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Obama Family Arrives in El Salvador
Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI)
Associated Press
Taming the Jungle, Saving the Maya Forest The Militarys Role in - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Taming the Jungle, Saving the Maya Forest The Militarys Role in - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
6 April 2011 | Global Land Grabbing | POLITICS: Conflict & Violence Taming the Jungle, Saving the Maya Forest The Militarys Role in Guatemalan Conservation Megan Ybarra Willamette University Associated Press Obama Family Arrives
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“Ranchers and Drug Barons Threaten Rain Forest”
- - NY Times, 17 July 2010
“There’s traffickers, cattle ranchers, loggers, poachers and looters,” said Richard D. Hansen, an American
archaeologist who is leading the excavation of the earliest and largest Mayan city-state, El Mirador, in the northern tip of the reserve. “All the bad guys are lined
up to destroy the [Maya Biosphere] Reserve. You can’t imagine the devastation that is happening.”
¿Mini-Narco-State or Maya-Themed Vacationland?
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Jungle to be Tamed, Forest to be Saved
Taming the Jungle Saving the Maya Forest Jungle Reprised Implications
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Save the Forest Tame the Jungle Jungle Reprised Implications
Taming the Jungle: Colonization
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Taming the Jungle: Counterinsurgency
Save the Forest Tame the Jungle Jungle Reprised Implications
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Inventing the Maya Forest?
Tame the Jungle Save the Forest Jungle Reprised Implications
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Whose woods are these, anyway?
Tame the Jungle Save the Forest Jungle Reprised Implications
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Save the Maya Forest!
1990: Maya Biosphere Reserve becomes heart of Guatemala’s new protected areas system Mayarema project (USAID) -- $27 million 1996: Peace Accord on “Agrarian Situation”
Tame the Jungle Save the Forest Jungle Reprised Implications
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Living on Scorched Earth
“We didn’t invade the park, the park invaded us!” – Sepac community members
Tame the Jungle Jungle Reprised Save the Forest Implications
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¿Guerrilla? ¿Park Invader? ¿Narcocampesino?
Tame the Jungle Implications Save the Forest Jungle Reprised
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Is saving the Maya Forest remilitarization by another name?
This research was funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, and UC Human Rights Fellowship. I am grateful to Oxlaju Aj Tz’i’, Proyecto Lachuá, APROBA- SANK, CONGCOOP, Mercy Corps, and all those who invited me into their homes and onto their lands.