The mythology of the Lacondons describes the whole earth as covered with jungle, to destroy the jungle is to destroy the world. - Didier Boremanse
As early as 1878, commercial lumbering operations began extracting valuable hardwood from the vast stands of mohogany and tropical cedar in the Lacandon territory. The jungle was parceled out as privately controlled lumbering zones to various companies - mostly owned by foreigners. The network of rivers that drained into the great Usumacinta river were used to float the wood to Tenosique where it was hauled by rail to seaports for shipment to foreign markets. Also, to feed the new fad for chewing gum ("chiclets"), chicleros roamed the forests taping the chicle tree for its rubbery sap.
The camps of the lumbermen and chicleros became trading posts for the Lacandons. Meat, tobacco, produce from their milpas and bows and arrows could be exchanged for salt, cloth, metal tools and, significantly, firearms. But unfortunately foreign diseases were thrown with the barter. The Lacandons must have made the connection early on. Karl Sapper, who explored the region in the early 1890’s, reported, "The single appearance of white men is usually enough to lead them to abandon their old dwelling places". These diseases contracted from the lumbermen and chicleros decimated the population. A yellow fever epidemic early this century killed so many of the southern Lacandons, among them many important elders and their heirs, that it ended active religious practices almost entirely. The Lacandon population may have fallen to as low as 100 at one point.
The next phase of in-migration eclipsed the impact of the early lumbermen and chicleros entirely. Landlessness was becoming an acute problem in the more populous parts of Chiapas and other parts of southern Mexico. In a gesture towards implementing long over due land reforms called for in the Mexican constitution, the government instituted the Ley de Reforma Agraria in 1940. Most of lowland Chiapas and much of the Lacandon rain forest was opened for colonization under a policy similar to the U.S. Homesteading Act.
Responding to this new policy, many Tzeltals from Bachajon and Yajalon who had been removed from the jungle by the Spanish in the 16th century returned to their ancestral lands in the Ocosingo valley. They reclaimed their lands and began to move deeper into the jungle encroaching on the Lacandon domain. Many Chols also returned to the rain forest and soon isolated areas where the Lacandons prefered to live were becoming scarce. Finally, a decade later, this process came to its logical conclusion with Tzeltals and Tzotzils from the Chiapas highlands along with land hungry peasants from other parts of Mexico migrating to the rain forest.
The Tzeltals and Chols and other immigrants have often been demonized for turning rain forest into farmland, but certain conditions made this inevitable. From the time they were rounded up by the Spanish and moved to the highlands in the 16th century until well into the 20th century they lived in a state of slavery or debt peonage working on plantations for Spanish and later Mexican land owners. It is often said that the revolution never really reached Chiapas. Land reform in the state of Chiapas had little effect and what small pieces of land the big haciendas were forced to cede to communal ejidos (collective land holdings) was generally the worst surplus land they had. These lands were hardly sufficient to meet the needs of a large and growing population of peasant farmers. If real land reform had occured in other parts of Chiapas and Mexico, the Lacandon rain forest might not have suffered from such disasterous in-migration and deforestation.
The Lacandons were not pleased with the arrival of the kaho "community dwellers", as they referred to the immigrants. By tradition they were reluctant to live near non-related members of their group, let alone foreigners. Rather than put up any resistance, they retreated to the still uninhabited parts of the jungle. Hiding their small settlements in the dense jungle and taking care not to leave a marked trail continued to prove effective, but not for long. Soon the ever encroaching Chol and Tzeltal communities forced the Lacandons into ever tighter settlement patterns. "Although they had been missionized, catechized and scrutinized since the 18th century, the Lacandons had previously relied on their ability to withdraw into the jungle when contact became uncomfortable. As the numbers of jungle inhabitants increased suddenly and systematically after 1940, however, their opportunity to maintain this isolation disappeared." (Nations, 1979)
The newcomers cleared huge areas of the jungle to feed their fast growing numbers as well as cattle and pigs. Instead of letting their fields fallow or regenerate they seeded the exhausted land for livestock forage. New milpas (corn fields) were cut from the jungle. The deforestation soon had its impact on the Lacandons. In the shrinking areas of forest, the wild animals they hunted for food began to disappear. Regular conflicts broke out between the colonists Disputes over issues such as land claims led to murderous feuds. The Lacandons found their fallowed milpas cleared and occupied, disrupting their agricultural cycles. Lacandon families were attacked. Chicleros and crocodile hunters stole food from their milpas. The last refuge for the northern Lacandons was in an area from Monte Libano east to Lake Metzabók. The Southerners settled along the Rio Lacanjá while a few remained near San Quintin and Laguna Miramar living in desperate circumstances.
