The way to Nueva Vida: in the Yucatan, where jaguars lurk and pyramids poke out of the forests, human are learning to live peaceably with nature

Sierra, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Barbara Kingsolver

THE SUN HAD SET, but the trees' upper branches were still lit like candles, aflame with birds. Keel-billed toucans hailed us from high overhead with huge beaks that looked freshly painted by an artist oil a binge. In the treetops they threw back their heads and laughed their goodnights. An enormous lineated woodpecker's vermilion crest stood straight up as if frozen in fright. We rolled down our windows and breathed in rarefied steam. The boughs of a gumbo-limbo tree drooped low with roosting chachalacas, dark, chicken-size birds renowned for their remarkable singing style. But by now it was too late in the day for singing. Eyes in shining pairs blinked from the roadside: foxes, agoutis, maybe wild cats. We had reached Mexico's Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, home to jaguarundis, ocelots, margays, pumas, and jaguars. It also conceals tapirs and opossums, turkeys colored like peacocks, orchids and bromeliads the size of turkeys, monkeys that hoot like owls, and owls with eyes in the back of their heads. Where the map shows a vast green emptiness, the land is alive.

That this wilderness still exists is something of an accident of geology. In the last century the industries of deforestation moved south through Mexico like General Sherman, sweeping and burning it clear of its subtropical forests. The march came here to the Yucatan Peninsula and then literally dried up. Even though the rains come heavy at times, no streams at all cross the Yucatan's limestone surface; the same water scarcity that plagued the ancient Maya has daunted modern ranchers in the region, preventing the successful development of this land for large-scale meat farming. So the Calakmul, for now, still belongs to toucans and jaguars.

Of course, birds and beasts alone have no power to save a Mexican forest. What the Maya of old worshiped as gods, the modern Maya tend to eat. Likewise the Chol, Tzeltal, and other groups fleeing Guatemalan repression and Mexican poverty. Some 17,000 refugees poured into this region between 1980 and 1995. Their tradition of slash-and-burn farming demanded that they leave behind used-up corn-fields every three years to clear new patches of forest. The Mexican government had designated the Calakmul forest a biosphere reserve in 1989, but signs posted to that effect tended to be read by the homeless as invitations to settle. "Hooray," refugees must have exclaimed at the sight of the forest preserve signs. "Nobody's living here who will give us trouble."

And so Mexico's last great forest, having held its own against timber magnates and hamburger franchises, seemed doomed to fall one branch at a time to corn patches and cook fires. But because of an extraordinary program launched in 1991, it still stands. In the villages surrounding the Calakmul another whisper was going around, maybe a feather of hope for the place. That was what we were looking for.

JUST OUTSIDE THE PRESERVE, in the village of Nueva Vida, or "New Life," Carmen Salgado waved happily from her gate and invited us into her backyard garden. We'd been told that here and in the region's other small villages we might find an intriguing update on the civilizations we had been intriguing in postmortem condition to the north, where the great pyramids poked out of the Yucatan forests. Here and now, in a cooperative of 36 families, papaya and lime trees shaded thatched houses elegantly constructed of smooth wooden poles. I kept studying them until the connection registered: These high-peaked roofs perfectly echoed the shape of the vaulted ceilings inside Mayan ruins. The architecture had preserved its central elements for thousands of years.

Outside Carmen's house, in her sunny garden, I stepped carefully to avoid solid plantings of cilantro, lettuce, and chaya--which she explained was a high-protein leaf crop that had been grown in the area since ancient times. A vine she called "nescafe" curled its tendrils around the wire fence that contained her compost pile; from its beans she made a coffee substitute and protein-enriched bread. We walked from her back gate down the gravel path through the village center, where a lush community citrus orchard offered oranges and grapefruits. A turkey paused to eye us, then continued stalking the ground under the citrus trees with a fierce forager's eye, taking seriously his job as the DDT of a new generation.

Carmen informed us in no uncertain terms that chemical pesticides and fertilizers are beyond the means of the subsistence farmers here--and what's more, they are learning not to want them. Instead, they demoralize pests with a concoction of soap, onions, and garlic. Their reliance on organic methods of pest control and soil amendment allows these farmers self-sufficiency; while also ensuring that their notoriously poor tropical soil will improve with each crop, rather than deteriorate.

Carmen's broad, handsome face lit up as she explained these things. Although she has had almost no formal education, she is astute, articulate, and comfortable with visitors, a natural spokesperson for Nueva Vida and its new program. She grew up in one place and another in the poorest parts of rural Monterrey, without family, land, or much hope until she came here. She was lucky: She arrived just as a new environmental appreciation was dawning over the Calakmul forest, and with it a new approach to its conservation. Everything depends on these villages immediately surrounding the forest preserve. Nueva Vida is one of the 72 ejidos, or cooperative farms, that ring the Calakmul reserve in a protective belt, established by government land grants assigned to groups of families that otherwise, inevitably; would have consumed the forest from the inside out. The plan may seem contradictory to U.S. notions of wilderness preservation, but here in the land of the Maya it may just be the only right solution: Rather than fight a losing battle to keep people out, the reserve's managers would encourage a boundary of settlements that could buffer the forest against waves of outsiders moving farther hi. The program's goal was to encourage these farmers to shift their long-standing war against trees into a peaceful coexistence.