10.

From Exploitation to Protection

These two maps reflect how rapidly and radically imaginaries of Eastern Chiapas transformed in just a
few decades. In both maps the jungle is divided, in the more recent map these geometric divisions
signify spaces of protection rather than exploitation. In place of concessions, by the 1970s vast areas
of the jungle were designated as protected areas for conservation, at least in theory. This transition
saw the jungle imaginatively transformed from a threatening space to a threatened space.

To understand the causes of this transformation we have to revisit the hegemonic imaginary of the
jungle in the early twentieth century. At this time, the jungle was seen in opposition to ‘civilization’, a
hostile space resistant to attempts at modernization, as were its Lacandon inhabitants. When the
hegemonic imaginary of the jungle transformed, so did that of the Lacandon people.

Tropical Resistance to Modernity

The dominant imaginative geography of Eastern Chiapas in the early twentieth century was not
specific to Mexico, but reflected Western ideas about the Tropics more generally at that time.
Tropical spaces in the Americas, as well as Africa and Asia were denigrated as backwards, racially
degenerative, disease-ridden, and unconducive to civilization. The jungle was feared for its supposed
debilitating effect on the mind and the body, and it was often termed as the ‘white man’s grave’. This
discourse was used to justify European imperialism, but attempts to subjugate nature often failed
due to the challenging climate and geography of the jungle. These failures only reinforced the
imaginary of the jungle as an inhospitable space. This discourse can be seen in descriptions of both
Eastern Chiapas and its Lacandon inhabitants at the time.

The jungle here is not man's slave, but his enslaver

 Serge Alejandro in ‘Boletin Estudiantil’, 1965

Outsiders in Eastern Chiapas were seen to be engaged in a losing ‘battle against nature’, which was
perceived in militaristic terms, as an ‘invader’ to be ‘conquered’. A notable example of this was
lumber companies’ failed attempt to mechanize the extraction of timber:

At great effort and expense, two tractors were

brought into one of the camps on the Usumacinta
River. A road was cut, and the first tractor started in
pulling two trailers loaded with gasoline. It took
several months to reach the destination and when it
got there there was barely enough gasoline for a
return trip to get more gasoline. The second tractor
sank and had to be dug out, dismantled and brought
in on muleback.

Frans, 1961

Machines failed to function in the jungle due to its muddy terrain which was almost impassable
during rainy season:

Day and night, early and late, the rain whips the trees and
leaves. The streams fill up. What used to be a trickling little
brook turns into an angry and roaring avalanche of water
and as the mules tramp along the trail they beat it into an
oozing, ankle-deep quagmire.
Frans, 1961

Travel was painfully slow, and the jungle didn’t ‘obey’ the
geophysical conventions which governed ‘civilized’ spaces.

An official Mexican league [...] in the jungle is an erratic and elusive way of measuring
distances.
Frans, 1961
Counter intuitively, the more well-traveled a trail was, the more difficult it was to pass through:

The definite fact is that thirty minutes after you leave established habitation you are to hell
and gone. The forest closes in silence behind you and nobody cares one whoop in hell about
 what may happen to you […] Every time a string of mules make a round trip, the trail is
kneaded into deeper mud.
Frans, 1961

Eastern Chiapas was also seen as inhospitable due to the rate at which the jungle was able to reclaim
human development.

Unless continuously maintained [the trails] become impassable in less than a year's time
-Archaeologist and cartographer David Amran, 1948

When Frans returned to Eastern Chiapas five years after his 1943 expedition, he was shocked at the
how quickly the airfield of El Cedro had dilapidated:

You won’t believe that this was a village before [...] All the houses which had stood along [the
airfield’s] edges 5 years ago had completely disappeared without leaving even traces of
them. The second growth bushes and fast growing trees covered and hid all. Only one palm
thatched house leaned sadly towards disappearance and oblivion.
Frans, 1948

Dangers of the Jungle

"...beyond the mountains is hell. The cursed land

where life is easy for those who overcome death. The
country of the tiger and the wild boar, of the snake and
the mosquito. Where onchocerciasis blinds the people.
Where malaria shields the bodies afternoon after
afternoon. Where the jungle kills men "You must not go
there".
Mario Balboa Robles in ‘Asi’, 1943
 We descended the mountain at an accelerated pace,
already blind to the danger of snakes or ferocious
animals, thinking only of the sky, the sun and the
water. And when, finally, after several weeks of
anxiety and anxiety, the thick curtain of leaves closed
behind us and we were able to contemplate the sky
again, we felt the joy of the prisoner for whom the
wide doors of freedom open.
Ricardo Lopez Toraya and Antonio Rodriguez
writing for ‘Mañana’, 1944

