13 Policy Matters.qxp

and good will, work to pro-

duce such knowledge as

truthsabout the natural

and social world.^6

However, my research

leads me to suggest that

such research data should

not be understood as true

reflections or mirrors of

the world; rather, knowl-

edge is always partial,

selective, the product of

particular configurations of

power and knowledge.^7

For example, studies on

resource management pur-

port to document specific

sets of practices as a basis

for decision-making. And yet, research cap-

tures a moment in time and research

reports tend to freeze this moment as the

way things are. In the process, particular

practices become fixed and, through repeti-

tion in policy documents, come to appear as

traits essential to particular cultural groups.

Once attached to a particular group, these

cultural and environmental traits are then

considered as a basis for determining which

groups are appropriate to the goals of con-

servation and which are not. Such determi-

nations also delineate who will be included

in or excluded from decision-making and

who will or will not have access to natural

resources. As they inform policy and plan-

ning, conservationists’ truths directly impact

the lives of local groups.

In this context, it is important to ask how

local people, as individuals and collectives,

interact with these truths generated about

them. And, what are the implications for

those social groups whose cultural traits and

environmental practices are deemed inap-

propriate to the goals of conservation? To

get at these questions, I narrow in on the

every day discourses of conservation in the

Maya biosphere reserve, with attention to

how they are elaborated, deployed, contest-

ed, and appropriated. Using a two-pronged

approach, I draw upon textual analysis of

NGO and government documents as well as

ethnographic research undertaken between

1996 and 1997, including participant obser-

vation, semi-structured and structured inter-

views.^8 After outlining the research context,

the first section focuses on NGO discourses

and illustrates how studies that profess to

document natural resource management in

the reserve also serve to fix cultural traits

and environmental practices as essential to

specific social groups.

I then shift to an analysis of how two differ-

ently positioned groups, peteneros(people

of the Petén) and sureños(migrants from

southern Guatemala) interact with these

discourses and practices. Petenerocommu-

nities have been historically dependent

upon forest collecting, thus conservationist

discourses position them as key to forest

conservation in the reserve. Sureños, on the

other hand, practice slash and burn agricul-

ture and, consequently are framed as igno-

rant of appropriate human land relations.

Drawing upon my ethnographic research, I

illustrate how each group, as individuals and

collectives, engage with conservationist dis-

courses as they attempt to deal with the

material implications of changing power

structures and resource governance regimes

in the reserve.

Research Context: the Maya

Biosphere Reserve

In the popular imagination, the northern

lowland forests in the department of Petén

have long been seen as a source of wealth;

for many, the region represented the coun-

try’s future (Figure One).^9 However, in the

late 1980s, environmental activists revealed

that the expansion of the cattle ranching

industry, logging, and migrant farming had

removed approximately 50 percent of the

Petén’s forest cover since the 1960s.^10

Conservation aas ccultural aand ppolitical ppractice

The ssocial rrelations
that eempower NNGOs
in LLatin AAmerica,
and ttheir cclaims tto
technical eexpertise,
impartiality, aand
good wwill, wwork tto
produce ssuch kknowl-
edge aas ttruths. YYet,
my rresearch lleads mme
to ssuggest tthat [[...]
knowledge iis aalways
partial, sselective, tthe
product oof pparticular
configurations oof
power aabout tthe nnatu-
ral aand ssocial wworld.