Petenerosare defined in relation to sureños
or immigrants from departments south of
the Petén; the majority are ladinosfrom the
Orienteregion and Q’eqchí from Alta and
Baja Verapaz (see Figure One). Because
they practice slash and burn agriculture,
conservationist discourses frame migrants
as the primary cause of deforestation in the
reserve, to the exclusion of other actors
such as powerful cattle ranchers, loggers,
and oil companies.^20 Indeed, 86 percent of
individuals from fifteen international and
national NGOs surveyed in 1995 responded
that immigrants are responsible for the
deterioration of the reserve.^21 One predomi-
nant opinion in conservation and develop-
ment circles is that migrants slash and burn
because they are unfamiliar with the
region’s ecology. For instance, one report
argues that the migrants come from differ-
ent regions of Guatemala where the ecolog-
ical conditions are very different; this is said
to “provoke a lack of understanding of the
appropriate methods of a sustainable use of
the natural resources” in the tropical low-
lands.^22 One study suggests: “the lush veg-
etation leads people to believe, mistakenly,
that the land is extremely productive.”^23 In
a recent article new immigrants are said to
“cut down large tracts of for-
est for extensive monocultiva-
tion of corn and cattle ranch-
ing because they are unfamil-
iar with the traditional liveli-
hood strategies of the old for-
est society.”^24
As these narratives illustrate,
conservationist visions of how
the reserve should be man-
aged shape perceptions of
social groups and their human
land relations. Empirical docu-
mentation of peteneroand
immigrants’ environmental
practices is taken as evidence
of fixed characteristics, which
are understood as essential to
their culture. The environmental practices of
petenerosare framed as appropriate to the
goals of forest conservation, while migrant
farmers are seen to have inappropriate
traits. As a consequence of such naturaliz-
ing discourses, peteneroshave been privi-
leged within conservationist discourses and
given a say in conservation policy-making
processes. Migrant farmers, in contrast,
have been framed as ignorant of appropri-
ate resource management and therefore
excluded from decision-making circles.
While these discourses have real implica-
tions in the lives of local people, my
research suggests that they should not be
understood as truereflections of human-
land relations as they really are in the
Petén. Rather, conservationists’ truths are
the product of particular configurations of
power, which have empowered certain
groups to shape knowledge in ways that
reflect their goals and interests.^25 Indeed,
a closer analysis of conservationist dis-
courses reveals the ways in which peten-
eroshave been able to shape the dis-
courses of conservation to reflect their
interests.
History, cculture aand cconservation
Figure 4.Migrant Farmer. (Courtesy Kevin Bray)
