Ex-Fighters Chop Guatemala Jungle
5/1/97
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Headline: Ex-Fighters Chop Guatemala Jungle
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Date: 5/1/97
Byline: Colin Woodard
Copyright 1997 by Christian Science Monitor
Two Wars Leave Unkind Cuts in Tropical Forests
From the air you can appreciate the vast scale of the Peten jungle
- a sea of virgin rain forest stretching in all directions. North of
the frontier town of Flores, the rolling green canopy continues
uninterrupted deep into neighboring Mexico and Belize. There are no
paved roads and only a handful of dirt tracks and villages
interspersed between the overgrown ruins of Guatemala's ancient Mayan
cities.
But moving south, more and more plumes of smoke rise above the
jungle floor, a telltale sign that yet another poor peasant family has
arrived in the Peten. Swaths of burned earth and ragged, eroded
pastures are left in their wake, consuming the jungle at an alarming
rate.
With thousands of Mayan Indians desperate for land arriving from
the highlands every month, many fear that North America's largest rain
forest may not survive the invasion.
``The Peten will turn to desert if it is deforested; it's a
scientific fact,'' says Carlos Soza Manzanero, director of the
Flores-based environmental group Pro-Peten. ``The soil can't support
highland-style agriculture and erodes away, but nobody can stop the
newcomers.''
Hundreds of thousands of uprooted Mayan peasants - many of them
former guerrilla fighters - have been on the move since the end of
Guatemala's 30-year civil war. Believing falsely that the peace
settlement signed in December sanctions the seizure of uninhabited
lands, many have come to the Peten, a sparsely populated wilderness
that makes up a third of Guatemalan territory.
This remote northwestern area has seen its population increase
22-fold to 360,000 in the past 30 years. With the annual growth rate
now estimated at 10 to 15 percent and growing, the population is
expected to reach 500,000 by the end of the decade.
Arriving in the wilderness, newcomers typically clear the forest
using slash-and-burn tactics. But the soils are so poor that the new
fields are exhausted within a year or two, and the farmers move on to
clear more land to feed their families.
``The immigrants come from a culture of corn production, so they
try to farm by clear-cutting just as they would in the highlands,''
says Hermogenes Roldan Morales, a Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
official working in Peten. ``Of course these tactics don't work in
tropical lowlands, with bad results for both farmers and the land.''
More than 40 percent of unprotected forests in the region have been
``severely degraded'' according to government estimates.
Even the 3.9 million acres of legally protected jungle that make up
the Maya Biosphere Reserve are under threat. The government is
avoiding confrontations with squatters in the reserve for fear of
upsetting the peace process or donor nations. Some immigrants have
reportedly cut farms inside national parks in the reserve that are
designed to protect ancient Mayan structures, many of which have not
been excavated.
In March, armed squatters in the reserve took 29 government
officials hostage near the village of Laguna del Tigre when the
officials tried to enforce a court order to move them from the
protected lands. The officials were later released, but the squatters
stayed.
``The peace process is misunderstood and mismanaged in this
region,'' says Pro-Peten's Mr. Soza. ``Only international pressure and
assistance can protect the reserve. If it is left as an internal
matter, there will only be chunks of jungle left.''
The government's hand is very weak in Peten. With few roads, phone
lines, or settlements, authorities have difficulty policing the
frontiers.
Diplomatic sources in the capital say the Peten has become a major
transshipment route for US-bound narcotics and illegal immigrants.