A Mexico City newspaper Excelsior ran an article on April 5th 1964 reporting that the Lacandon families living in the area of Monte Líbano were told to abandon their territory by Sr. Pedro Vega. Their hunting and agricultural lands, Vega told them, were owned by Fernanda del Villar, who had just sold the timber rights for 15,000 mahogany and cedar trees to a gringo company. Lacandons had long inhabited this area along two tributaries of the Rio Jatate; Puna, Sám, Capulín, Capulco, El Censo and Monte Líbano. Tzeltals had already moved into the area from the Ocosingo valley and now, with marching orders, the Lacandons had no choice but to disperse eastward into the jungle. Several of these families settled near Lago Metzabók and Lago Tz’ibahnah establishing the Metzabók community.
The colonization of the Lacandon area had gotten out of control. Potential casualties of the slash and burn agriculture consuming the rain forest were the large stands of valuable old growth mahogany and cedar in the remaining pristine forest. (Prices for tropical hardwood had risen greatly since the colonization began.) A plan was devised to create a national park, the Zona Lacandona, to regain control of the region for the government. There has been great controversy regarding the Zona Lacandona since its inception. The government of President Echeveria tried to appear altruistic and concerned about environmental protection when they implemented the plan. But there were valuable lumber and petroleum resources at stake. Throughout the whole business the government played the Lacandons as their pawns.
In November 1971 a Presidential decree gave the Lacandons legal title to 614,321 hectares of the Chiapas jungle, an amount which represented more than 64 square kilometers of tropical rainforest. [error in original: that should be 6143 square kilometers] Although Mexico City legal authorities noted in the decree that the Lacandons had held no previous title to the area, they declared that the group had been in "continuous, public, and peaceful possession of the land since time immemorial" (Diario Official, March 6 1972). Overnight, hundreds of Tzeltals, Chols, and other campesinos were transformed into illegal squatters on Lacandon land (Nations, 1979). [Understandably, this poisoned relations between the Lacandons and their neighbors for a long time.] The settlements of Metzabók, Naja and Lacanjá Chan Sayab became propiedades comunales (communal properties) and were alloted 2500 hectares each. Isolated families were flown to these communities at government expense (Nations, 1979).A few Chol and Tzeltal communities with secure ejido status remained on their land within the Zona Lacandona. Many less fortunate colonists were evicted and relocated in much the same way as the spanish colonial powers had done in the 16th century.
Six thousand Tzeltals were moved to the community of Palestina, renamed Nuevo Centro de Populación Velasco Saúrez in honor of Manuel Velasco Saúrez of Chiapas. An equal number of Chols were resettled at Corozal, near the Rio Ucumacinta, and the community was rebaptized Nuevo Centro de Populación Luís Echeverría after the president then in office. In both cases, the relocated families were alloted 25,000 hectares, or approximately four hectares per person (Nations 1979) [less than a quarter of what the Lacandons were alloted].The government of Mexico had suddenly made the most enigmatic and ellusive inhabitants of Mesoamerica among the largest landholders in Mexican history. Having divested thousands of Chol and Tzeltal immigrants of any legal rights to the Zona Lacandona the government was free to negotiate the fate of the region with 350 Lacandons. With vast resources at stake, the Lacandones were negotiating for the first time in their history with a modern nation state.
