The Future of Petén

SAN FRANCISCO — One of the strangest things about Guatemala is how close it is to the US. And how easy to leave. In our plane, we effortlessly crossed the border where Mexico tries to keep the Guatemalans out, then cleared the wall the US is building to keep the Mexicans out. Just four and a half hours out of Guatemala City’s gleaming new airport we landed in LA.

It is jarring to move so quickly from one environment to the next. And I am reminded that this very act — the ability to move freely — has so much to do with the situation in Petén.

Petén is being shaped by politicians and conservationists who draw borders trying to redefine how people and forest products will move through the region. Petén is being shaped by narco-ranchers, invasive farmers and fire-setters who mow down the forest illegally in swaths and patches. Some are big-time landowners with political connections. Others are campesinos who have edged north one by one, seeking the parcela that they couldn’t find anywhere else. Petén is being shaped, too, by the communities rooted there who have been living off the forest for generations. Very few of the latter people could ever get on a plane and just go.

Before we left Guatemala, we had time to explore communities in and near the Maya Biosphere Reserve. First we visited the lumberyard of FORESCOM, a company that markets the forest products of the concessions belonging to umbrella organization ACOFOP. There, we watched as the trees of the jungle were planed, shaved and measured into decking and molding, ready to be exported to the U.S.

From there we visited AFISAP, the concession of San Andrés, a community on the north side of Lago Petén Itzá. There, too, trees were becoming lumber, as is the work of this season. At AFISAP, raw trunks were laid out in the sun, and we could appreciate the enormity of each one. Workers pried off the bark with the full force of their arms and backs, one blow at a time, until the trunks lay bare and ready for the saws.

Raquel, our guide at AFISAP explained that at this rainy time of year, the logging has ended, and the wood is being prepared for export. AFISAP is focusing on marketing some lesser known hardwoods and trying to build international demand. The reason: the mahogany is running out. It will be gone in 10 years, he says. Raquel was the first and only Guatemalan to discuss this problem with us. We had heard a similar prognosis for mahogany from Professor Liza Grandia, formerly of ProPetén. Raquel says that ACOFOP is already strategizing to find other sources of income for forest-dependent communities.

This, of course, raises the question of how sustainable “sustainable” forestry is. As we found out, the results varied dramatically from one community to the next. In communities such as Carmelita and Uaxactún where the traditional economic activities are the harvesting of non-timber forest products, communities have been fairly successful in maintaining the forest, even with a lumber industry. This is in part because they have never been big farmers, and have always depended on the forest ecosystem. In the case of Uaxactún, the security provided by guards at the Tikal archaeological site dramatically reduces their burden to patrol their concession for invaders and illegal loggers and makes it easier to keep the forest intact.

But other communities are less equipped. The day after our AFISAP visit, David and I spent a long time traveling up and down the road between Flores and Carmelita. Our first stop was a CONAP security post under construction. CONAP had been run out of a nearby town called Cruce a Dos Aguadas, where angry community members torched their guard post. Now there are 10 soldiers stationed on the border of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a little ways up from the town. The number will increase to 35, we were told, when the post is finished, and they believe this will be enough to prevent the trafficking of illegal timber, drugs and other products in and out of the Reserve.

Later we stopped in Cruce a Dos Aguadas to learn what happened from the community perspective. One of the leaders, Eliseo Acuña, described how the concession model doesn’t work for communities ill-equipped to live off the forest. The people of Cruce a Dos Aguadas, he said, were farmers. They each wanted individual parcels of farmland instead of tracts of forest. After six years of petitioning the government, particularly the legislature for an agricultural concession as opposed to a forest concession, he helped get the area recognized as an “agricultural polygon” where farming is allowed within the Biosphere Reserve.

But the community’s experience with CONAP was negative, he said. His biggest critique is that CONAP comes in, tells people that they can’t cut down the forest, but doesn’t provide enough alternative employment. He says for poor people with families to feed, there is simply no alternative to growing corn and beans to survive, and that requires land.

In neighboring communities such as San Miguel and La Pasadita, forest concessions were granted but they failed. According to Eliseo, the communities didn’t have the resources adequate to manage and protect the reserve, so they sold out to ranchers, although the land is not legally theirs to sell. Their concessions have since been canceled. These failures will be fodder for the political debate over land use under the Cuatro Balam plan. Still, concessions advocates maintain that on the whole they have been more successful in maintaining the forest than in areas without them.