The jungle posed a multitude of dangers, and deaths from drownings, falling trees and disease were
relatively common. The jungle also held more unusual dangers, such as the deadly Chechen tree,
whose poison was used by the Lacandon to commit suicide:

If a man sleeps under it, his entire body becomes swollen; if only a leaf touches his body, that
part swells up immediately. The sap is worse. If it gets into a scratch, the man slowly dies.
Trudi, 1945

The bridge, which was only a huge mahogany tree fallen from one
bank to the other and over which we had passed a few days before,
was under water. The situation was bad, because our supplies were
scarce. Every attempt to throw trees across the river was a failure.
They broke when they fell. I tried to swim to the other bank, but the
current was so strong that I was swept away. It was impossible to
get through with the beasts.
Trudi, 1947
Malaria

Malaria was a significant danger in the jungle, although its prevalence was greatly exacerbated by
the human presence of the chicleros themselves, since mosquitoes hatched in the puddles of mules’
hoof prints:

There are few mosquitos in the undisturbed forest, but

when the chicleros arrive the picture changes…and very
soon the country becomes infested. The chiclero cannot
understand and never will understand that he must be
blamed for his own condition.
Frans, 1945

Frans suffered from a serious bout of malaria during the 1943

expedition:

We were in the middle of a march through the jungle, when he

started to feel sick. He could hardly walk. I found [him] lying on a
bed of leaves. He was shivering horribly from the cold of malaria.
Then he was sweating waterfalls. I served him as a nurse for a
few days […] he told me ‘I owe you my life Gertrude’

Trudi, 1944
The Drama of Bonampak

On his 1943 expedition Frans was very close to the yet ‘undiscovered’ ruins of Bonampak, but his
poor health prevented any exploration. Malaria thus likely prevented Frans from making the most
important Mayan ‘discovery’ of the 20th century. Instead, the Lacandon Chan Bor led the American
explorers John Bourne and Carlos Frey (Frans’ assistant on the 1943 expedition) to Bonampak in
1946. However, its famous murals, the ‘Sistine Chapel of the Mayas’ would only be found a few
months later by the archaeologist Giles Healey.

Just three years later, on an expedition to Bonampak for the Mexican government, Carlos Frey along
with the Mexican artist Franco Lázaro Gómez drowned in the Lacanja river. Although officially a
‘tragic accident’, at the time many rumours circulated that Carlos was murdered by the Lacandon.
Frey’s death served to further enhance the region’s dangerous reputation, and since few people
living in cities of Mexico ever ventured into Eastern Chiapas, their imaginaries of the jungle were
greatly informed by these sensationalised accounts.

The Law of the Jungle

Perhaps the best-known depiction of tropical nature in the early twentieth

century was Joseph Conrad’s novel ‘Heart of Darkness’. Within it, Conrad
described how the jungles of the Belgian Congo brought out the worst of
human nature. In a similar way, the anarchic environment of Eastern Chiapas
was seen as a magnet for immoral characters, and as having a corrupting
effect on those who lived there.

From them we learned about some chicle gatherers who were

fugitives from justice and said to be avoiding capture by the police
by hiding in isolated chicle camps deep within the nearby jungle.
American explorer John Bourne, 1945

As with the jungle’s dangerous wildlife, the reality was greatly exaggerated:

Popular legend has it that most chicleros are escaped convicts or candidates for conviction.
While they are no pantywaists, there are few criminals. Mostly they are perfectly ordinary
citizens
Trudi, 1945
Mexico’s Wild West

Eastern Chiapas was perceived as a lawless ‘Wild West’, and one factor contributing to this was its
blurred sovereignty. In 1882 Guatemala renounced its claims to Chiapas and the Usumacinta River
was established as the international border between Mexico and Guatemala. However border
disputes continued, and it was feared that Guatemala might invade, especially when the antagonistic
Jorge Ubico became president in the 1930s.

