.
[3] In 2008, Zapatistas and allied prohibited the entrance of federal police and army into ejidos such as La Garrucha, San Alejandro and Hermenegildo Galena to search for marijuana fields, claiming that these forces are outside their jurisdiction to do so.
They and certain NGOs such as Maderas del Pueblo de Sureste oppose programs such as Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), claiming it commodifies indigenous culture, giving a commercial value to it vis-à-vis the environment.
[38] In 2011, over 600 communal farmers from Frontera Corozal, a Ch'ol town on the border with Guatemala entered into an agreement with the government to grow forests on their lands in exchange for payment under the REDD+ plan.
In exchange, each member of the communal organization received 2,000 pesos as a first payment, brought personally by the state's governor, Juan Sabines Guerrero.
The agreement calls for monthly payments as well as assistance in creating tourism opportunities and groves of oil palms on non-reserve lands.
[3] Zapatistas have raised concerns that the pressure to explore the area's natural resources is biopiracy, i.e. the patenting of wild plants and animals at the expense of native peoples.
The Zapatistas claim that the government is hiding the presence of oil in the area as they try to force them and the indigenous people who support them off the lands, after which they can extract without compensation.
