The Future of Petén

In the remote Petén region of northern Guatemala, environmentalists are fighting environmentalists in a behind-the-scenes ideological conflict over how best to save the vast but rapidly shrinking Maya forest.

American archaeologists, Guatemalan bankers and the country’s government have aligned to support an ambitious plan to protect hundreds of thousands of acres and support the excavation of ancient Maya cities with tourist dollars. But some international green groups, which in the 1990s helped local communities win the right to build “sustainable” logging businesses on overlapping lands, say new, large-scale tourism would sweep away the local-empowerment movement they’ve worked so hard to build.

In July 2008, four Northern California journalists travel to Petén with a travel grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to sort out the scientific claims about conservation and document the stories of residents caught up in a transnational conflict over the fate of Guatemala’s disappearing northern wilderness.

KARA ANDRADE
Kara graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism with a Master’s in Journalism. She received her B.A. in Literature from New College of Florida and has six years of experience in nonprofit development, public health and community organizing. She has worked as a staff writer, photojournalist and bilingual multimedia journalist for the Alameda Journal of the Contra Costa Times, the Oakland Tribune, Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, and many publications. Her specialties are online content and news production, Second Life event planning, community organizing, social networking and online strategy. She is the Online Strategist for the Maynard Institute and the Interactive Director for Youth Radio. For her portfolio go to www.karaandrade.com.

DAVID M. BARREDA
Born in Perú and raised in Vermont, David Barreda studied Geography and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and journalism at the University of Missouri. He currently is a staff photojournalist for the San Jose Mercury News where he also dabbles in multimedia production. Previously he worked for the Rocky Mountain News, and Miami Herald and the Valley News of New Hampshire. His travels have taken him as far afield as Huascabamba, Perú, Ambositre, Madagascar, and Yarolslavl, Russia. Some of David’s interests in photography include the environment, nationalism, spirituality and sustainability. To view David’s portfolio go to www.dynamicvision.org.

MICHAEL STOLL
Michael Stoll is an environmental journalist, college journalism teacher and director of a nonprofit media-reform project in San Francisco. He first learned about the conflicting visions of the fate of the forest in Petén in 2004 when he was working on an article about archaeological artifact smuggling for San Francisco Magazine. He has also written articles for the San Jose Mercury News, the Christian Science Monitor and E/The Environmental Magazine. He teaches editing and reporting classes at San Jose State University, and also works with an all-volunteer group of journalists to establish a new noncommercial daily newspaper, to be called The Public Press

NADIA SUSSMAN
Nadia has five years experience as an advocate on behalf of prisoners, asylum-seekers and the homeless, including three years as an investigator for death row habeas corpus appeals. She is currently producing a documentary short about two formerly incarcerated youth. Her interest in international conservation began while working as a research assistant at the Center for Investigative Reporting. Nadia has spent six months traveling and studying in Central America. She graduated from Yale University in 2003 with a B.A. in political science.