The potential for a war was agitated by the commercial activities of lumber companies and chicleros
who often violated the border and each other’s territory. The government lacked the resources to
patrol the vast area of Eastern Chiapas, left a vacuum where anarchy and violence thrived, and where
many of the norms of ‘civilization’ didn’t apply:

Two men [...] were camped on a neighbouring concession, attempting to steal all the chicle
they could get away with. The owners found them out and the result was a shooting scrap
with seven dead.
Frans, 1945

[the lumber companies] saw to it that the boundary lines of their respective concessions were
as vague as possible, so that they could expand stealing in every direction. What magnificent
pirates they were.
Frans, 1943

In [chicle] camps where there are many women there are frequent fights […] Also passion
murders [...]- One particularly brutal murder took place some years ago when an irate - let’s
call him husband - shot his rival when he was high up in a tree. The wounded man stayed up
in the tree caught by his climbing rope, and the murderer just let him hang there, head down,
to bleed for a slow death.
Frans, 1961
The Devil’s Brew

The chiclero lifestyle was extreme, being confined to the jungle in discomfort for most of the year
and then the sudden excess in Tenosique after the chicle season spending their earnings on women
and liquor. Writing to his parents from the jungle in 1919, Frans stated:

many of those who live in the tropics succumb to drinking. The heat makes you thirsty and
torpid, and a large part of the people who work in the tropics are stranded out here.

Of course, Frans would himself become an alcoholic, in no small part due to the extreme jungle
lifestyle.

In the jungle, chicle contractor’s forbid the consumption of alcohol, but chicleros found a way around
this. They brewed their own moonshine known as ‘shotgun rot gut’, for which reason corn and sugar
were strictly rationed by the chicle contractor.

One measure of sprouting corn and two measures of

sugar are poured into an empty kerosene can, it is left to
ferment. After twenty four to forty eight hours a shotgun
barrel is attached to the can and the devil’s brew is boiled.
The steam of this concoction condenses in the shotgun
barrel, and the liquid drips into a cup. Add some water,
drink and go crazy. It is guaranteed to rot your guts and to
make you want to cut the guts out of your best friend with
your machete.
Frans, 1945

Challenging the Dominant Imaginary

"I never get tired on expeditions. I get tired in the city" The danger of the tiger. The tiger is
afraid of humans, and does not attack unless attacked. Snakes rarely attack. I have swum
across lizard-infested ponds and rivers, and not once have I come away with a missing leg or
arm. To my knowledge, this has not happened to anyone. More horrible things happen in
Acapulco "paradise of lovers" than in my jungles.
Trudi, 1953

In the 1960s, public critiques against the modern discourse of civilisation grew louder and louder,
and the dominant imaginary of Eastern Chiapas slowly began to change in response. It was portrayed
less and less as threatening and savage, valued only for its resources, to space instead valued for its
beauty and diversity of plants and animals. The previously dominant language of the ‘conquest’ of
nature was replaced by that of the ‘protection’ of nature.
Frans and Trudy were early proponents of the jungle’s intrinsic value, often praising its majesty in
their early writings. It would take a few more decades before the rest of the world would catch on.

There is nothing like sitting one quite late afternoon in the great
forest watching the animal life. It slowly gets darker - birds are busy.
The parrots always in pairs screech overhead as they go home to
roost. [...] As I returned to the small clearing by our camp a flower of
24 macaws, flying in pairs- passed above - looking like a fleet of
airplanes against the evening sky - and their red and yellow
plumage shining in the light of the setting sun.
Frans, 1943

Horseback riding, in dry weather, through these alleys, is one of the most beautiful things I
have ever seen. They are two and three meters wide, forming real avenues in this immense
mountain. Walking through them, one has the impression of walking inside a gothic
cathedral, with its vaults shaped by the giants of the jungle.
Trudi, 1947

Guardians of the Jungle

It was no coincidence that the Lacandon, who had always been amalgamated with the jungle, were
also imaginatively transformed at the same time. Whereas previously their supposed distance from
modernity and closeness to nature had been held against them and used as evidence of ‘savagery’, it
was now held in high esteem and even romanticised.
 I love the life of the Indians, their way of being, their simplicity [...] they have a sense of time,
of the continuity of life, of the centuries, that we lose among the noises of the city and the
annoying exactitude of civilization.
Archaeologist Roberta Joughin, 1953

These “primitive” people live a damned right better than the people of so-called “civilised”
Tenosique.
Frans, 1943

It wasn’t understanding of the Lacandon which changed so much as views about nature, of which the
Lacandon were deemed to be part of. The Lacandon took on the role as ecological ‘noble savage’, the
spiritual guardians of the newly reimagined jungle. They were understood as saviors who could
absolve the sins that modern development had committed against the natural world. Their survival
was thus seen as key to saving the jungle, and artists and photographers invariably depicted them
against trees - ‘at one with nature’.