Thus, the Lacandons put their thumbprints on the documents presented by lumber company and government representatives and, in return, received gifts of cloth and medicines and promises of cash payments. In this way they agreed on November 27th 1974 to a 16 month contract which guaranteed them 250 pesos (U.S. $20 at that time) per cubic meter of mahogany and tropical cedar and 50 pesos (U.S. $4) per cubic meter of other tropical woods. On the international market, such quantities of lumber were at the time worth more than 8000 pesos (U.S. $640) and 3000 pesos (U.S. $240), respectively. Moreover, the Lacandons received little cash for the trees extracted from their territory. Instead, 70% of their royalties were placed in a common fund controlled by National Financiera and administered by the Fondo Nacional Para el Fomento Ejidal (FONAFE) - a fund which quickly grew to seven million pesos.* The remaining 30% of the proceeds from the lumber extraction was given directly to the Lacandons themselves. Thus, in August 1975, each of the officially recognized 66 Lacandon families received a sum of $4,862.90 pesos (approx. U.S. $400), a sum which subsequently was paid to them every six months (Nations 1979).Originally only the southern Lacandons were consulted by the government which appointed Jose Pepe Chan Bor as the representative of all the Lacandons (North and South) (Boremanse 1978). In fact 70% of the Lacandons lived to the north of the new national park boundaries. In 1975 the Zona Lacandona was increased to 662,000 hectares to include the communities of Najá and Metzabók. Two sub-delegates were nominated among the northerners to represent the people of those communities; Chan Kín Jr., son of Chan Kín Viejo in Najá and Joaquin [Trujillo Chan Kín ?] in Metzabók (Boremanse, 1978). (The Lacandons continue to “elect” these representatives. The political role of these presidentes is to deal with government officials on behalf of the communities. Political appointees have little authority over internal matters. Decision making as a whole is done by "democratic" (male) concensus at community forums. The Lacandon communities are basicly acephalous societies without much centralized authority.)[* There is no indication, in 1997, that even 20 years of interest on over half a million U.S. dollars has been spent in the three Lacandon communities.]
Although the biannual payments do not amount to a great deal of money, they were enough to begin to disrupt Lacandon subsistence patterns. The Compańia Nacional de Subsistencias Populares (CONASUPO) built community stores with money from the FONAFE fund and stocked the shelves with such goods as flour, refined sugar, canned fruit juices, honey and packaged ground corn. These products were purchased to the neglect of traditional food production. Government agencies tried to induce the Lacandons to switch to agriculture that would produce goods for national and regional markets.
Instead, the Lacandons collected their biannual payments, reduced the number of crops in their milpas, bought food in the community stores, and purchased radios and battery-operated phonographs with the sudden influx of cash. Eventually, they came to speak of the government officials who brought the cash payments as winik ku sihik t’a k’in* : the "men who give away money" (Nations, 1979).The new communities faced new health and sanitation problems now that they no longer lived in isolated family units in the jungle. Hygienic practices they were accustomed to were not appropriate in concentrated communities. Infectious diseases were easily transfered: salmonella, shigellosis, influenza, measles, and intestinal parasites.[* t’a k’in means literally "shit-of-the-sun"]
Lacandon nutrition also suffered further degradation. The massive Chol and Tzeltal encroachment on their territory and the gradual destruction of the forest itself rapidly decimated the area's wildlife. Men and women who formerly had consumed a diet that balanced milpa crops with protein from undomesticated animals found themselves purchasing canned sardines and kilos of tzeltal-produced beef. As one Lacandon family head succinctly put it, "What would I eat if they stopped bringing money?" (Nations, 1979).By the end of the 1970´s any return to traditional subsistance was becoming impossible. Roads blazed by the lumber companies and oil prospectors were closing in on the Metzabók and Najá from east and west. As the old growth trees were hauled out, more homesteaders moved in. Any hope of the Zona Lacandona remaining largely protected rain forest was a lost cause. The roads reached Najá around 1979. Uncharacteristically, the Lacandons in Najá moved their community to alongside the new road and airstrip.
Only a handful of families, 15% of the population, ignored the government royalty payments and remained outside the three condensed settlements in an attempt to retain some semblance of traditional life. For the remainder of the Lacandons, the 20th century had arrived (Nations, 1979).
Beyond the records of San José, the earlier origins of the modern Lacandons is open to speculation. First we must consider the significant cultural and ethnic differences between the northern and southern Lacandons. Their origins could be quite distinct. (Presently, many northerners live in the south in and around Lacanja Chansayab. “Southern Lacandons” refers to those whose forebears originally came from along the Rio Lacanja and the area around San Quintin and Laguna Miramar.) Also, the oral history of the Lacandons provides no clues. They have no migration myth and recall only having lived in a world that is an endless rainforest (Bruce, Boremanse).
The prevailing theory is that the modern Lacandons are related to Yucatec Maya who fled from disruption, disease and slavery of the Spanish conquest far to the northeast in the Yucatan peninsula. This view is supported almost entirely on the grounds that the Lacandons speak Yucatec Maya and it is believed the inhabitants of the Lacandon Rainforest at the time of the conquest were primarly Chol speakers. (The Chols were forcibly evacuated from the “inhospitable” jungle by the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries.) There are a few reasons why one is allowed to have some doubts about this theory. One is that the term “Chol”, as it is found in colonial records, may not refer to a specific lanquage. It might be a word that the Spanish picked up from the peninsular Maya which may have meant “of twisted tongue” refering to anyone who speaks an unintelligable language (Bruce). And then there is the later research of J. Eric S. Thompson.
Thompson’s arguements in A Proposal for Constituting a Maya Subgroup, Cultural and Linguistic, in the Peten and Adjacent Regions (1977), challenge the view that Yucatec speaking Maya arrived relatively recently to the lowland area stretching from Belize to eastern Chiapas. He proposes that a distinct subdivision of Yucatec speaking Maya have always been among the indigenous inhabitants of the area. In fact, Thompson believed that the ancestors of the modern Lacandons may have been living in the Usumacinta and Pasión river valleys during the post-Classic period and possibly the Classic. (He offered impressive evidence – linguistic, ethno-historical, religious and archeological – to support his conclusions.)
Thompson’s ideas might provide a unifying theory. It would allow that the ancestors of the modern Lacandon only migrated a comparatively short distance from the El Peten, an expanse of jungle continuous with the Lacandon Rainforest to the east of the Ucumacinta river in Guatemala. This could resolve the contradiction of the Lacandons’ own oral history, which does not recall a great migration. After all, the Lacandons were always shifting their homesteads in the rainforest. A gradual shift west a few hundred kilometres through the jungle to Chiapas might not have seemed like a migration. This still leaves the question of cultural and ethnic differences between northerners and southerners. Perhaps this could be accounted for if one group had contact or mixed with Chol Maya who had escaped the early Spanish reducciónes. Whatever the exact origins of the Lacandones may have been, it is important to keep in mind that, until quite recently, the majority of them continued to inhabit not Chiapas, but the western region of the Guatemalan Peten (Nations, 1979).
Finally, it is probably safe to lay to rest the romantic idea that the Lacandons of today are direct descendants of the Maya who ruled at Palenque, as suggested in The Last Lords of Palenque by Victor Perera and Robert Bruce.
References:
Population Ecology of the Lacandon Maya
by James D. Nations
Dallas: South Methodist University, 1979
375 p. (Thesis. Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology)
The Social Organization of the Lacandon Indians of Mexico
by Didier B. Boremanse
Oxford: Campion Hall, 1978
388 p.
A Proposal for Constituting a Maya Subgroup,
Cultural and Linguistic, in the Peten and Adjacent Regions
In: Anthropology and History in the Yucatan
by J. Eric S. Thompson
Austin: University of Texas, 1977
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