Modern Destruction of the Jungle

The imaginative transformation of nature took place at a time when the previously dominant
narrative of modern progress was coming under fire from a nascent ecological movement shocked at
the rapid deterioration of the environment. Concern was growing worldwide about human impacts
and increasing levels of pollution.

By the 1960s, accelerating levels of deforestation and the slash and burn farming of settlers in
Eastern Chiapas had shrunk the jungle to a shadow of its former self. Whereas Eastern Chiapas had
previously been the site of a series of failed battles to tame and dominate the immense jungle,
modern development was now defeating it. The language of ‘conquest’ no longer made sense - the
jungle had finally been conquered.
 When it is possible to tear down complex ecosystems and replace them with pastures,
croplands, oil wells, asphalt, satellite dishes, cell phone networks, and military stations, it is
no longer possible to imagine the jungle [...] as a landscape in which the forces of modernity
disintegrate.
Academic Brian Gollnick, 2008

For years, Trudy had been advocating for state intervention to protect both the Lacandon and their
jungle home, and her hard work would finally come to fruition with the election of president Luis
Echeverria. In 1972 he met with her and the governor of Chiapas in Na Bolom. A few months later he
issued a decree making the ‘Lacandon Community’, and the Lacandon people the sole owners of over
600,000 hectares of the jungle - the largest land grant in Mexican history. It was at this time that the
Lacandon were required to relocate into the three communities of Lacanjá Chansayab, Nahá and
Metzabok which exist to this day.

This was followed in 1978 by the creation of Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, Lacan-Tun Biosphere
Reserve and Chan-Kin Flora and Fauna Protection Area in 1992, and Naha-Metzabok Biosphere
Reserve in 2004.
Continued Extraction

Although the dominant imaginary of Eastern Chiapas had transformed from a space of exploitation
to a space of conservation, extraction continued apace. The 1972 creation of the ‘Lacandon
Community’ was less about conservation and more about ensuring state access to natural resources
in the region. Such underlying motives can be discerned from the 1974 government report ‘Gran
Visión de la Selva Lacandona’ (‘Great Vision of the Lacandon Jungle’), which laid out the
government’s ambitions for the region. The maps highlight the government’s interest in several new
forms of extraction - oil, hydroelectricity, and tourism.

Government Manipulation

It was politically expedient for the government to grant exclusive land rights to a few hundred
Lacandon rather than tens of thousands of Chol and Tzeltal settlers also living in Eastern Chiapas at
that time. Unlike the Lacandon ‘guardians of the jungle, these settlers were demonised for their
destructive effects on the jungle. Yet the creation of the ‘Lacandon Community’ in 1972 did little to
halt the jungle’s continued destruction. On the contrary, it was a tool which enabled the government
to carry out more efficient timber extraction. Two years after receiving their land title, the Lacandon
were manipulated into signing a government agreement to form a semi-state-run lumber company
‘COFOLASA’ (Compañía Forestal Lacandona, S.A) which was
permitted to extract 10,000 trees a year.

While the government profited from the jungle’s

destruction, thousands of Ch’ol and Tzeltal settlers were
disenfranchised. Only through years of protest and
negotiations did 5,000 Tzeltal and 3,000 Ch’ol manage to
achieve recognition of their land rights by Presidential
decree in 1978. However, echoing the Spanish reducciones
centuries earlier, the government only agreed on the
condition that they relocate to two new communities,
Frontera Corozal and Nueva Palestina.
[QUOTE HIGH UP ON THE WALL]

The immense jungle, attractive and repulsive. The hopeless hell of some, and the marvelous
Eden of others, was finally laid bare before our eyes, eager for mystery and adventure.

Ricardo Lopez Toraya and Antonio Rodriguez in ‘Mañana’, 1944

[QUOTE HIGH UP ON THE WALL]

There was the greenish darkness of all the jungles; the air of fear that makes the immense
constellation of its branches tremble. There were, finally, the dangers that gave our journey
the character of a risky adventure.

Ricardo Lopez Toraya and Antonio Rodriguez in ‘Mañana’, 1944

[QUOTE HIGH UP ON THE WALL]

We passed through Ocosingo. Civilization stops at Ocosingo. Beyond it there are no churches.
There is no law.
Hugh Hambleton in ‘The Evening Citizen’, 1947